How can we teach more responsible entrepreneurship?

The birth and limits of the entrepreneur myth

‘What, above all else, unites Carnegie and Gates, Edison and Jobs, Ford and Musk? The fact that all of them, regardless of their industry and the specifics of their personal legends, embodied the march of progress.’ Anthony Galuzzo, The Myth of the Entrepreneur (1)

If you had to caricature the entrepreneur of the last 30 years for a children's book, it would surely be a knight riding a unicorn pointing to the horizon with a silicon sword. The caption would explain that he is a fearless loner, that his rank is measured by his fundraising, and that his weapon is a semiconductor, and therefore linked to technology. However, the Silicon Valley model and its global influence are criticised: a broader, more inclusive approach is preferred in order to better respond to contemporary economic and social challenges (2).

In the 1980s, when entrepreneurship research was in its infancy, the fashionable project was to identify the typical psychology of entrepreneurs. It was assumed that certain personality traits predisposed people to entrepreneurial success, such as risk-taking, tenacity and the ability to withstand failure. However, no behavioural study of entrepreneurs has concluded that there is a relevant profile (3). Yet references to these supposed characteristics of successful entrepreneurs are found everywhere in the grey literature, and even in textbooks for management students.

Entrepreneurship in school textbooks

Why this misleading persistence? As shown by Bridgman & Cummings (4), management textbook publishers admit that it is often difficult to popularise new management theories, which are often jargon-laden, without betraying them: this is a lever for distinction in a scientific output that is growing every year. They also admit their difficulty in finding ideas that stand out from the fundamentals of 50 years ago.

In the absence of clear new knowledge, publishers continue year after year to play a game of ‘telephone’ that truncates, distorts and impoverishes concepts from the last century. Through this process, what was in 1943 an ambitious theory of human motivation has been transformed into a simplistic pyramid that "looks good on a slide and is easy for students to remember. But that's not what Maslow wrote" (4).

Entrepreneurship education is prone to this pitfall. Out of a pedagogical desire to establish a common basis of understanding within groups that often include a wide variety of nationalities, outdated and simplified concepts are taught, along with stereotypical representations of what it means to be an entrepreneur (5).

Mettons-nous dans la peau d’un étudiant : face au manque de nouveauté scientifique, du Bachelor au Master, les cours, les cas d’études et les séminaires qui traitent de l’entrepreneuriat et de l’innovation semblent redondants. Sur son téléphone, les algorithmes des réseaux sociaux l’invitent quotidiennement à une offre pléthorique de contenus, tutoriels et formations à l’entrepreneuriat qui reposent sur les mécaniques séduisantes du développement personnel. Cette curation personnalisée, loin des slides standardisées des cours, est aussi le moyen d’accéder et de s’identifier à des visions alternatives de l’entrepreneuriat tel qu’il est enseigné dans les écoles de management. Des chercheurs vont même jusqu’à dénoncer des curriculums cachés entre les lignes de certains programmes, et les comparent à une forme de culte (6) qui entretiendrait une idéologie moniste du monde, où entreprendre implique de reproduire certaines pratiques, d’épouser une certaine identité.

Let's put ourselves in the shoes of a student: faced with a lack of scientific innovation, from bachelor's to master's degrees, courses, case studies and seminars on entrepreneurship and innovation seem redundant. On their phones, social media algorithms bombard them daily with a plethora of content, tutorials and training courses on entrepreneurship based on the appealing mechanics of personal development. This personalised curation, a far cry from standardised course slides, is also a way to access and identify with alternative visions of entrepreneurship as taught in management schools. Some researchers even go so far as to denounce the hidden curricula between the lines of certain programmes, comparing them to a form of cult (6) that perpetuates a monistic ideology of the world, where entrepreneurship means reproducing certain practices and embracing a certain identity.

Through this call to guide students towards greater critical thinking and reflection on the clichés of entrepreneurship, some researchers want to see more room given to imagining new, more responsible forms of entrepreneurship. In order to examine local, frugal and circular approaches; to understand alternative modes of financing and governance; and finally to explore the psychological and identity-related drivers of entrepreneurship tailored to introverted, neuroatypical or precarious students, it will be necessary to update the theoretical framework and toolkit of programmes.

Towards teaching responsible entrepreneurship

Teaching responsible entrepreneurship — from the Latin respondere — could mean training each student to make choices they can justify and be accountable for within the society where their business operates. To achieve this, students must learn to project entrepreneurial action, a core element of management science, into the complex realities where such action unfolds — a domain more broadly rooted in the humanities and social sciences.

Europe is ideally positioned to define a new entrepreneurial ideal. Its efforts to design regulatory frameworks (such as the CSRD or the AI Act) where the United States and China leave entire sections of the economy unregulated make it a legitimate testing ground for new paradigms of entrepreneurship.

La responsabilité s’y manifesterait à travers une éthique d’entreprendre profondément ancrée dans le souci de l'autre et de la planète, inspirée à la fois par la perspective kantienne, celle de Hans Jonas et de l'éthique du care. Les entrepreneurs européens seraient appelés à se comporter en eurocitoyens corporatifs, veillant à intégrer dès le départ les enjeux de performance globale (économique, environnementale et sociale) à leur modèle d’affaires et à la gestion de leurs opérations dès le départ (Responsible by design @EDHEC). Pour pouvoir répondre de ses choix devant la cité, l’entrepreneur d’excellence serait incité à les justifier dans une démarche de production de connaissances. Plus que l’étude d’un marché et de ses consommateurs, la recherche et développement en sciences sociales deviendrait un pan essentiel de l’activité pour comprendre les rouages de son environnement.

Responsibility would manifest itself through a business ethic deeply rooted in concern for others and the planet, inspired by Kantian thinking, Hans Jonas and the ethics of care. European entrepreneurs would be called upon to behave as corporate Eurocitizens, ensuring that global performance issues (economic, environmental and social) are integrated into their business model and the management of their operations from the outset (Responsible by design @EDHEC). In order to be accountable for their choices to the community, entrepreneurs of excellence would be encouraged to justify them through a knowledge-generating process. More than just studying a market and its consumers, research and development in the social sciences would become an essential part of business in order to understand the workings of the environment.

Entrepreneurship becomes responsible when it seeks first and foremost to rid itself of certain irresponsible aspects (invisibility of employees, toxic managerial culture, relentless fundraising, etc.). In recent years, counter-narratives have emerged to denounce undesirable practices, sometimes inherent in the success of the startups concerned (#balancetastartup).

But entrepreneurship in grandes écoles should also open up new accounting practices (CARE multi-capital model, 2012), identify speculative traps (NFT bubble) and alienating trends (performative positivity) in the start-up ecosystem, raise awareness of the challenges of the Anthropocene, and free students from ‘dominant’ but also rigid frameworks and methodologies and outdated representations of the lone genius in his garage.

To maintain legitimacy and depth in the face of the proliferation of content accessible online to their students, entrepreneurship teaching models must offer more than a series of introductory courses in management sub-disciplines. Case studies from the Ivy League would benefit from being extended with more concrete, human and ambiguous management simulations. Experience shows that students are more stimulated when a teaching case goes beyond the purely managerial aspects of a subject. They flourish when they are presented with the complexity and ambivalence of the real world, without trying to oversimplify it.

References

(1) Galluzo, A. Le mythe de l’entrepreneur—Éditions La Découverte. (n.d.). Retrieved 25 November 2024, from https://www.editionsladecouverte.fr/le_mythe_de_l_entrepreneur-9782355221972

(2) Audretsch, D. B. (2021). Have we oversold the Silicon Valley model of entrepreneurship? Small Business Economics, 56(2), 849–856. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-019-00272-4

(3) Gartner, W. B. (1988). “Who Is an Entrepreneur?” Is the Wrong Question. American Journal of Small Business, 12(4), 11–32. https://doi.org/10.1177/104225878801200401

(4) Bridgman, T., & Cummings, S. (2020). A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about Management Theory (1er édition). SAGE Publications Ltd - https://collegepublishing.sagepub.com/products/a-very-short-fairly-interesting-and-reasonably-cheap-book-about-management-theory-1-268894

(5) Raible, S. E., & Williams-Middleton, K. (2021). The relatable entrepreneur: Combating stereotypes in entrepreneurship education. Industry and Higher Education, 35(4), 293–305. https://doi.org/10.1177/09504222211017436

(6) Farny, S., Hannibal, M., Frederiksen, S., & Jones, S. (2016). A CULTure of Entrepreneurship Education. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 28, 514–535. https://doi.org/10.1080/08985626.2016.1221228