Page 190 - 1-Entrepreneurship and Local Economic Development by Norman Walzer (z-lib.org)

Effective Entrepreneurship Education Programs 179

resources and are being forced to cut back on many programs, especially ex-
tracurricular activities. The extent to which proponents of entrepreneurship
education are able to identify and marshal resources in support of entre-
preneurship learning may be the ultimate test to whether they understand
and practice entrepreneurship themselves. If, as Harvard Business School’s
Howard Stevenson suggests, entrepreneurship is “the pursuit of opportu-
nity beyond the resources you currently have available” (Mahoney 2006),
embarking on the design and implementation of entrepreneurship educa-
tion is such an opportunity that must not wait until the resources are at
hand.
There are two dimensions to the resource question: (1) financial and (2)
human. To overcome the resource challenge, school administrators and in-
structors should not merely reallocate existing resources. Instead, identify-
ing and marshaling the needed resources from previously untapped sources
has several advantages. First, it does not create animosity from colleagues
who might otherwise view the entrepreneurship program as in competition
with their courses for scarce resources. Second, seeking additional resources
provides an opportunity to engage community and business leaders in the
program, which may eventually lead to both direct and in-kind support for
the program. Finally, the resource strategy provides classroom learning mo-
ments, giving instructors a chance to demonstrate the importance of un-
derstanding customer needs, articulating a value proposition, and differen-
tiating between a good idea and a business opportunity.
All of these objectives are satisfied when proponents of entrepreneurship
education view creating the program as an entrepreneurial venture. For ex-
ample, those individuals who initiate the program must be able to answer
the following questions:

• Are we creating sufficient value so that individuals will take money out
of their pockets and put it in our pocket for this purpose?
• Who is the customer—that is, for whom does this value proposition
resonate?
• Who is the competition?
• Can we design, produce, and deliver the program at a cost that makes
it worthwhile for us and the students?

When approached from this perspective, one realizes that building a self-
sustaining entrepreneurship education program in local schools is, in and
of itself, a visible and relevant example of social entrepreneurship. For ex-
ample, this effort is an opportunity to teach the difference between cus-
tomers, those who provide the resources—whether donors or investors—
and end-users (i.e., the students who are the direct beneficiaries of the
program) and then to articulate the value proposition to potential cus-
tomers.