High Educ DOI 10.1007/s10734-016-0105-x BOOK REVIEW

Sherry Hoskinson and Donald F. Kuratko (eds): Innovative pathways for university entrepreneurship in the 21st century Emerald, 2014, 254 pp., ISBN: 978-78350-498-5 Hao Ni 1 & Xiaozhou Xu 1

# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016

The call for a greater emphasis on university-based entrepreneurship is compelling. Now more than ever, innovation and entrepreneurship have been touched upon in the field of higher education and industrial policies. Entrepreneurship education, however, as a new modality out of the traditional educational boundaries, is still experiencing a diffusion process. In-depth theoretical construction and the best grounded practices are both expected to inspire multistakeholders, such as educators, researchers, policy makers, and entrepreneurs in the field, especially given that the developing pace of universities’ programs and centers focused on entrepreneurship is accelerating. With contributions of scholars from the USA, Spain, Singapore, and Mexico, the book Innovative Pathways for University Entrepreneurship in the 21st Century makes valuable efforts to build a large body of scholarship specific to entrepreneurship education by providing the latest perspectives on how the entrepreneurship field of study looks forward to reshaping and preparing tomorrow’s highly sophisticated entrepreneurial generations (p. xi.). Edited by Sherry Hoskinson and Donald F. Kuratko, this book probes into interrelated topics like entrepreneurship ecosystem, technology transfer, entrepreneurial intention and behavior, and social innovation and transformation. Perhaps more exciting is that the book also addresses global entrepreneurship education development trends, namely, university-wide entrepreneurship education and teaching social entrepreneurship. Cross campus entrepreneurship education is a logical consequence of the rapid development of entrepreneurship in postsecondary institutions across the globe (Morris et al. 2014). Nonetheless, most of the other disciplines are not well prepared and even collide with for cross-pollination. There is an increasing interest in the field of social entrepreneurship among academics and social activists as well as among many in the private sector (Praszkier and Nowak 2012). At the same time, * Hao Ni [email protected]

1

College of Education, Zhejiang University, 148 Tian Mu Shan Road, 310028 Hangzhou, Zhejiang, People’s Republic of China

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questions about how to embed it into higher education system remain looking for thoughtprovoking answers. Hence, to some extent, this book arrives in time. Compiled by more than 20 contributors with management and entrepreneurship academic background, this collected work consists of ten chapters with a wide range of issues. Chapter 1, entitled “Building University 21st Century Entrepreneurship Programs that Empower and Transform”, argues that students are at risk since they lack the entrepreneurial mindset and capabilities to stay abreast with changes in demands in the twenty-first century. This is dynamic, threatening, and complex while creativity is regarded as the catalyst to make a change. After providing a broad overview of entrepreneurship education programs’ (EEPs) structuring and development from an organizational perspective, the authors contend that EEPs should be created for empowerment and transformation across the campus by adopting the 5C framework concept, convictions, competencies, connections, and character) as a roadmap. The second chapter, “Exploring the Concept of an Entrepreneurship Education Ecosystem”, concentrates on the conceptualization and typology of the entrepreneurship education ecosystem (E3) on the basis of responding to defined general ecosystems, business ecosystem, and university-based entrepreneurship ecosystem, respectively. This chapter holds the view that stakeholders, resources, infrastructure, and culture are the four dimensions and curriculum, cocurricular activities, and research are the three domains of internal E3. By applying the above two aspects, evaluating how the domains’ activities are tightly connected and how deeply the university commits in terms of the above-mentioned dimensions, a 2 × 2 typology can be created to show the role of a university: a broker, a coordinator/facilitator, a hub, or a developer. Chapter 3, “Addressing the Challenges of Future Entrepreneurship Education: an Assessment of Textbooks for Teaching Entrepreneurship,” deals with textbooks for teaching entrepreneurship. It reveals that the number of entrepreneurship textbooks has skyrocketed with the interest increasing in EEPs. By analyzing the content of 57 textbooks, the study suggests that most of the textbooks have manifested significant coverage of such topics as the nature of entrepreneurship, business plans, marketing, and financing. On the other side, topics like sales, family business, women and minorities, ethics, and sustainability gained little attention and were provided little coverage. Besides, social media and business canvas are some examples of emerging concepts that address the challenges of future entrepreneurship education. Following the previous chapters are two quantitative studies from Singapore and Latin America, respectively, while both are based on the theory of planned behavior. Using data from a survey of 836 students at NUS, the Singapore case examines the effects of EEPs (both classroom-based programs and experiential programs) on students’ level of entrepreneurial engagement, which was proved to have a positive influence and significantly moderated by students’ attitudes and perceptions. The study also supports the call to move toward hands-on experiential programs as a more effective way to influence students’ behavior and venture activities. From an institutional economic approach, the Latin America case proposes a conceptual model with a sample of 1759 students enrolled in three entrepreneurial universities. The study verifies that entrepreneurial university pathways (education and training) have positive effects on students’ start-up actions by the indirect impact observed on start-up intentions. Chapter 6 introduces a matrix of opportunity types that describes considerable variations in the means-ends relationship. Four types of opportunities (replication, reinterpretation, revelation, and revolution) are identified and delineated. To further understand how variations in opportunity conceptualizations influence entrepreneurs’ interpretation of their specific

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opportunity and in turn drive the actions they take to fulfill their visions, legitimacy building, knowledge assimilation, market demand, and resource acquisition are the four actions that may be valued in different situations, as the authors illustrate. The article ends by highlighting implications for the design and pedagogy of EEPs, in which matching opportunity type and action is highlighted. Turning to a broader understanding of entrepreneurship, chapter 7 employs the discipline of Informing Science as a lens to study the particular entrepreneurial informing system. Focusing first at the level of the entrepreneurship discipline itself, recently advanced frameworks for practice-as-entrepreneurial-learning and for the scholarship of teaching and learning for entrepreneurship (SoTLE) are built upon using related work on academic informing systems to develop a system that informs entrepreneurial practice (p. 147). A brand new perspective of viewing entrepreneurship as an informing discipline brings implications for improving how it informs its clients and how to avoid the impact of potential crisis. The last three chapters (8, 9, and 10) shift to convergence trends in entrepreneurial training programs. Chapter 8 presents the hybrid model that provides training to entrepreneurs after they have started their business and before they become large or well established. Modules like knowledge-based training, experiential learning, and peer networking are well organized in the proposed EEP in urban environment. This format of program allows for progressive learning while networking among participants. The ninth chapter starts out with a historical account of the land-granted movement as an important American social innovation/initiative. Linking the past with the present, the author suggests an alternative model, the so called social entrepreneurship for land-granted colleges and universities. Corresponding with their historical role, these higher educational institutions are positioned as key agents in promoting economic and social interests of the nation by advancing technology transfer. The final chapter examines the history, accelerants, and challenges of the radiant model for popularizing entrepreneurship. Cornell University, University of Rochester, and Syracuse University are the three cases in this chapter as campus-wide entrepreneurship education samples. Leadership, student culture clash, faculty development, and sustainable funding are the key concerns in university-wide programs, though they continue to grow and spread to more campuses. In fact, the above three chapters also point out the transformation and upgrading of EEPs, from single knowledge instruction to experiential learning, from focusing on technical and commercial entrepreneurship to social entrepreneurship, and from business school-based entrepreneurship education to campus-wide entrepreneurship education. In conclusion, this book provides profound and comprehensive insights on how to cultivate talents to be equipped with out-of-box thinking and entrepreneurial competence response to the global challenges in the twenty-first century. Throughout the book, there is continued attention paid to leading universities to be prepared for the coming generations in entrepreneurship excellence. This volume will undeniably be of interest and use to students, scholars, trainers, and administers working in this field. EEPs outlined in the chapters will be a great reference for program designing. Another merit is that the book not only gives consideration to global trends but reviews country-specific context to strengthen the awareness of university-based entrepreneurship. Nevertheless, lacking of overall coherence seems to be a fly in the ointment.

High Educ Compliance with ethical standards Funding information This was funded by the National Social Science Fund of China (14CGL063).

References Morris, N., Kuratko, D., & Pryor, C. (2014). Building blocks for the development of university-wide entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship Research Journal, 4(1), 45–68. Praszkier, R., & Nowak, A. (2012). Social entrepreneurship: theory and practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.