The curricular confusion between entrepreneurship education and small business management: a qualitative analysis

The curricular confusion between entrepreneurship education and small business management: a qualitative analysis1. The purpose of this chapter is to identify the common curricular practice of mixing and mismatching concepts and theories of small business and entrepreneurship based on the assumption that small business and entrepreneurship are coterminous phenomena. The discussion of this paper revolved around the question of clarifying and articulating the differences between pedagogy and curricula for steady state growth oriented small business owners and accelerated growth or scalable venture founders. The distinctiveness and overlap between steady state and accelerated growth entrepreneurs is relevant to academia, practitioners, and policy makers. We suggest 'entrepreneurship' is the art and science of taking the risk and action to create a venture and value for multiple constituents. Furthermore, we posit that it is the 'entrepreneur' that engages in 'entrepreneurship'. Moreover, entrepreneurs can be either founders of small business ventures (steady state growth aspirant) or scalable ventures (accelerated growth aspirant). Finally, while these two entrepreneurship paths (steady state versus accelerated growth) are divergent in nature they can be convergent (steady state growth morphs into a scalable accelerated venture and vice-versa), and they have different pedagogical and curricular needs.