Combining Cross-Border Online Teams and Field Projects in Developing Entrepreneurial Competencies

Preparing potential entrepreneurs for business entries has been for several decades a traditional aim of entrepreneurship education (Gartner & Vesper, 1994), which differentiates it from management education. Some of the existing firms support intrapreneurship in order to increase performance through strategic renewal and the creation of new venture opportunities (Lumpkin & Lichtenstein, 2005), and this links corporate entrepreneurship in large organizations with searching new business opportunities. Entrepreneurship education has also the potential to prepare students to act as independent professionals in the knowledge-based economy. Developing business opportunity identification skills has a crucial role in entrepreneurship education (De Tienne & Chandler, 2004; Heinonen & Poikkijoki, 2006). Shane and Venkataraman (2000) defined entrepreneurial opportunity as a situation where new goods or services could be introduced for greater revenue than their cost of production. Entrepreneurial opportunity recognition can initiate learning processes on the level of an individual but also on the level of groups or organizations. Lindsay and Craig (2002) specify three stages of opportunity identification: opportunity search, opportunity recognition and opportunity evaluation. Later stages of business opportunity exploitation include business concept development, business planning and business creation (Ardichvili et al., 2003). Business planning has been often treated in academic entrepreneurship education as the process that integrates all essential steps for launching an entrepreneurial business.