A Proposal for a Standard With Innovation Management System

Fusing Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Into
Postgraduate Education
Panayiotis Ketikidis, Anna Sotiriadou, Thanos Hatziapostolou, Petros Kefalas
and Adrian Solomon
The University of Sheffield International Faculty, CITY College - Thessaloniki,
Greece
ketikidis@city.academic.gr
sotiriadou@city.academic.gr
hatziapostolou@city.academic.gr
kefalas@city.academic.gr
osolomon@city.academic.gr
Abstract: For many years entrepreneurship education was mostly integrated within the academic fields of
business and management. Recently though, entrepreneurship education has expanded the boundaries of purely
business education to other specialised sectors such as technology and science, promoting thus the need of
introducing the teaching of entrepreneurship in non-business environments. Nevertheless, most higher education
institutions still provide entrepreneurship education in a business programme context. This limitation requires
appropriate addressing since it creates and maintains a gap in relation to the effective knowledge transfer from
the academia to the industry. The numerous challenges of infusing interdisciplinary entrepreneurial capabilities to
postgraduate students must be tackled through well established mechanisms, especially for executive mode (one
long weekend per month) programmes of study. Such mechanisms include constant curriculum development,
effective quality assurance methods, innovative and flexible programme delivery and assessment models, and
finally, proficiency on educational technologies that can assist all previously mentioned aspects, but can also
enhance the students’ learning experience. Within this context, this paper presents an interdisciplinary
postgraduate programme that aims to instill and develop the habits of a mind characteristic of entrepreneurial
thinking to non-business students: the MSc in Business Management and Technology. The programme is
innovative and unique in its mode of delivery, quality assurance mechanisms and other core teaching and
learning and administration aspects which are presented in detail. Finally, we debate on the effectiveness and
efficiency of the programme by analysing the feedback from our students.
Keywords: entrepreneurship education, postgraduate education, curriculum delivery, south east Europe
1. Introduction
The limited diffusion of entrepreneurship into non-business studies has raised a wide literature debate
that aims to point towards devising inter-disciplinary entrepreneurial programmes into higher
education (Gibb, 2005, Boyle, 2007, Heinonen, 2007 and Brand et al., 2006) rather than focusing on
delivering entrepreneurship studies in the traditional business programme. According to the European
Commission (EC, 2008) but also to the academic literature (Brand et al., 2006), “viable business ideas
are more likely to arise from technical, scientific and creative studies”, pointing thus towards the
challenge of delivering inter-disciplinary entrepreneurship education. The same European agenda
(EC, 2008), reports that “Europe needs to stimulate the entrepreneurial mindsets of young people,
encourage innovative business start-ups and foster a culture that is friendlier to entrepreneurship and
to the growth of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs)” and thus leading to the creation of key
competences for all. Furthermore, the high emphasis that is being put on developing these
programmes resides mainly in the fact that entrepreneurship is directly linked with economic growth
(Brand et al., 2006), job creation and innovation (Ching & Ellis, 2004). Finally, entrepreneurial
capabilities may also lead towards intrapreneurship which can renew existing organizations (Hayton,
2004). Nevertheless, the same European Commission report (EC, 2008 and Socrates, 2006) also
debates the gap between existing teaching and programme delivery methods and those that are most
effective, and emphasises the need for experience-based teaching, interactive learning approaches,
multidisciplinary collaboration and staff mobility/exchange.
In this paper we start off by acknowledging the need for entrepreneurship education in a non-business
programme, but rather in an inter-disciplinary environment (technological) within postgraduate studies
in which traditional entrepreneurship provision methods are replaced by innovative means for
delivering the programme, ensuring academic quality and enhancing the student experience.
Furthermore, we believe that universities should promote staff mobility and internationalise their
programmes in order to offer a diverse but integrated background of knowledge and experiences that
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