Developing an entrepreneurial mindset while working
- On 26/05/2020
While working for a company as an intern or doing an apprenticeship and studying at the same time, some students are developing more than skills: their entrepreneurial mindset! More often young people are growing it at the same time as establishing ideas for a project or discovering how innovative concepts could be set in the future.
What does it mean to have “an entrepreneurial mindset”?
The entrepreneurial mindset is a state of mind that focuses on the research and development of opportunities. It can refer to the need or envy to create new concepts, to bring changes through innovation to businesses but also to think in a way to continuously learn and develop competences.
How students can develop their entrepreneurial mindset?
One of the first ideas we might have would be to start with business studies. In fact, in the path of having this state of mind, we can enrich it by learning more about entrepreneurship or the important skills to become an entrepreneur. However, having an entrepreneurial mindset doesn’t automatically apply to grow its own business.
Any students can build this mindset with a strong determination to go beyond the knowledge acquired in studies, from work or life challenges.
Developing an entrepreneurial mindset while working, can also occur by a change of behaviour and/or thinking.
Through a research on entrepreneurship, Nina Angelovska created the 8P’s of the entrepreneurial mindset:
The eight P’s of entrepreneurship – Nina Angelovska
The European project EnterMode is following the same purpose: helping European students in higher education to acquire an entrepreneurial mindset while working! In this sense, the consortium of the project developed “The EnterMode internship model: a win-win situation for interns and companies“. The internship model aims at connecting higher education institutions (HEI) and companies, to help a European student to achieve a given challenge, as incubators. This challenge is a goal the student agreed to realize during the internship to increase her/his skills and entrepreneurial mindset, with the support of the HEI and company involved. Have a sneak-peek of the internship model here.
This internship model is a great and innovative concept to help European students to give life to their ideas. Besides, it is in line with one of the four objectives of the strategic ET framework 2020 of the European Commission: to “enhance creativity and innovation, including entrepreneurship, at all levels of education and training“.
To sum up, entrepreneurs are not born to be, they work vigorously to become ones. Consequently, developing an entrepreneurial mindset is a faculty that can be obtained by anyone by working on it through the years, with powerful motivation.
https://www.gettingsmart.com/2018/03/the-entrepreneurial-mindset/
https://disruptorleague.com/2019/04/12/the-entrepreneurial-mindset/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ninaangelovska/2018/10/10/the-8-ps-of-entrepreneurship/#18bfe05514f5
https://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/european-policy-cooperation/et2020-framework_en
