Ecopreneurial education and support: developing the innovators of today and tomorrow

Manning, Louise, Smith, Robert, Conley, Gillian and Halsey, Luke (2020) Ecopreneurial education and support: developing the innovators of today and tomorrow. Sustainability, 12 (21). p. 9928. ISSN 2071-1050

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Abstract

Entrepreneurship and more particularly ecopreneurship are essential to drive the sustainable transitions needed in food supply chains. Existing pedagogic frameworks should address these academic disciplines and they should be embedded in the educational curricula. Even when ideas are formed that can drive sustainable change the process from ideation to commercialization can be difficult. The so-called “valley of death.” This aim of this conceptual paper is to consider pedagogic and program design and the mechanisms required to enaction of a body of practice around entrepreneurship and more specifically ecopreneurship within academic curricula and associated business incubators. This makes this paper of particular interest for both academia, policy makers and industry support sectors alike. An existing university that has both a student enterprise and ecopreneurship programme and an established agri-technology business incubator and accelerator is used as a case study to provide insight into how progress from ideation to commercialization can be more readily supported in a university setting. From a pedagogical perspective, it is incumbent to develop new conceptual, methodological and theoretically underpinned spiral pedagogies to teach and support future generations of learners at agricultural and landbased colleges and universities as to how to exploit and take advantage of entrepreneurial and ecopreneurial business opportunities. Productization too needs to be embedded into the ecopreneurial pedagogy and also consideration of how businesses and their associated ecopreneurs navigate from ideation to successful product/service commercialization.

Item Type: Article
Keywords: technology, ecopreneurial, ideation, commercialization, productization, support
Divisions: Agriculture, Food and Environment
Depositing User: Professor Louise Manning
Date Deposited: 04 Nov 2020 12:09
Last Modified: 06 Nov 2020 14:01
URI: https://rau.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/16425

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