Teaching Entrepreneurship for Sustainability

Emma Folmer and Tom Long were awarded an Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership grant for their project to move entrepreneurship and sustainability teaching forward.

In light of the sustainable development goals set in Agenda 2030 of the UN, there is a high need and demand to integrate sustainability into entrepreneurship education as entrepreneurial firms are an essential part of achieving these goals. However, sustainability principles are currently often provided as an 'add-on' aspect to entrepreneurship education and teaching, not truly integrating the two concepts. Entrepreneurship education tends to be opportunity- and process-oriented, while sustainability education tends to be systems- and consequence-oriented. Can the one simply be added onto the other in educational contexts, or are new ways of teaching necessary? We feel the need to dig deeper into this matter and to explore new ways of teaching sustainable entrepreneurship. Hence, the objective of this project is to address this gap by developing a teaching module integrating entrepreneurship and sustainability education. This module should develop students’ sustainability and entrepreneurial mindsets, bridging a gap between technology, commerce and purpose. We want students to acquire knowledge and skills that makes a valuable contribution to the UN sustainable development goals.

The project is funded by the Erasmus+ grant of the European Commission. We work in partnership with Uppsala University (Sweden) and Nord University (Norway).