Crowdfunding for Entrepreneurial Education: A Classroom Exercise in a Business School

Introduction

Entrepreneurial education is commonly seen as a vector to improve the level of entrepreneurial intention (Martin et al. 2013) and entrepreneurial activity (Aparicio et al. 2019). In higher education, this theme has gained prominence since 2001, having surpassed the mark of 400 scientific papers (Fernández-Portillo 2018). Although the field of studies has emerged mostly focusing on general themes associated with entrepreneurial education, since 2007 its focus has shifted to specific themes, such as “entrepreneurship learning, entrepreneurship intention, higher education and provocation” (Aparicio et al. 2019, p. 111). Among the emerging research gaps for the 2020s, we elect the challenge of promoting studies that investigate pedagogical models and their perceptions on entrepreneurial, undergraduate education (Nabi et al. 2017). We also follow Ferreira et al. (2018) on the claim that information technology (IT) is pervasively present on people’s lives and tasks nowadays, thus requiring instructors to use these tools to implement their teaching methods in class.

In this study, we contribute to entrepreneurial education by developing and validating a classroom crowdsourcing exercise in a business school, implemented via freely available crowdsourcing platforms. Considering our results, we expect future researchers to establish comparisons with further cases in comparative research designs, such as Crammond (2019).

Entrepreneurial education is considered a strategic tool for regional development and the generation of entrepreneurial universities is one of the most prominent themes in the literature (Galvão et al. 2018). Through entrepreneurial education, students develop “financial literacy, management skills, ability to take responsibility and make decisions, competitiveness, perseverance, ability to network and make contacts and ability to research effectively” (Adamu, 2019, p. 211). Considering entrepreneurial education and its current challenges, studying the impacts of technology on teaching and learning strategies stands out. This is a topic of interest for our study.

In recent years, the implementation of new teaching and learning strategies has become more prevalent (Broadbent & Poon 2015; Claxton et al. 2006). Teaching, learning, and research in higher education institutions nowadays do not stop at the boundaries of campus and classroom any more due to the emergence of technologies that facilitates social online interactivity and collaboration between people around the world. This technological context creates the ideal opportunity for a “costless” digital, internet-based entrepreneurship where students efforts can concentrate on applying the concepts and tools they are learning (Nambisan 2017). Although this pedagogical exercise here presented in focused on strategic (Miller & Friesen 2008) and entrepreneurial theory (Malhotra et al. 2017). There are good reasons to believe the same or a similar exercise could be adopted on any course in the broad applied sciences spectrum (Solomon, 2013).

Unlike traditional means of soliciting capital, where the entrepreneur presents his idea to a narrow and sophisticated group of investors, crowdfunding allows entrepreneurs to apply for internet funding to a large number of people, where each individual contributes only with a small amount to reach the established goal (Belleflamme et al. 2014; Greenwald 2012).

Teachers in higher education are slowly accepting the fact that they have to become more professional in their approach to teaching, matching their professionalism in research (Laurillard, 2014). There is also a growing recognition that the technological media have the potential to improve student learning, or at least teach efficiency, and university teachers are looking for ways of increasing their understanding of what can be done with the new media, and how to do it. Collaborative technology and social media play a central role in the communication among university students nowadays (Shen et al., 2017). These are the questions explored in this paper.