Developing the enterprise curriculum: Building on rock, not sand

© 2007, © 2007 SAGE Publications. Entrepreneurship education is the process of providing individuals with the ability to recognize commercial opportunities and the insight, self-esteem, knowledge and skills to act on them. It includes instruction in opportunity recognition, commercializing a concept, marshalling resources in the face of risk and initiating a business venture. It also includes instruction in traditional business disciplines such as management, marketing, information systems and finance. This paper describes the design and introduction of a new programme in entrepreneurship at the University of Tasmania. Rather than adopt a traditional business school (passive learning) approach, this programme largely reverses the method and responsibility of learning through the process of student-centred learning. This method of learning represents a challenging departure from traditional mainstream teaching practices. In considering the benefits achievable from this teaching method, the paper also addresses the difficulties involved in transferring increased responsibility to students to manage their futures.