Yes, entrepreneurship can be taught. While it can indeed be helpful to learn from failure in an actual business venture, I believe similar lessons can be taught by studying cases and using simulations. I have been teaching undergraduate and graduate entrepreneurship courses for 15 years and many students have used the business plan assignment in the course to launch of successful businesses.  Another very informative assignment, perhaps related to knowledge sharing, is to require students to interview a successful entrepreneur for a written paper with specific questions provided by the Professor. Often the practicing entrepreneurs and small business owners who are interviewed by students provide valuable lessons about previous failures they often experienced.  Also, the practical aspects, such as planning the legal form of ownership, financing opportunities, marketing, staffing, technology, and so on) of entrepreneurship that are included in most textbooks are very important for aspiring entrepreneurs and individuals who wish to become self-employed. Here are some articles I wrote that might helpful. Good luck in your research.

Article Aspects of entrepreneurial success

Article On becoming an entrepreneur: An evolving typology

Article Strategy Choices of Potential Entrepreneurs

 See the excellent article of Deniz Ucbasaran, Dean A. Shepherd, Andy Lockett, and S. John Lyon, "Life After Business Failure: The Process and Consequences of Business Failure for Entrepreneurs", in,

Journal of Management January 2013 39: 163-202, first published on August 23, 2012 doi:10.1177/0149206312457823. It's free to download.

Pro-active people are entrepreneurs.  But its possible to motivate young people as entrepreneurs by arousing their enthusiasm to be proactive.

 Of course, entrepreneurship can be taught. I had the chance to teach entrepreneurship in master for several years. Some students, not the majority, succeeded to launch and develop their own business.

Those students have some particular features. They are autonomous, highly motivated, communicate well and they don't fear the risk. Hence, teaching entrepreneurship is useful but not sufficient to make successful entrepreneur. Some particular personal qualities are necessary.

 Hi Justin,

I think that arousing enthusiasm of young people isn't sufficient to make them entrepreneurs. They also need training, financial support and accompany.

Yes, entrepreneurship can be taught. While it can indeed be helpful to learn from failure in an actual business venture, I believe similar lessons can be taught by studying cases and using simulations. I have been teaching undergraduate and graduate entrepreneurship courses for 15 years and many students have used the business plan assignment in the course to launch of successful businesses.  Another very informative assignment, perhaps related to knowledge sharing, is to require students to interview a successful entrepreneur for a written paper with specific questions provided by the Professor. Often the practicing entrepreneurs and small business owners who are interviewed by students provide valuable lessons about previous failures they often experienced.  Also, the practical aspects, such as planning the legal form of ownership, financing opportunities, marketing, staffing, technology, and so on) of entrepreneurship that are included in most textbooks are very important for aspiring entrepreneurs and individuals who wish to become self-employed. Here are some articles I wrote that might helpful. Good luck in your research.

Article Aspects of entrepreneurial success

Article On becoming an entrepreneur: An evolving typology

Article Strategy Choices of Potential Entrepreneurs

 Other aspects are, also, important to teach, especially, leadership and innovation.

Paul,

These papers may help.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/299747565_Towards_a_talent-driven_outward-oriented_globally-competitive_SME_framework_Discussion_Paper

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236941623_Building_a_knowledge_society_one_individual_at_a_time_a_multi-level_review

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260638458_Strategies_for_enhancing_Jamaican_competitiveness_in_the_global_knowledge_economy

Working Paper Building a knowledge society one individual at a time: a mul...

Technical Report Towards a talent-driven outward-oriented globally-competitiv...

Conference Paper Strategies for enhancing Jamaican competitiveness in the glo...

@Silburn, Thank you for the links.

It has been said, entrepreneurship CANNOT be taught, but may be INSPIRED. Most professors who try to teach entrepreneurship are not themselves entrepreneurs. It is rare to see successful entrepreneurs return to universities to teach. In fact successful entrepreneurs seldom teach others to be entrepreneurs, but the often inspire others to become entrepreneurs through mentorship, role modeling, etc. If it there is a formula to teach entrepreneurship, we would duplicate Bill gate and Mark Zuckerberg by the millions----the fact remains, there is one Bill Gate and one Mark Zuckerberg. Hundreds of successful entrepreneurs that followed are all in different shape, form, fields and capacities. 

Agreed Paul,

Entrepreneurs are a rare breed.  Not all persons desire, yearn or wish to,  or indeed can, operate a business and further, not all business persons are entrepreneurs.

I had posted the response below  earlier on RG, but it is worth repeating in this context.

In  the Schumpeterian model an entrepreneur by definition is an innovator.  For further clarity, we must distinguish between creativity and innovation.  Two separate concepts.  Until the market votes positively and rewards a creator / ideator financially for that creativity, then he remains just an inventor.   The patent office holds many inventions that have never been "commercialised". The two acid tests that apply here are novelty and usefulness.  Unless the new or improved product , service, method, process etc are both novel and useful then there is no innovation.  If it is merely novel, it is an instantiation of creativity but not yet innovative.  What causes the "novelty" to be transformed into innovativeness is its usefulness as accepted and validated by the market; i.e. commercialisation.  The entrepreneur makes that happen.  hence there is no entrepreneurship without innovation and vice versa.  In the Schumpeterian model, the entrepreneur makes innovation happen.  

By the way, back in the day,  Schumpeter's conceptualisations were viewed as radical and unorthodox.  The orthodoxy at the time had no role for an "entrepreneur" in explaining economic development.  Today, it is widely accepted that entrepreneurs are the drivers of economic development,  as without innovations, there is no possibility for the expansion of the production possibility frontier (PPF).

So when we look at the universe of business persons in an economy, not all are entrepreneurs.  Some are truly just tried and proven replicative operations; adopting and repeating systems of before.  Are they low or no risk ?   Not really !  Because they are in a crowded, common competitive space,  their operations are typically high-risk.  Are they therefore defined as "entrepreneurs" because of this risk ?  I would say not.  There is nothing new or improved.   What percentage of the population of businesses are replicative; I would suggest the vast majority.  They are merely about the business of the logistics of an economy; eg taxi service, shop-keepers, restuarants, doctors, lawyers etc.   many are small business persons but not entrepreneurs.   The entrepreneurs, on the other hand, are really a minority sub-set of the population of business persons.  Replicative businesses serve to maintain the PPF.   Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, through their new and improved business activities (ie innovations) grow and expand the PPF.  

So an analogy.  Not perfect but workable and makes the point.  Lets imagine a flight of geese in their V formation.  The lead bird is forward scanning the environment and making the decisions as to how to beat the headwinds.  The birds on the flanks doing the same thing, but less so.  The rest of the flock behind the leading edges are expending less energy and benefit from the zone of low turbulence and free lift in the wind's wake. They are pulled forward by the slipstream of the leaders and glide along relatively effortlessly for the most part. The bird on point is the lead innovator. The birds on the leading edges, left and right,  must also be entrepreneurial.  They operate at the cutting edge of change and must make "new and useful" adaptations to flight (ie innovate) to survive.   The rest of the flock, the vast majority, operate behind these leaders, in a zone of minimal or no "innovation" turbulence; these are the replicative businesses.  The truth is that a lot of businesses (replicative businesses) do not want to be at that leading edge.  They are very happy to work with systems that are way behind the innovation trail and just not be bothered with the trials and tribulations, risks  and failures, of innovating.   They are more comfortable to be efficiently executing standard proven processes and procedures.  They are very content to replicate and to leave others (entrepreneurs) to do the heavy lifting of innovating.   Is a business-person the same as an entrepreneur ?  Not necessarily.  The two are oftentimes conflated; especially by the media.   Entrepreneurs are indeed  a rare and special  breed.   A non-innovating entrepreneur does not exist in Schumpeterian logic; its an oxymoron.

(Flying geese model is merely for illustration as in fact the geese flights are far more egalitarian with constant rotation of roles in-flight)

Extracted from:   "Can anyone suggest a method for innovation in entrepreneurship? - ResearchGate. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Can_anyone_suggest_a_method_for_innovation_in_entrepreneurship/2 [accessed Jun 11, 2016]".

Dear Paul Louangrath, Thank you very much for asking this very important question.

Question:

Can entrepreneurship be taught?

this is a very important issue that requires scientific research.

The topic is important. In my opinion, this is an important and interesting question. It is very good that this question appeared on the research portal Research Gate. This is a very interesting and scientifically important topic. Because the topic is very important so I still read the answers, I follow the interesting discussion.

Entrepreneurship education is important in today's advanced knowledge-based economies.

I answer an interesting question:

Yes, entrepreneurship can and must be taught. Of course, you can teach skills, knowledge, etc. On the other hand, not every citizen is educated, because personality traits are also important: management, decision making, acceptance of investment risks, etc. In knowledge-based economies, one of the important factors of economic growth is the activation of innovation and entrepreneurship.

As part of this activation, entrepreneurship should be taught in schools and at universities. In many schools and many fields of study, the subject of Entrepreneurship should appear in the curriculum in addition to the Foundations of Economics.

In order to teach entrepreneurship effectively, it is necessary to improve and implement innovative teaching techniques and instruments. New online information media, social media portals, data processing in Big Data database systems, etc. should be used in the teaching process. During the course students should set up companies and participating in the didactic game, these companies should be conducted in simulations of different scenarios of the characterized, analyzed market environment , competitive, institutional, etc.

I invite you to the discussion.

Definitely, only a few entrepreneurs are born, the majority have becime entreoreneurs throigh education. That's why educatokn in entrepreneurship is so important.

I am most doubful that mot of you about the possibility to teach entrepreneurship. I teach it and I advise associations of young entreneurs. For me it is quite easy to teach them some managerial technics to help them once they have decided to create something. But everybody won't be an entrepreneur; everybody has not this special willingness and "ambition" to create something and to be independant and "fully" responsible; and to me that is that spécial willingness which makes sometime serial entrepreneurs, but that seems quite difficult to teach.

The essentials of entrepreneurship can be taught by schooling, virtual and/or real. But-- as Israel Kirzner many times opined: If I would be an entrepreneur, I would not be here (teaching) today.

Double-loop-learning seems to be very important, with respect to risk psychology,

a strict methodical life-style and 'the money-burn-rate'.

I think it highly depends on practical experience.