Richard Blundel - Exploring Entrepreneurship

• Richard Blundel
• Nigel Lockett
• & Catherine Wang

SAGE Publications Ltd

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We have written this book to help you to explore entrepreneurship in all its complexity and variety. Our approach is based on the view that some subjects, such as medicine, engineering, and entrepreneurship, are particularly well-suited to experience-based learning. The basic idea is that people can learn a lot more if they are able to connect the research evidence and the theory to some kind of direct personal experience. The nature of this experience depends a great deal on what you are studying. For example, a medical student spends time working in different parts of a hospital, while an engineering student might design a new product or test some materials in a laboratory. Providing practical experience is more difficult for entrepreneurship students, but it is possible to re-create some aspects of a real-life experience using new venture exercises, business plan competitions, and computer simulations. In this book, we provide support for all three types of activity. However, experience-based learning is about more than just having an experience. Some of the most important learning happens when practical activity is combined with well-structured reflection. With this in mind, we have designed the book around three related aims:

1. to help you gain essential practical skills and underpinning knowledge, and reflect on the challenges involved in creating an entrepreneurial venture, either individually or as part of a team;