Entrepreneurship education and the business school

Abstract This paper examines entrepreneurship education in the light of debates about the future of the business school, the nature of the MBA, with which management education is generally synonymous, and the links that need to be created between teaching and research. There is increasing focus on the general utility of entrepreneurial skills and aptitudes (i.e. creativity, independent thinking, opportunity recognition and exploitation, etc.), and it is our contention that entrepreneurship education offers an innovative new paradigm for business school education that answers some of the challenges that are currently levelled against the MBA. Given the breadth of relevance in terms of the issues around Entrepreneurship Education and future pedagogical development in Business Schools, this paper is also well placed as a vehicle to introduce the rest of the coverage in this special issue of TASM. This paper therefore also summarises the papers presented in terms of their contribution to our understanding of the role of entrepreneurship and innovation in higher education. All suggest the need for the broadening of human and social capital, while some propose a fundamental shift in the delivery of professional education.