University training for entrepreneurship: Swedish approaches

Empirical research in Sweden on business venturing suggests that qualified experience and social skills are more crucial to success than formal education. Adopting an action perspective on entrepreneurship, a framework for identifying competences needed for an entrepreneurial career is provided. It is argued that entrepreneurial training calls for a contextual approach, implying, for example, that the social resources included in the personal network will supplement personal and organizational resources. Within such an entrepreneurial-learning framework, different Swedish academic programmes aiming at enforcing or supplementing management skills in small firms are presented. The reported courses include a MBA-programme with internship and training programmes for established entrepreneurs. Implications of the Swedish experiences for career management, the general school system and the re-training of management for entrepreneurial initiative are discussed.