Do We Really Teach (Approach) Small Business the Way We Should?

There has been a substantial growth in all kinds of training support activities in Europe in the field of small-business management and entrepreneurship in the past decade. There have also been a number of attempts in the past five years to review activities in the field and questions are raised about the teaching of entrepreneurship—what we know about the success factors in entrepreneurship and whether indeed they are teachable. This paper argues that to improve the way that small business is taught there are simple pragmatic approaches that need to be taken (many of which are well-known but may be ignored under the pressures we face). However, there are some basic conceptual issues relating to the process by which small businesses can be helped to learn which have implications for the design of educational institutions, and to the skills and competencies of teaching staff.