From ventures to citizens: rethinking the role of teamwork in entrepreneurship education

In a world of growing complexity and metacrisis, democratic participation is more important than ever. Entrepreneurship education (EE) is increasingly recognized as a vehicle for societal transformation through the development of skills beyond business. Despite being a central didactic feature of EE, the role of teams in fostering interpersonal and democratic capacities remains largely unexplored. This paper addresses that gap by examining how teamwork can serve as a learning ground for building democratic citizenship skills. Drawing on a qualitative multi-method approach, this study combines a systematic literature review (SLR) of 44 papers with a content analysis of entrepreneurship course descriptions from two periods (2021–2022, n=382; 2025–2026, n = 262) across 20 leading universities worldwide. Findings from the SLR reveal that teams in EE are addressed in three dimensions corresponding to Nussbaum’s democratic capacities: Critical Examination, World Citizenship and Narrative Imagination, alongside a fourth, Enabling dimension that provides the structural support for them. The analysis of course descriptions showed that the Enabling dimension was most strongly represented, whereas the three democratic capacities themselves could only be identified implicitly. These findings suggest that EE curricula already feature much of the structural scaffolding to foster democratic capacities, yet rarely intentionally target or name them. The paper calls for intentionality in integrating and facilitating teamwork in EE and proposes implications for educators and researchers.