Ways to cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset in students

Cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset in students is crucial for fostering innovation and creativity. By exposing students to entrepreneurial concepts and opportunities, you will empower them to think critically, solve problems and take initiative. This engagement not only prepares students to be dynamic in the workforce but equips them with skills to start their own ventures and create successful futures.  

At Cardiff Metropolitan University, entrepreneurship is embedded within our learning, teaching and student engagement strategy. All academic programmes embrace the Cardiff Met EDGE, which exposes students to ethical, digital, global and entrepreneurial opportunities. 

We define entrepreneurship using the European Entrepreneurship Competence Framework (EntreComp) framework which highlights 15 key skills conducive to an entrepreneurial mindset. All programmes and activities are mapped against this framework to ensure our community of learners develop a broad range of key skills.  

Engaging, empowering and equipping students

Our support aligns with the Welsh government's Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy (YES) which focuses on three themes; engage, empower and equip. We deliver activity at each level to ensure there is appropriate support for each individual at every stage of their entrepreneurial journey. “Engage” involves light-touch engagement activities such as information stands, lecture shout-outs and networking events, “empower” focuses on building key enterprise skills – for example, through our weekly workshops which cover topics such as finance for founders or starting a small business, while support at the “equip” level is suited to our students who are actively in the process of launching a business and includes one-to-one business advice meetings, intensive business bootcamps and test trading opportunities. 

Alongside this pathway, we regularly gather feedback from the student body about what we deliver, what students would like to see in the future and what topics or skills they feel they could improve so that we can ensure our offering meets their needs. 

Curriculum provisions

With an engaged body of academic staff, Cardiff Met’s Centre for Entrepreneurship is regularly called upon to offer specialist support and deliver a range of workshops that act as an “off the shelf” framework tailored to the required subject and delivered at an appropriate academic level. Topics include developing an entrepreneurial mindset, an entrepreneurial approach to the world, sustainable futures, networking, presentation skills and more.

The success of our efforts regularly leads to requests for collaboration on live module briefs to deliver real-world practical experience, as demonstrated by Cardiff Met’s MSc Marketing students receiving real social media consultancy briefs from our graduate start-up network to form part of their assessment. 

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Enterprise and entrepreneurship community

Our new enterprise and entrepreneurship community brings together staff with an interest in further developing their enterprise education knowledge. Promoted and supported by our quality enhancement directorate, the initiative aims to support colleagues to nurture their students’ entrepreneurial ability and know-how. Termly events take place with short presentations from academics who are currently embedding enterprise or entrepreneurship into their programmes to share best practices with others, who in turn start considering entrepreneurial education within their teaching. This focus allows for multiple colleagues to connect with the agenda through the lens of their discipline. The community also has a virtual channel, where members can collectively share practice, case studies, external publications and learnings relating to enterprise education. 

Top tips for cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset

• Finding the right wording is key: sometimes students see the word entrepreneurship and switch off because they think starting a business isn’t for them. We emphasise time and time again that entrepreneurial skills are for everyone no matter their chosen career path. For example, we run a weekly “curious about...” workshop series that sparks inquisitiveness and exploration, teaching entrepreneurial skills without explicitly mentioning business or entrepreneurship.
• Make your workshops as practical and fun as possible: create interactive and engaging sessions that might seem unrelated to entrepreneurship at first, then illustrate and explain what entrepreneurial skills they’ve learnt from them and how this benefits them. 
• Try to “plant the seed” as early as possible with light-touch entrepreneurial skills sessions at level 4, then enhance these at levels 5 and 6: being consistent with delivery and hitting as many touchpoints as possible will help open students’ eyes to the potential of their newly gained entrepreneurial skills.
• Embrace collaboration: find and connect with students and academics who are passionate about and interested in entrepreneurship to facilitate collaborations. As a result of these collaborations, you can showcase the impact you’ve made and spread this to the rest of the student and academic communities. 

We understand the fortunate position we are in at the Centre for Entrepreneurship at Cardiff Met in that we have a dedicated team alongside support from our university-wide strategy. It allows us to try things out, change direction and take risks to ensure we’re always delivering the best value for our students. 

For those wondering how these strategies can be applied with different resources, just start somewhere, and start small. Adapt and embrace your own entrepreneurial qualities to become a catalyst for building them in your students.

Isabelle Ford and Hannah Willis are enterprise champions at Cardiff Metropolitan University’s Centre for Entrepreneurship. 

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Cardiff Metropolitan University was shortlisted for Outstanding Entrepreneurial University at the Times Higher Education Awards 2024 #THEAwards. A full list of shortlisted candidates can be found here.