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The Teaching and Practice of Entrepreneurship within Canadian Higher Education Institutions

9. Dimension 6: Outreach

The outreach dimension takes into account that developing entrepreneurial mindsets amongst students is not entirely a theoretical exercise.

In most educational settings, students are often isolated from the external environment. In order for students to develop an entrepreneurial mindset as well as entrepreneurial behaviour and skills, external stakeholders can offer students opportunities to gain practical experience through various outreach activities.

9.1 Findings

Figure 8 illustrates how the three Canadian subsets compare within the three sub-dimensions of the outreach dimension:

• Alumni: Kept in touch with alumni, involved alumni in entrepreneurship activities.
• Links with stakeholders: Established links with foundations, private companies, entrepreneurs, government, science parks / incubators or specialized bodies in entrepreneurship.
• Community engagement: Students provided with internships, work projects and business competitions to develop entrepreneurial mindsets and skills.

Figure 8: Spider Diagram of Outreach Dimension (score out of 100)

[Description of Figure 8]

Of the three sub-dimensions, the average score for Canada and the top five institutions was highest in the community engagement sub-dimension, suggesting that institutions are actively involved in the community by offering student internships, work projects and business competitions to develop entrepreneurial mindsets and skills in a real-world context.

A majority of the top five institutions track alumni and involve alumni in entrepreneurship activities, and have links with stakeholders that make an actual contribution to the institution's entrepreneurship activities. The scores for the Canadian average in these two sub-dimensions were approximately 20 points lower, however, suggesting some opportunities for improvement.

Common external stakeholders for promoting and supporting entrepreneurship were entrepreneurs and private companies (Table 9)

• The most common external stakeholders were private companies (84 percent) and entrepreneurs (84 percent).
• Other stakeholders with an interest in promoting the idea of being entrepreneurial and providing networking opportunities were government (77 percent), foundations (61 percent) and specialized bodies supporting entrepreneurship (60 percent).

Amongst external stakeholders that provide support to start-ups (commercialization):

• 41 percent of institutions did not have links to investors, such as venture capitalists or banks. Given entrepreneurs require at least a business plan and financing to start a business, a greater number of institutes could facilitate financing options on campus.
• 51 percent of institutions did not have links with professional service providers to provide assistance to interested entrepreneurs in areas such as accounting, marketing and income taxes.
• 61 percent of institutions did not have science parks / incubators to offer facilities and management support to start-ups.

Knowledge-transfer to society is one measure of entrepreneurship that can take the form of venture creation as well as licensing, consultancy work and/or academic spinoffs (Table 10)

• In the 2007–2008 academic year, a total of 281 ventures were created — 167 by university graduates and 114 by college graduates.
• Of other forms of knowledge transfer:
  • Consultancy work was the most popular.
  • Approximately one third of institutions transferred knowledge via academic spinoffs (venture creations), licensing agreements and/or intellectual property rights.
  • However, 25 percent of the institutions did not transfer knowledge to society
    • Based on a small sample, by institution, a greater proportion of technical institutes (53 percent) did not transfer any form of knowledge to society.

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