Title: Creativity among entrepreneurship students: comparing engineering and business education

Authors: Henrik Berglund, Karl Wennberg

Addresses: Department of Innovation Engineering and Management, Chalmers University of Technology, SE-41296 Goteborg, Sweden ' Center for Entrepreneurship and Business Creation, Stockholm School of Economics, P.O. Box 6501, Stockholm SE-113 83, Sweden

Abstract: As creativity is increasingly recognised as a vital component of entrepreneurship, researchers and educators struggle to reform enterprise pedagogy. To help in this effort, we use a personality test and open-ended interviews to explore creativity between two groups of entrepreneurship masters| students: one at a business school and one at an engineering school. The findings indicate that both groups had high creative potential, but that engineering students channelled this into practical and incremental efforts whereas the business students were more speculative and had a clearer market focus. The findings are drawn on to make some suggestions for entrepreneurship education.

Keywords: entrepreneurship education; creativity; engineering students; engineering education; business education; enterprise pedagogy; higher education; universities; Sweden.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCEELL.2006.010959

International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Life-Long Learning, 2006 Vol.16 No.5, pp.366 - 379

Published online: 21 Sep 2006 *

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