Title: Creating innovative entrepreneurial mindsets as a lever for knowledge-based regional development

Authors: Giustina Secundo; Pasquale Del Vecchio; Giuseppina Passiante

Addresses: Department of Engineering for Innovation, c/o Campus Ecotekne, University of Salento, Via per Monteroni s.n., 73100 Lecce, Italy ' Department of Engineering for Innovation, c/o Campus Ecotekne, University of Salento, Via per Monteroni s.n., 73100 Lecce, Italy ' Department of Engineering for Innovation, c/o Campus Ecotekne, University of Salento, Via per Monteroni s.n., 73100 Lecce, Italy

Abstract: Regional development in the knowledge-based economy is not just determined by the creation of new knowledge but also by the ability and willingness to transform this knowledge into new products and processes that create economic and social value. Improving this entrepreneurial mindset in human capital is becoming one of the most important challenges to raising innovation, productivity and regional growth. With the aim to provide a contribution in this direction, the paper presents an innovative curriculum model to sustain the development of the entrepreneurial mind set especially in engineers and scientists. Based on an ongoing experiment with five education projects launched by a technological district located in south Italy, the preliminary results emphasise the role of an entrepreneurial-directed approach based on the phases of developing, managing and growing new 'technology intensive' ventures. Implications for theory and practices highlight the strategies for designing entrepreneurial learning programs that could support the creation of knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship for regional development, mainly in those regions where entrepreneurship does not arise spontaneously.

Keywords: innovative entrepreneurship; entrepreneurial mindset; curriculum; entrepreneurial learning; knowledge-based development; high technologies; high-tech; human capital; regional development; entrepreneurship education; technology districts; Italy.

DOI: 10.1504/IJKBD.2015.074301

International Journal of Knowledge-Based Development, 2015 Vol.6 No.4, pp.276 - 298

Received: 02 Jan 2015
Accepted: 01 Oct 2015
Published online: 21 Jan 2016 *

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