Resumo

The way the experts have guided entrepreneurs to act in pursuit of success has changed in recent years. It is particularly evident after the proposal of Effectuation logic (Sarasvathty, 1999) and the publication of Lean Startup (Ries, 2011) and Canvas (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2010) and more recently the Customer Development (Blank & Dorf, 2014). The way to teach entrepreneurship must accompany this change, but it is still a slow process. It is not yet described how effectuation is being applied in education, especially considering the experiential learning approach.

Thus, although Effectuation logic is being applied as a framework for entrepreneurship action in practice, its application as a teaching methodology is not described so far. This study expects to fill this gap by describing the use of effectuation in entrepreneurship teaching. The following question guides this study: How effectuation approach is applied to entrepreneurship teaching?

This article has its main theoretical foundation in Effectuation (Sarasvathy, 1999), which changed the way entrepreneurial action is observed; however, this movement has not yet been able to establish its convictions in the area of education. We seek authors from the field of entrepreneurship teaching like Neck & Greene (2011), Sirelkhatim & Gangi, (2015) and Huq and Gilbert (2017) to show how experiential teaching methods can contribute to the consolidation of the new vision of entrepreneurship in this field.

To understand how effectuation is being applied in entrepreneurship training this study was developed in two stages. The first one was a desk research analyzing the curriculum of some recognized high-end universities that mentioned Effectuation Theory in their programs. The second was a case study of a training program that applies effectuation as their core methodology for entrepreneurship training.

Desk research has shown that entrepreneurship education is shifting from a planning approach to a focus on action (effectual) and learning, both for high potential entrepreneurs and for poor entrepreneurs. The case analyzed presented causal and effectual elements together in the course and considered that any activity that used experiential teaching was effectual, which is not necessarily true.

Entrepreneurship education is changing. Approaches that use experiential learning are growing. Although Effectuation is based on five principles, the bird-in-hand is the one that dominates the curriculum in the case studied in this paper. Their training programs have diverse levels of applying Effectuation as the basis for teaching entrepreneurship. This logic is better explored for the potential entrepreneur (the ones that do not have a business yet), while Causation logic dominates the program for current entrepreneurs. Experiential learning, by another side, is common in both programs.

Sarasvathy, S. (1999) How do firms come to be? Towards a theory of the prefirm. (Doctoral dissertation). Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University. Sarasvathy, S. D., Dew, N., Read, S., & Wiltbank, R. (2008). Designing organizations that design environments: Lessons from entrepreneurial expertise. Organization Studies, 29(3), 331–350. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840607088017 Neck, H. M., & Greene, P. G. (2011). Entrepreneurship education: Known worlds and frontiers. Journal of Small Business Management, 49(1), 55–70. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-627X.2010.00314.x