Resumo

This study aims to measure and evaluate the progress of students participating in mixed teams of entrepreneurs and students participating in an innovative startup acceleration program developed by the professor Steve Blank at the Berkeley University based on customer development. The progress of the students was evaluated in terms of the evolution of these students regarding Entrepreneurial Orientation, Attitude Towards Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial Intention, and Entrepreneurial Education.

This study aims to assess the progress of students working in mixed teams of entrepreneurs and students participating in an accelerating program for innovative startups, to the learning of these students. The main objective of this study is to evaluate the benefits of using a company acceleration methodology focused on developing customers as a teaching method for the training of future entrepreneurs. More specifically, the objective is to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology in the evolution of the Entrepreneurial Orientation, Attitude, Intention and Education.

Harms (2015) developed a study involving learning for entrepreneurship involving team learning techniques and the lean-startup methodology, using a startups competition. Similarly, Guerra et al. (2015) presents some previous results of the use of a methodology funded and approved by the NSF (National Science Foundation) called I-Corps, which was developed by professor Steve Blank based on the concepts of lean startup (called by him the Lean LaunchPad ). Entrepreneurship has been treated with increasing interest worldwide (BASÇI and ALKAN, 2015).

The sample for this study were undergraduate business school students enrolled in an entrepreneurship related class. This class included, among other things, an real life experience of participating in a lean startup acceleration program based in customer development. In this program the students participated in teams formed by both students and real entrepreneurs that were developing real startups. Therefore, this experience becomes a real-life experience for the students, that would face the challenges, disappointments, and also realize some of the rewards that entrepreneurs do.

Entrepreneurial Education before the program presents the lowest average and jumps to second highest average after the program. From that can be implied that the program possibly had a major impact in the perception of the students on the contribution of the course to their Entrepreneurial Education. Attitude Towards Entrepreneurship presented the second highest average before the program, it presented the second highest growth rate, displaying a growth of 10%, which is also expressive. Entrepreneurial Intention presented a small increase.

The use a hands-on, practical experience working in a team with real entrepreneurs going through an lean startup acceleration program seems to be an interesting strategy to impact undergraduate business school students in relation to entrepreneurship. More specifically, the program seemed to show good results towards enhancing the Attitude Towards Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial Intention, and the perception about Entrepreneurial Education.

Guerra, R., Smith, K., McKenna, A., Swan, C., Korte, R., Jordan, S., Macneal, R. Innovation corps for learning: Evidence-based entrepreneurship™ to improve (STEM) education. In Proceedings - Frontiers in Education Conference, FIE. Fevereiro, 2015. Harms, R. Self-regulated learning, team learning and project performance in entrepreneurship education: Learning in a lean startup environment. Technological Forecasting and Social Change. Novembro, 2015.