Keywords

1 Introduction

The Algerian higher education system had introduced since 2004 new reforms [1]. These reforms included a different area in the modernization of education and training systems. Firstly, it aimed to achieve the adoption of the three-cycle system (Bachelor Master Doctorate). Secondly, it tried to achieve the adaptation of curriculum program to the market need and the introduction of Quality Assurance. Thirdly, these reforms had enhanced the employability, personal and professional development of graduates throughout their careers by improving cooperation between employers, students and higher education institutions.

However, the Algerian Minister of higher education considers that these reforms could be achieved mainly through the development of programs and the insertion of internal structure that help increase innovation, entrepreneurial skills and research of graduates. These reforms give to the Algerian universities the opportunity to explore and develop their role in the national innovation system [2].

However, the higher education system is facing now new problems in the achievement of all these reforms. In this context, the government creates new structure dedicated to the promotion of innovation and entrepreneurial spirit within the Algerian universities. These institutional implications push the university to invest in the field of entrepreneurship education and the commercialization of their innovation.

Our contribution aims to illustrate the role of the Startup competition and entrepreneurial ecosystem in the integration of entrepreneurship education within the Algerian universities. This paper offers insights into how the university enables actors to address the challenge of internal factors and external factors to use the best pedagogical practices in teaching entrepreneurship and enhancing innovation culture. The authors use a qualitative interview with facilitators implicated in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Those had organized and animated the startup competition within the Algerian universities.

2 Creating an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem to Foster Entrepreneurship Education

From the literature review, there is no a consensus on the definition of an entrepreneurial ecosystem. However, it can be defined as a group of interdependent actors and factors such companies, including Start-ups that share similar goals and work in a network or organization to promote innovation and productive entrepreneurship within a particular territory. This concept refers also to the social and economic environment affecting the local and regional entrepreneurship.

The entrepreneurial ecosystem was first developed in the 1980s and 1990s as a new field in entrepreneurship research based on the role of social, cultural, and economic forces in the entrepreneurship process [3]. This environment composed of entrepreneurial leaders and policymakers whom created a community and developed a culture have an impact on the entrepreneurship process, from the intention of nascent entrepreneurs to start a firm to their ability to find venture capital and to launch a new firm.

The idea behind is to explain the influence of the regional economic and social factors over this process in a systemic entrepreneurship research approaches. Thus, Moore [4] conceded the basic functioning of the entrepreneurial ecosystem depending on the interaction of all stakeholders related to entrepreneurship. Consequently, this entrepreneurial ecosystem is a great accelerator of startups. In the field of entrepreneurship education, the entrepreneurial ecosystem is one of the most important keys that foster innovation behaviors, entrepreneurial intention and contributes to enhance entrepreneurial spirit Fig. 1.

Fig. 1.
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Startup competition in centre of the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

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In the case of the Algerian university, the integration of entrepreneurship education was the impulsion of the government to promote entrepreneurship and innovation within university [5, 6]. While the entrepreneurial ecosystem is fostering the startups, the startup competitions facilitate the integration of entrepreneurship within the university.

This two, concept played an important role in the integration of entrepreneurship education within the Algerian universities. One of the specific actions of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Algeria was to support web entrepreneurship through the Startup competition. Every year, the GEW (Global Entrepreneurship Week) in coordination with Algerian universities and others public and private actors organized the startup competition named Webdays competition. Based on business plan competition, the Webdays events specific to the web and telecommunication sector are actually the most used in teaching entrepreneurship within the Algerian universities Fig. 2.

Fig. 2.
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Source : [6]

Webdays competition based on business plan within the Algerian universities.

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3 The Integration of Entrepreneurship Education Within Universities

The relation between entrepreneurship and university had been developed as a result of a collaborative work with the partners of the higher education system. Then, the university will be more responsible to diffuse knowledge in the greater way and in the appropriate need of industrial partners. University must assure the transfer of technology to their users with low cost and create a competitive dynamic in the local, regional and national innovation system.

Entrepreneurship changed the vision, the culture and the value of the university by making the university in the middle of the knowledge market. It became more important in producing and commercialization of knowledge, in the other way it became a seller of services to the knowledge industry [7].

Moreover, the entrepreneurial university is based both on commercialisation “custom made further education courses, consultancy services and extension activities” and commoditization “patents, licensing or student owned start-ups” [8]. The university must ensure their responsibility in building a bridge to the industrial users of innovation.

Indeed, the emergence of the entrepreneurial university was explained as a response to the increasing importance of the knowledge in national and regional innovation systems, and the recognition that the university is an effective and creative inventor and transfer agent of both knowledge and technology [9, p. 314].

The literature defined the entrepreneurial universities were allowing new resources of funds like patents; research funded by contracts and entry into a partnership with private enterprises [10]. This ability to find new resource fund is the first essential factors in the integration of the entrepreneurial vision within the university. The entrepreneurial university can be defined as the university which involved the creation of new business ventures by university professors, technicians, or students [11].

As a second mission of the entrepreneurial university, the university must push their internal actors to discover the entrepreneurial adventure by creating new business ventures and contribute to the development of innovation in a competitive behaviour. Etzkowitz [12] affirmed this mission by considering the entrepreneurial university as a natural incubator, providing support structures for teachers and students to initiate new ventures: intellectual, commercial and conjoint. In this context, this university had the ability to innovate, recognize and create opportunities, work in teams, take risks and respond to the challenges [13]. Moreover, Clark [14] consider that the entrepreneurial universities are those who seek to innovate in how it goes to business, to work out a substantial shift in organizational character, to become stand-up universities that are significant actors in their own terms.

Nearly of all these characteristics, the entrepreneurial universities are those who generate technology advances. And facilitates the technology diffusion process through intermediaries such as technology transfer offices (TTOs) as well as the creation of incubators or science parks producing support R&D for existing companies or to help jump-start new firms [15]. This university capitalised their technology transfer in a formal effort from research by bringing research outcomes to fruition as commercial ventures [16]. Studies on the entrepreneurial university, however, usually focus on the mechanisms for the development of products, patents and academic spin-offs [17] and characterised the relationship between the university and their business partnership as more closer [18].

Across of all these definitions, we adopt the definition given by Röpke [19], who concluded that the entrepreneurial university was the meaning of three things: the university itself, the members of the university–faculty and the interaction of the university with the environment.

According to Röpke [19] definition, the introduction of entrepreneurship is developed by the interaction between the university and their environment. Therefore, the university had to learn from their environment and explore all opportunities. At the same, time the success of this relationship is conditioned by the ability of the university to achieve three important outcomes: Teaching, Research and entrepreneurial activity.

Eventually, teaching entrepreneurship becomes more important since the first course was given in 1947 at Harvard University by Professor Myles Mace. This experience was generalized increasingly in all the United States University and Colleges. It might be argued that the introduction of entrepreneurship education was an individual initiative from the member of the university. This professor brings a new idea to the academic field which is teaching entrepreneurship. Besides this opportunity, other actors were implicated in the development of entrepreneurship education for example Center for entrepreneurship.

From this American experience, the university learns to integrate the culture of innovation and creativity. It appears that the primary origin of the integration process entrepreneurship was the awareness of entrepreneurial spirit. This awareness aimed to develop student’s entrepreneurial intention, create a new student entrepreneur generation [6].

Furthermore, research based on entrepreneurship education argues the importance of the entrepreneurial intention in the awareness the entrepreneurial spirit [20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30].

In addition, the entrepreneurial intention is considered as a great tool to measure the impact of entrepreneurship education on and to evaluate the useful pedagogical practice in enhancing the entrepreneurial spirit (Fayolle et Gailly, 2009; Fayolle et Klandt, 2006; Fayolle, 2004; Verzat, 2011). In the case of the Algerian university, the integration of entrepreneurship education was the impulsion of the government to promote entrepreneurship and innovation within university [5, 6].

This integration as we define is an internal process based on the internal actor’s roles and the ability of the university to enables them with the help of external actors to address the challenge of entrepreneurship and innovation culture Fig. 3.

Fig. 3.
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Source: Adapted from [6]

Conceptual framework of the study.

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Our research has explored three cases. The research involved a review of previous literature, the collection of in-depth case material through interviews with the teachers of entrepreneurship implicated in the university’s integration process during 2016 and the first half of 2017. The three cases were selected on the basis that those teachers were involved in the following actions:

  1. (1)

    Awareness the entrepreneurial spirit;

  2. (2)

    Choosing the best entrepreneurial pedagogical practice;

  3. (3)

    Developing the entrepreneurial skills.

  4. (4)

    Participating and organization of the startup competition within an entrepreneurial ecosystem.

The sample is regionally diverse as the universities are located in three different regions of Algeria. Therefore, the interviews were loosely structured on the four actions of the conceptual framework of a study and the literature review. Due to the confidentiality, the actual names of universities and the exact locations will not be given in the paper. The three cases are named Case 1, Case 2 and Case 3.

4 Three Cases Studies

Given the first objective of the paper, these three cases studies will present the internal entrepreneurship integration process of the Algerian university. The cases studies are presented below in order to describe three different universities and to understand the integration process.

Case 1:

Case 1: The aim of the teachers is to enhance student entrepreneurial spirit: “……I believe in my students they can improve their entrepreneurial abilities. Our first mission is to give them the opportunity to enhance their entrepreneurial intention among entrepreneurial program. Then, we aim to help them in the adventure of launching a new startup.” Teachers affirm that since they were implicated their student became more interested to discover entrepreneurship and they asked for more information. Thus, for this first case, the implications of teachers were initiated by the faculty: “….In our university, entrepreneurship as a program was the initiative of the faculty. In the beginning, the administration implicated teacher in the elaboration of the entrepreneurship education syllabus. The first mission was to discover the subject of entrepreneurship that is new and ambiguous. We organized many seminars and open day on entrepreneurship; we invited some entrepreneurs and expert of the field.”

The integration process had been begun by allowing the teachers to propose and elaborate entrepreneurship program. The faculty in collaboration with teacher organized seminars and open day on entrepreneurship. These events were animated conjunctly with practitioner and entrepreneurs. Their interpretation of the entrepreneurship integration process for those teachers was essentially based on stimulation of the entrepreneurial spirit: “…For stimulating entrepreneurial spirit, we organize every month, an open day. The entrepreneurship house located at university play the role of facilitator it gives information for all students present at the event. We aim to share more knowledge about the field of entrepreneurship within the academic community.”

Thiers experience was an excellent opportunity to share their knowledge with their own student and to learn from the external actors (entrepreneurs and expert involved). This case illustrates that the faculty is an important internal actor who gives to the teacher a great implication in the facilitation of the entrepreneurship integration process.

Case 2:

Case 2: The aim of the teachers is to enhance student entrepreneurial spirit and to work deeply with the entrepreneurship house: “Teaching entrepreneurship is a new field and students are interested….I think we need more facilities and tools to attend the higher number of students. The enrollment’s student statistic delivered by the entrepreneurship house show that events on entrepreneurship attract more students every New Year.” Teachers are more implicated, and they tried to improve the internal integration process by offering their own suggestions in order to devolve and facilitate the interaction between the entrepreneurship house and their students: “…..Statistics provided by the Entrepreneurship House show that the number of students enrolled in education increases annually and we should be proud of this fabulous evolution. We succeed to enhance a maximum of our student comparatively with other Algerian universities. We are more implicated in business plan competition and the national startup competition, and we had made our network.”

In this second case, teachers are more involved and motivated. They use new pedagogical practice, e.g. startup competition and business plan competition. Also, those teachers are part of a network, and they capitalized a large experience in enhancing entrepreneurial spirit. This network is an indicator of integration process made by the internal actors.

Case 3:

Case 3: The teachers are facilitators one of them is a member of an international youth entrepreneurship association: “Before teaching entrepreneurship we should develop the student entrepreneurial intention then implicate them to discover the entrepreneur ability. Student must be able to decide creating new enterprise.”

Teachers offer their experience by animating conference and open day to discuss the subject of the entrepreneur as a job. For this case, teachers were involved in the four actions of the conceptual framework of the study: “We promote the entrepreneurial spirit by keeping awareness during all the year. We believe strongly in the effect of the actions of awareness on the student entrepreneurial intention. Our methodology is based on two approaches. The first is the experimental method; we give to our student the opportunity to learn in a real experience (competition). The second is the learning by doing method, they learn by making errors, and we correct for them we bring entrepreneur, and they were excited to discover the real life of an entrepreneur.”

In this third case, teachers choose their approaches, and they are part of the integration process. Teachers make their experience in order to enhance their students. As facilitators, they learn from a real experience to bring the external actors (entrepreneurs) into the classroom.

5 Discussion of Finding

In achieving the objective of this paper, which is to discover how the university enables actors to facilitate the process of integration of entrepreneurship culture among university. We have observed that the teachers are the main important actors in this integration process. They are involved; and they believe in their work. Even some of them don’t initiate offering entrepreneurship courses; they contribute truly.

Despite these observations, the teacher is the most important actor who can facilitate the internal process in collaboration with faculty and the others external, actors. Certainly, the entrepreneurial education can be defined as “something” that facilitates access to entrepreneurial practices. It concerns the “what to do?” And how to make it happen by being personally involved” [35, p. 26].

According to the three cases, the third case is a good example of the role of the teacher in the integration process. As we saw, the teacher can bring their experience and make a bridge with the other partners of the university. In addition, the use of the startup competition is one of the most important pedagogical practices that contribute to facilitating the integration of entrepreneurship education within the Algerian university.

6 Conclusion

This paper has been concerned with the interpretations and meaning that teachers are involved in the internal integration process of entrepreneurship within the university. Evaluating their impact is the first step in our conceptual framework. Limited by time and the availability of teachers, ours cases study were done with a focus on the role of the teacher in the internal integration process. In order to select them, we make sure that they were implicated at a minimum in one of the four following actions:

  1. (1)

    Awareness the entrepreneurial spirit;

  2. (2)

    Choosing the best entrepreneurial pedagogical practice;

  3. (3)

    Developing the entrepreneurial skills.

  4. (4)

    Participating and organization of the startup competition within an entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Essentially, we were proudly grateful for their contribution. Through our analysis of the three cases, we have identified two ways of the internal entrepreneurial integration process: teacher as part of awareness teaching and teacher as facilitator.

Thus, we conclude that the teachers who successes are those who make their own network. Bring their experience and knowledge into the university system. However, the lessons we draw from the case studies enable us to discover the role of the teacher in the internal integration process, and we should develop further research to evaluate the effect of each way of the internal integration process in a quantitative survey research projects.