Engaging on entrepreneurship: The effectual logic behind the entrepreneurship journey

摘要

The energy sector is dominated by large incumbent firms that expect entrepreneurship being embodied by energy specialists who decide to start a new venture. In this context, an expert entrepreneurial theory, such as effectuation, is required to engage energy experts in a business-oriented reasoning. The goal of this paper is to analyze how the Entrepreneurship Journey in Energy for Smart Cities develops an effectual logic in engineering master students, as an innovative learning method for encouraging sustainable energy entrepreneurship. Three principles of the effectual theory are explored in this paper: strategic partnerships, leverage contingencies, and affordable loss, as drivers of an entrepreneurial attitude. The Entrepreneurship Journey emphasizes entrepreneurial aspects, e.g. action taking, value creation, and the employment of creative business tools, revealing an entrepreneurial expert logic that can be taught and replicated in educational contexts. The employment of a case-study methodology suggests how effectual principles are embraced by the Entrepreneurship Journey students during the development of their market-oriented proposal.