Making entrepreneurship education more inclusive for non-western university students

The Master Track Entrepreneurship – started in 2013/2014 - is a comprehensive program of courses, projects and an internship accessible for all master students from Wageningen University aiming at developing their entrepreneurial competence, and stimulating and instigating their entrepreneurial careers. The program hosts about 70 students from all over the world representing a diversity of entrepreneurial intentions, experience and competence. What is problematic is that the majority of the current theories, cases taught and learning activities that characterise entrepreneurship education have their origin in western-oriented epistemologies and ontologies. So rather than being inclusive, entrepreneurship education at Wageningen University, remains rather exclusive, focussing mainly on stimulating entrepreneurial endeavours for those who aspire entrepreneurial careers in western-type of companies and cultures. As a first response to this issue, a new course in the Entrepreneurship Track has been developed and effectuated from the academic year 2017/2018: Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economies. This course aims at providing students with knowledge and hands-on experience in the unique challenges when operating in, trading to or from emerging economies. Although the new course already sources from more diverse theories from entrepreneurship, it has not radically changed its entrepreneurship education didactics. In order to further grow this course and to increase its effects, we propose to develop, introduce and evaluate a series of supporting entrepreneurial learning activities. Learning activities that make the course (more) inclusive for the wide diversity of (non-Western) students that we cater for, and stimulate learning with and from ‘the other’.