Part of the strategy to be adopted within the city was to ensure that the university could make a worthwhile contribution to the development of the local economy. Some work had already begun, especially in launching actual start-up businesses that are spinoffs from universities. For example, since its founding in 2004, a specialist organization by the name of UNIVATIONS has been involved with more than 200 student-owned businesses and has created enormous interest in the whole field of starting a business.
Perhaps this is because the focus of entrepreneurship education in Halle is interdisciplinary. Whereas many other universities across the World have their entrepreneurship programmes centred in business schools, the approach in Halle is to provide access to entrepreneurship education to all students throughout all campuses and faculties. Furthermore, interdisciplinary project teams include business students as well as students of natural sciences. Programmes in Halle also use experiential learning (engaging in real-world projects to launch businesses, which is a very effective method of teaching entrepreneurship and even if some businesses fail, the learning mission will be accomplished.
Even though I was there to present different models of university-industry linkages to the Halle group, there were certainly lessons to be learnt from the fact that the universities in the region considered entrepreneurship and knowledge transfer to be key to the future of the region. I would argue that in Wales, such activities still come a poor third to research and teaching, despite millions being spent on supporting these activities. Indeed, I would argue that the focus on entrepreneurship within Welsh universities, which once seemed to have a bright future, seems to be waning, with only one institution currently having a centre of expertise in this area.
This seems to be counter to trends in many other countries, where developing entrepreneurial students is seen as a key factor in creating a knowledge-based economy of the future. Despite successes such as the Knowledge Exploitation Fund scholarships for graduate entrepreneurs, it would seem that the majority of business schools at Welsh universities are no longer buying into the concept of developing a core competence in enterprise and small business management, and sharing that expertise across other faculties.
Given that the vast majority of our businesses in Wales are small, and that the sector employs over half the working population, surely it is imperative that our students are taught something about the real world of entrepreneurs, given that 50 per cent of them will end up working for such individuals (or may even become entrepreneurs themselves).
Whilst it is highly laudable for business school academics to produce high brow academic papers in areas such as banking, finance, economics, management science and accounting, and to develop MBAs which focus on bringing in fee paying international students, this does little to help the small firm community in Wales. Given this, perhaps the solution is for Welsh universities not to actually get involved in small business education.
One of the models we discussed at Halle was the possible development of a standalone Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the region which would teach and develop research which would be relevant to the real training needs of businesses in a growing knowledge-based economy. Perhaps the time has also come for such a development in Wales, so that the learning requirements of current and would-be entrepreneurs can be met.
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