Entrepreneurship Education as a Process with the support of a Structural Equation Modelling

The need for an Entrepreneurial University, is caused not only by social and market changes but also by the emergence of a different way to innovate, which makes synergy its vision and, in which “working together” becomes its major tool. In an attempt to provide a contribution to the studies that aim to boost entrepreneurship education and the entrepreneurial activity of universities, I analysed and tested an experimental lab, the ExperimentaLab, a virtual platform to support entrepreneurial training programmes through a learning process that simulates the progression from idea to start-up, helping students or would-be entrepreneurs acquire entrepreneurial competences and skills, thus increasing their future likelihood of starting up a business. In so doing, the ExperimentaLab training process focuses on the third mission of the university, i.e., to promote economic and social development (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 2000; Etzkowitz, 2004), as it seeks to educate would-be entrepreneurs by helping them practise the managerial and entrepreneurial functions of new venture creation. To evaluate the educational effectiveness of the virtual platform ExperimentaLab four simulations by role play were conducted, which allowed issues related to such a complex phenomenon to be dealt with. I adopt a structural equation model and multi-group analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of the ExperimentaLab. Results show that the ExperimentaLab could be a valid educational tool potentially implementable by entrepreneurial universities, providing students with an entrepreneurial training program, along with a robust process and a network to stimulate the progression from an idea to a real start-up.