Enhancing entrepreneurial self-efficacy and intentions through education: The benefits of authentic experience

Many skills and attitudes associated with enterprise are cultivated through authentic experience and enhanced within the workplace. There is increasing interest in how individuals might develop them earlier in their lives. This paper reports on EDGE, an eight-week extra-curricula programme, supported by public-sector agencies and Glasgow and Columbia Universities, to develop entrepreneurial capacity in school and university participants. The paper presents results of evaluation, using a multi-survey methodology, to establish change in a range of behaviour, skill and intention measures. Results are compared with those of another enterprise intervention to inform the debate on approaches to programme design and delivery.