Entrepreneurship education between theory and practice: case study based teaching as a method of creating future entrepreneurs

Does Entrepreneurship Education differ from teaching other Business Administration courses? This is one of the main questions the authors focus on. From the author’s perspective, future Entrepreneurs should be educated with different methods than traditional MBA students, aiming at the special skills potential Entrepreneurs need to successfully found their business. In the author’s point of view, it is not possible through classical lectures to teach how to communicate, lead, or motivate; the so called “soft skills”, which are actually “hard skills” for Entrepreneurs. Therefore, during their research the authors searched for a proper method to educate future Entrepreneurs. We identified the case-study method as one of the best ways to provide Entrepreneurship students with the skills they need to found a business, e.g. the above mentioned “soft / hard skills”, analytical skills as well as a concrete theoretical and practical framework of what it’s like to be an Entrepreneur. The authors ask for increasing the usage of case-study based teaching in Entrepreneurship Education, of course additionally to the classical way of teaching, to increase the number of successful Entrepreneurs in the future. During our research, we focused on Entrepreneurship Education in German-speaking countries.