Connecting entrepreneurial and action learning in student-initiated new business ventures: the case of SPEED

The Student Placements for Entrepreneurs in Education (SPEED) project ran in 12 higher education institutes in the UK between 2006 and 2008, providing an innovative, action learning-based route that enabled students to start new business ventures as self-started work experience, and has influenced successor programmes. The paper addresses three questions: (1) What is known about action learning and entrepreneurial learning in relation to new venture creation? (2) What can the case of SPEED add to our understanding of the conceptual and practical connections between entrepreneurial learning and action learning? (3) What can be achieved through universities working collaboratively to make a significant and coordinated impact on graduate entrepreneurship by using action learning as a mediating means? It connects action learning with theories of new venture creation and entrepreneurial learning, with reference to relevant literature showing increasing evidence of innovative practices of action learning within entrepreneurship education. It reflects on the experience of creating and running the SPEED programme as an innovative multi-higher education institute project and explores the processes of action learning for educators and student entrepreneurs. It develops a conceptual model of entrepreneurial action learning as a transferable approach in relation to new venture creation. Recommendations for future development of this approach in the new economic era of 2009 and beyond are proposed, since it is increasingly clear that graduate self-employment and entrepreneurship must contribute to educational and economic development.