Purpose
EUXCEL, a Trans-European technology entrepreneurship education initiative, has demonstrated that creating cross-border collaboration between Europe’s young ICT entrepreneurs is an achievable policy objective. This paper outlines the context of EUXCEL, an international entrepreneurship programme, describing the key outcomes and education process, highlighting lessons learned and suggests key policy features that can make borderless entrepreneurship the norm rather than the exception. The research question is ‘How can trans-regional entrepreneurship, with multi-nationality founders, be enabled and supported?’
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is a single case study that covers a two-year entrepreneurship program based in 6 countries, with 426 participants from 25 countries. There are three sources of data shared in this paper and the first of which dealt with a survey of founder nationalities of 56 start-ups the finding of which shaped the nature of the programme. The second source included data collected from the participants, which highlighted the ‘international entrepreneurship experience’ and a significant increase in entrepreneurial skill confidence’ as key learning outcomes.
Findings
The summary statistics of the EUXCEL case study are outlined in Table 2. The findings include nationality and gender engagement rates, increases in participant skills rates. The number of teams that successfully completed the programme and the number of startups that continued after the two year programme was completed.
EU Countries Engaged 90%
Team Task Completion Rate 90%
Female Participation 31%
Participant Skills Growth 86%
Startup Summer Schools 12
Incubator Ready Teams 39
Expert Speakers/Advisers 86
EUXCEL Startups 20
Table 2 Summary statistics for EUXCEL programme
In order to test the international impact, a measure for the international entrepreneurial social capital (IESC) held by participants was issued at the beginning and end of the programme. For this purpose, the resource generator instrument, a measure of the social resources available to individuals, was adapted (Van Der Gaag and Snijders 2005).
Research limitations/implications
This study has limitations, as the participants were nascent entrepreneurs, who were quite inexperienced, so extrapolating the findings to an actual population of experienced entrepreneurs would be problematic.
Originality/Impact
This study is unique, as a trans-regional study of ‘multi-nationality’ companies. No previous research has involved the scale and international diversity of EUXCEL. The EUXCEL consortium team reviewed the delivery of the education program at two key milestones. The lessons learned from this review process deals with a number of key themes, which include 1) Recruitment (Both Target Audiences and Channels), 2) Team Dynamics, 3) Education approach, 4) the role of Mentors and 5) the need for follow on support after an Education programme.
