ABSTRACT
Every year, thousands of students enrol in entrepreneurship courses, walking into their classrooms intrigued to learn more about this topic. According to one estimate, there are over 600,000 college students in the United States taking these courses annually (Schramm 2012). As an icebreaker to begin the semester, I ask my students why they are taking my entrepreneurship course. I ask not only to give them an opportunity to articulate their interests, but also to gain an awareness of the themes that contribute to their understanding of the entrepreneurship phenomenon. Business and non-business majors alike, they offer a variety of reasons for doing so, ranging from the obvious – acquiring knowledge to start a business now or for later in their careers – to the less obvious – satisfying curiosities about the entrepreneurial lifestyle. After listening to and recording their reasons on the whiteboard, I eventually invite my students to define entrepreneurship themselves.
