ABSTRACT
Graduates who join larger companies will often start as ‘trainees’ as they are given time to acquire the skills necessary to become productive members of the organization. The reality for those of you thinking about starting your own business is that the experience will be very different. Chang and Rieple studied the way in which students’ entrepreneurial skills developed during an elective module designed for undergraduates from a range of backgrounds. All those registered for the elective had completed the ‘core’ business and management modules including marketing, accounting and economics. The objective was to examine the impact of engaging with real-life entrepreneurs on students’ perception of their skills. Students from a range of different disciplines participated in an eight-week elective module, ‘developing a small business’. Saras Sarasvathy developed the concept of effectuation as an alternative way of considering how new ventures emerge from contingencies and available resources.
