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The purpose of this paper is to highlight the ways in which traditional views of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship have inadvertently limited entrepreneurship education. The authors propose a broader view of what it means to be an entrepreneur and describe a disruptive approach to entrepreneurship education, one that centers around building students’ entrepreneurial mindset. By tapping into students’ “inner entrepreneur” and nurturing their abilities to think and act creatively, embrace failure, effect change and be resilient, the authors are preparing them for the challenges of the twenty-first century labor market.

This is a perspective paper about how the traditional views of entrepreneurship education may be limiting its potential to create entrepreneurial college graduates set to take on twenty-first century careers.

Teaching the entrepreneurial mindset and process will allow us, as educators, to best prepare our students for the complexities of the current and future workforce.

By embracing the original meanings of the word “entrepreneur” – an act of reaching out and capturing and undertaking – the authors demystify what it means to be an entrepreneur. When we adopt a broader and more accurate conceptualization of “the entrepreneur,” we can teach our students to be the entrepreneurs of their lives.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how small firms work at a micro-level, applying Bourdieu’s Capital Theory to give insight into the way individuals use the social and cultural capital at their disposal, to innovate and solve problems.

The authors applied qualitative methods to explore problem solving and innovation activities at the micro-level in small firms, using interviews and thematic analysis.

The findings reveal that, compared to firms with lower levels of social and cultural capital, firms which possess higher levels of social and cultural capital have a higher success rate in problem solving and are more likely to engage in innovative activity. Social and cultural capitals complement and reinforce one another in small firms, for example an enhanced ability to utilise networks (social capital) allows small firms to access a greater diversity of knowledge (cultural capital).

Little is known about how different forms of capital are utilised in the day-to-day operations and problem solving of small firms: the application of Bourdieu’s Capital Theory offered an original frame in which to explore these activities.