Robert Phillips

Residential courses often conjure somewhat eye-rolling images: blindfolded MBA students doing clichéd team-building activities, sodden environmental students peering into muddy wire quadrants, or cliques of law students pretending to work on tomorrow morning's jurisprudence presentation over margaritas in the hotel bar. In that sense, some observers might rather welcome the decline in such courses since the Covid era forced everything from teaching to conferences online.

Data has shown that Thailand lags other countries in the region for start-up creation and success, with the limited provision of Entrepreneurship Education cited as a main reason. We investigated using qualitative research the views of existing entrepreneurs and students planning on starting a business on the education they received. We specifically looked at the content of Entrepreneurship Education, extracurricular activities, and opportunities for networking. We found that both agreed experiential learning and practical experience worked best, internships were an underutilized resource and founders were more aware than students of how to network and how it could help them. We suggest some recommendations to refine the current Entrepreneurship Education offering based on these results including modernizing the curriculum and making more use of internships and extracurricular activities for both experiential learning and networking, free from the constraints of assessments.

How to cite: Nititham, S.; Phillips R. A. 2024. The Importance of Entrepreneurship Education for Startup Creation in Thailand. In: 10th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd’24).Valencia, 18-21 June 2024. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAd24.2024.17014

World events of the last few years such as COVID, the Ukraine war and worries over climate change and food security have brought one positive: they have spawned more interest in social entrepreneurship among students worldwide, with an increase in support and recognition for students and universities who are getting involved.

Alliance Manchester Business School senior lecturer Robert Phillips surveys the global accelerator and incubator landscape to identify how business schools and universities can best support their students' entrepreneurial ambitions. ** A recent report from the Sutton Trust counts a total of 440 incubators and 314 accelerators in the UK-a considerable increase on estimates of 163 and 205, respectively, carried out by Nesta in 2017. Worldwide, there could be more than 10,000 of these supportive structures according to the National Business Incubation Association in the US, with many of these based at universities and business schools. But what are the differences between incubators and accelerators, what types of start-ups do they benefit most and how do they fit with the university start-up ecosystem?

Research to Enterprise is an exciting event, organised by MSEC (Manchester
Science Enterprise Centre) and funded by EPSRC (Engineering and Physical
Sciences Research Council), designed to raise the profile of enterprise at
The University of Manchester.

The Research to Enterprise programme is an initiative run by the Manchester Enterprise Centre with the aim of encouraging research students and staff to be more enterprising, within and beyond their research area. Now well into its second year, the programme includes a series of regular workshops, mentoring opportunities for researchers with new business ideas or who are interested in the commercialisation of research, an annual summit featuring entrepreneurial speakers from successful and prominent enterprises, and a residential enterprise school.

The Research to Enterprise
programme, which aims to
encourage research students and
staff to be more enterprising, is
now well into its second year of
operation; it has certainly been a
busy year to date and there are
numerous events planned for the
future. The program consists of a
regular series of workshops,
mentoring, an annual event and
a residential enterprise school.

The second Research to Enterprise summit,
organised by Manchester Enterprise
Centre (MEC), took place on 9 June at
University Place and once again attracted
a large number of students and staff.
Attendees listened to some inspiring
speakers and participated in a lively
networking session afterwards, where all
speakers were in demand for their advice

The UK government has recognised that, particularly in science, an
oversupply of postgraduates in relation to the number of academic
jobs available has meant only a minority of researchers will ever
attain a permanent position. Coupled with the difficulty academic
researchers often have in making the transition from academia to a
commercial environment, this is a major issue in utilising the skills
of these highly qualified and motivated people.

Manchester Enterprise Centre staged the 3rd annual Research to Enterprise Summit on 10th June at University Place, an event designed to
encourage research students and staff to be more enterprising whether they intend their future careers to be in academia, industry or a not-for-profit organisation.

The Research To Enterprise Summit took place on 17 June at Whitworth Hall with almost 500 postgraduate students and research staff in attendance. The aim of the summit, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and organised by Manchester Science Enterprise Centre (MSEC), was to raise awareness of enterprise for researchers at the University, inspiring them to become more enterprising in whatever their career holds for them in the future be it academia, industry, a technology transfer position or in starting their own business.

Students are looking at the viability of starting their own business while at university. The UK Higher Education Statistics Agency recorded nearly 5,000 start-ups created by UK university students last year as students become keen to leverage entrepreneurship for both earning money through their studies and as a potential career. University is still a time when you can experiment with what you enjoy and student businesses can often be quite varied, from making arts and crafts to creating IT solutions. There are though several conflicting elements for students wanting to start their own business.

Student entrepreneurship is more popular than ever-but how can biochemistry students get involved? Many well-known businesses have been founded by students while at university including Facebook, Snapchat, and Google, but can biochemistry students also be part of this entrepreneurial revolution?

The Higher Education Statistics Agency in the United Kingdom recorded nearly 5,000 start-ups created by UK university students last year. Other recent data suggests as many as 17% of students in the United States run their own business while at college, a figure which is 11% and 10% in Australia and the UK respectively. (University World News, 24/09/2023)

Protein L is a multi domain Ig-binding protein from the cell wall of the Gram positive bacterium Peptostreptococcus magnus that is able to bind to immunoglobulins (Ig) without affecting their antigenic binding ability. Unlike other Ig-binding proteins, Protein L binds to the V L domain of κ-chains enabling it to bind to all sub-classes of antibodies that contain κ-chains.

Whilst there have been many studies of entrepreneurship programmes looking at self efficacy and other outputs, including activities from courses to bootcamps and mentoring schemes, what is lacking is an attempt to understand what activities and experiences have shaped the formation of successful alumni entrepreneurs from the many activities they potentially could have taken part in during their university career, such as on curricular, off curricular and activities undertaken voluntarily in students free time unrelated to their university education from a backward looking perspective. This work is an attempt to understand from the alumni perspective which activities they considered prepared them best for being an entrepreneur. This would allow universities then to focus on measures which were proving to be most successful allowing provision to be more cost effective.

This paper describes the formation and running of a four day residential “Enterprise School” for 35 PhD and postdoctoral students from a mix of subject areas and universities in the North West England. This paper will examine some of the initial feedback and motivations of those attending the school and explains how the effectiveness of the programme in terms of encouraging entrepreneurial behaviours is being assessed by longitudinal study. This data is fitted to the Rugby Team Framework as a model to measure the impact of the school. It is increasingly important that PhD graduates are enterprising as the lack of opportunities in academia means many will need to find employment in commercial or not for profit sectors which employers will require more than simply a knowledge of a niche area. In addition, those that ultimately gain academic positions may become involved in forming a spin out venture, such activities becoming more important for academic promotions and for grant applications. The enterprise school consisted of an over arching theme of creating a business idea and completing a feasibility study before presenting this as a pitch to a panel of judges. The students were introduced to a variety of skills during the course such as opportunity recognition, market research, intellectual property, finance and sessions were of a practical nature. In addition, transferable skills such as team building, presentation and research skills were included.

This paper describes the formation and running of a four day residential “Enterprise School” for 35 PhD and postdoctoral students from a mix of subject areas and universities in the North West England. This paper will examine some of the initial feedback and motivations of those attending the school and explains how the effectiveness of the programme in terms of encouraging entrepreneurial behaviours is being assessed by longitudinal study. This data is fitted to the Rugby Team Framework as a model to measure the impact of the school. It is increasingly important that PhD graduates are enterprising as the lack of opportunities in academia means many will need to find employment in commercial or not for profit sectors which employers will require more than simply a knowledge of a niche area. In addition, those that ultimately gain academic positions may become involved in forming a spin out venture, such activities becoming more important for academic promotions and for grant applications. The enterprise school consisted of an over arching theme of creating a business idea and completing a feasibility study before presenting this as a pitch to a panel of judges. The students were introduced to a variety of skills during the course such as opportunity recognition, market research, intellectual property, finance and sessions were of a practical nature. In addition, transferable skills such as team building, presentation and research skills were included.

Since 2001, Manchester Science Enterprise Centre has been running a Masters course whereby a student brings a business idea from their own subject area and spends half the time working on developing the technology in their own department and the other half in learning business skills and actually setting up the idea as a live business. Approximately 1/3 of the students leave the course with a trading entity. The business ideas are generally hi-tech ideas from areas such as computing, physics, chemistry, biology and textiles where the university is working on leading edge discoveries. Since its inception in 2001, the course has produced over 30 trading entities from approximately 100 students. Many of these businesses now employ several other people and have received numerous awards and publicity in local and national media. The course has allowed the student to build up the business over the course of the year in an environment of low overheads with intangible advantages such as networking, access to experienced mentors and the academic staff and their connections. However, clearly, setting up a business from a hi-tech idea takes time, often longer than the one year that the student spends at the university, especially those businesses requiring further bench research and large amounts of further funding. It can take time to develop the technology to a workable level, to source funding, find partner companies etc. Many need to protect their intellectual property before any funding can be considered. Many ventures were in a position to apply for funding e.g. Government grants by the end of the year but where no funding was found many students opted for applying for jobs out of necessity. Several students needed to be entrepreneurial, working part time e.g. consultancy while trying to forward their business. This paper will detail what can be achieved in one year using examples as to how former students have obtained funding for their ventures from this unique start and what new strategies we have as a department to aid this process. It will also show how the companies have grown from a venture space (just a desk, computer and telephone) to a university incubator space using examples of projects that have successfully been completed from the master's course which have either led to a successful start up company or to "knowledge transfer" between the university and an outside agency.

A personal journal has been used for three years as part of the assessment of a ten credit "Entrepreneurial Skills" module offered as an option for a number of subject areas at Manchester University, including civil engineering, biology, chemistry, computer science and geography. The aim is to introduce students to companies, business models, finance and with an emphasis on analysis rather than simple repetition with the aim of getting the students to think how business issues could be applied to their subject area. Entrepreneurship is very much concerned with the development of transferable skills and the personal journal is one of the ways we at Manchester have found to help students think about how to gain transferable skills and think about what employers are looking for in addition to specialist knowledge in the students own subject area. The transferable skills element of these courses have proved to be a large selling point to other departments whose more traditional courses often do not offer this transferable skills training. The ten credit module involves 10 one hour lectures and 10 one hour workshops, using the lectures to teach basic principles and workshops to give the students the tools to complete the projects-In teams the students gather information on a well known "entrepreneurial" company and from this pool of information prepare a 20 minute PowerPoint presentation in groups and write individual reports. The project involves studying an entrepreneurial company of each group's choice and producing a report with conclusions and recommendations as to whether it is doing well/badly and what it should do in the future. There is no examination for the course. The Journal has formed part of the assessment for the course (15%) along with a project report (60%) and group presentations (25%). The journal has four sections.

A comparison of the effectiveness of two educational activities are carried out; a standard on-curricular postgraduate unit and an off-curricular school activity. The taught area for both is the theme of enterprise and entrepreneurship. They share similar intended learning outcomes, equipping participants with the same skills, knowledge and tools to set up their own business start-up. Another similarity is the number of contact hours with the students, however the main difference is the span these two activities take place; over a full semester or over a week. A survey was designed to be used in post teaching sessions to evaluate the effectiveness and impact the activities had on the students in the area of enterprise and entrepreneurship. The results indicated that both activities had an impact on start-up intention and activity however, the cost of the enterprise school per head and the fact that the on-curricular activities provide a recognized qualification in case the business fails means that short intensive off-curricular activities are better suited for researchers with limited time and who are still open minded about career choices. Both activities serve their own purpose and value as they provide the desired interventions for supporting positive attitudes towards enterprise and entrepreneurship.

It is accepted by most agencies that enterprise education is important for students and for the economy, however it is often difficult to measure the effectiveness of this education as effects can take many years to be shown. We have collected qualitative data from over 300 alumni entrepreneurs, reflecting on their time at the University of Manchester, which suggested that their experiences of enterprise education were mixed and that they would have benefitted from more practical courses rather than more academically interesting topics. For example they wanted training on how to register a company, understanding tax, employment law and basic book keeping, rather than how to generate ideas and theories of innovation and entrepreneurship. There is a clear need to shift some enterprise education to cater for those who have an idea now and need practical advice, or may have an idea in the future from their subject area and need to know how to proceed formally. On curricular courses are more likely to be academically and theory driven, especially with the need to provide appropriate assessment for students, whilst it is often the extracurricular activities which provide more practical details in how to start a business, which may not be open to all students, or may not be well advertised. Since many students don't start a business until later in life, with activity peaking in the 35-60 year old age group, they often do not take advantage of these opportunities while at university, should they be available. Our paper shows there needs to be a better mix of practical with academic courses to provide for alumni entrepreneurs' needs to allow them to start a business whether it be straight form university or later on in life.

Accountancy firms form an important element of a countries’ economic value, however, whilst there is considerable research into the service sector as a whole, there is little research which focuses specifically on accountancy firms themselves and how they innovate. This study used semi structured interviews with five senior members of different accounting firms in the US from which it was determined that the drivers of technological innovations were principally motivated by efficiency. Efficiency was important for a number of reasons. Firstly, aiding staff retention in terms of both providing feedback and allowing staff to perform less of the mundane tasks and focus on more analytical and strategic work and it was suggested younger staff members enjoyed using the new technology encouraging staff retention and job satisfaction. Secondly, staying competitive with pricing for customers was also a driver for using innovations to become more efficient, although increasing the profit margin was also suggested as savings made by innovations are not always passed on to customer (Ie value pricing), reducing the time and manual activity to do tasks was a key driver to improving the profitability of work. Thirdly, security was mentioned as an important area for innovation–both to keep confidentiality of clients’ data and to allow employees to work securely off site allowing staff flexibility in terms of working from home or at a clients’ site. The results also suggest that accounting firms engage in direct communication and collaboration with their employees, clients, alliances, and suppliers as a source of technological innovations.

This paper describes the measurement of entrepreneurial outcomes from a four day residential Enterprise School for Ph. D. and postdoctoral researchers from a mix of subject areas held in North West England. We determine the effectiveness of the programme in terms of encouraging a range of entrepreneurial behaviours from increased confidence to start a business to the actual creation of a business, and also intermediate outcomes such as using their new skills when returning to the workplace. Using a questionnaire at the end of the course and then eight months later, we have tried to fit the outcomes to the Rugby Team Framework as a model to measure the impact of the school in terms of what elements of the course they had incorporated in their workplace. We found that most students after returning still said they were more likely to start a business, a small number had actually started a business but interestingly we found that many were using the skills they learned now in the workplace, for example, opportunity spotting. These intermediate outcomes are often neglected by other studies but could prove valuable for employers and from those employees with them leading to higher employability and faster promotions.

A personal journal has been used for three years as part of the assessment of a ten
credit “Entrepreneurial Skills” module offered as an option for a number of subject
areas at Manchester University, including civil engineering, biology, chemistry,
computer science and geography. The aim is to introduce students to companies,
business models, fi nance and with an emphasis on analysis rather than simple
repetition with the aim of getting the students to think how business issues could be
applied to their subject area.
Entrepreneurship is very much concerned with the development of transferable
skills and the personal journal is one of the ways we at Manchester have found
to help students think about how to gain transferable skills and think about what
employers are looking for in addition to specialist knowledge in the students own
subject area. The transferable skills element of these courses have proved to be a
large selling point to other departments whose more traditional courses often do
not offer this transferable skills training.
The ten credit module involves 10 one hour lectures and 10 one hour workshops,
using the lectures to teach basic principles and workshops to give the students the
tools to complete the projects - In teams the students gather information on a well
known “entrepreneurial” company and from this pool of information prepare a 20
minute PowerPoint presentation in groups and write individual reports. The project
involves studying an entrepreneurial company of each group’s choice and producing
a report with conclusions and recommendations as to whether it is doing well/badly
and what it should do in the future. There is no examination for the course. The
Refereed Edition
Print ISSN: 1177-4541 On-Line ISSN: 1176-8592
Page 78 – Refereed Edition
Vol IV, Issue 4, December 2008, Conference Issue „Entrepreneurship Education“
© 2004-2008 Editors@asiaentrepreneurshipjournal.com
Journal has formed part of the assessment for the course (15%) along with a project
report (60%) and group presentations (25%). The journal has four sections.
1) A skills audit of transferable skills such as presentation skills, report writing, to
identify strengths and weaknesses and formulate a plan for improving.
2) A “diary” section where the student comments and refl ects on experiences during
the 12 week course e.g. lectures and workshops, when they have met in their groups
outside of work time, individual research etc. This section is fairly fl exible and left
to the students as to what they include as long as it is refl ective
3) A section where they can detail what they have done to demonstrate each of a
range of transferable skills during the project.
4) A statement of involvement in the group work to ensure work has been divided
equally is also included – giving them an explicit opportunity to state what they
have done, and what others in the group have done for the project (Working in
groups clearly gives weaker students the opportunity to do little work without this
safeguard).
We have found a number of benefi ts of using the journals, for example, it helps
students focus on transferable skills and records strengths/weaknesses and helps
them to structure future plans. It encourages lifelong learning and refl ection and
learning by experiencing.
It has also provided a number of hidden benefi ts – It encourages student attendance
(so the students actually have experiences to write about in the journal), provides
feedback to the lecturing team, and encourages all students to participate equally
in the project because of the statement of involvement. One of the most remarkable
and unexpected aspects of the use of the journals has been the amount of candid
feedback which the students have supplied. This has been far more useful than the
feedback supplied on the anonymous feedback forms which the university uses to
assess student satisfaction with courses. This has in fact been used to modify the
courses in future years. This paper will also look at differences in approaches from
different subject areas to the completing of the journals, differences in approaches
from small workshop groups (4-5 students) compared to larger groups (25-30) and
how we have used the feedback to improve the course.

From venture competitions to hackathons to master’s degrees, students have more opportunity than ever to explore social entrepreneurship. Universities – not to mention individual researchers and wider society – have much to gain, says the University of Manchester's Robert Phillips.

This paper explores the differences in the usage by students of an online platform for supplementary resources between a first year and final year entrepreneurship course which are traditionally face-to-face. We found a weak correlation between use of the online resources and higher marks. The average amount of time spent and other habits were identified. We can use this data to improve the online offering element for students at university where supplementary online resources are offered alongside face-to-face teaching.

Times Higher Education, 13 May 2023
Self-employment teaches valuable skills and offers more flexibility to fit work around academic and domestic demands, says Robert Phillips Many academics have been surprised and disappointed that students have not flocked back to physical lectures post-Covid. But there are several entirely understandable reasons for low attendances, with the need to earn money top of the list. A recent report by the Sutton Trust suggests that half of UK students have missed lectures due to their need to do paid work. A recent survey in Australia mirrors these findings: the cost-of-living crisis has forced nine out of 10 students into part time work, at the potential expense of their grades.

Venture competitions don’t just offer all-important funding prizes and a wealth of in-kind support and networking opportunities, they also help you develop your ideas and build skills in the process. Alliance Manchester Business School’s Robert A Phillips explains all

Entrepreneurship in Action – The Power of Student Run Ventures Edited by Eric W. Liguori and Mark Tonelli, Edward Elgar Publishing. 153 Pages

An often-forgotten area of entrepreneurship education is that for arts students who are likely to be self-employed when they graduate from university. This book, aimed at lecturers from the arts who need to equip their students with practical entrepreneurial skills, very much champions action learning – with students actually running a business during their studies, with learning likened to “drinking from a firehose”.