Abstract:
Economic growth and job creation are driven by entrepreneurship and small
business development. The purpose of this study is to highlight the importance of
entrepreneurship education and competency development in developing
entrepreneurial talent. Additionally, the study is designed to test whether experiential
learning is more effective than traditional classroom instruction in teaching
entrepreneurship. Researchers have identified entrepreneurial competencies as
essential to business success. Experiential learning has been linked to business
performance, but the entrepreneurial competencies that mediate that relationship
have not been tested. Four hypotheses based on previous literature are presented.
Hierarchical regression is used to test these hypotheses using data collected from
123 participants in an entrepreneurship development program. Based on the
findings, experiential learning does lead to the development of entrepreneurial
competencies that benefit business performance. There was a significant mediation
effect between experiential learning and business performance through
entrepreneurial competencies such as opportunity, network, return on investment
and insights into the market.
