Family business entrepreneurs' influence on entrepreneurship education and training : a discussion paper

Abstract

Entrepreneur education and training are the key concepts for the success and wel-fare of the European societies. In this, the most important actors are the local and national family business entrepreneurs and their enterprises. The challenge for them is to become global and to build international business and social networks with their European counterparts as well as to learn to be motivated in coopera-tion with educational establishments. This study focuses on the online learning program of Global Entrepreneurship developed with the support of family busi-ness entrepreneurs as mentors. The students act as business assistants to the entre-preneurs. The study offers entrepreneurs an exciting and motivating platform for this in five European countries: Austria, Finland, Hungary, Italy and Lithuania, as well as in Turkey. At the same time, the educational institutions support the en-trepreneurs in putting their innovative visions of international cooperation into practice. The outcomes of the cooperation include SME business surveys, market-ing research and a proposal for an online department store. The evaluation em-phasizes the occupational competences and attitudes of the entrepreneurs, which are results based on the previous study by Westerholm (2007) in the same coun-tries except for Italy, which is a new partner country. The empirical case of IN-NOVET- Transfer on Innovation - is a real-life application of entrepreneur educa-tion and training.