Introduction

Activity 1: Teamwork where participants carry out online research.

Topic: Green entrepreneurial mindset and business activities

• Teacher provides a brief overview of the sessions and the activities.
• Teacher hands out necessary learning materials and makes clear where to find the learning resources and other OERs.

Note: 

1. This session relies heavily on the output from sessions 1 to 3 as the input and starting point for this session. Learnings gained from the previous sessions must be developed in this session.
2. The activity for this session must be team-based.

Background information: It was Jean Baptiste Say (1767 – 1832) that coined the word entrepreneur from “entreprendre”, meaning to undertake an endeavour, a project that requires means, effort, and coordination. This is seen as a social function of arbitration, which is the art of shifting resources from one location to another to help the economy to adjust and develop its production. It is the entrepreneur who takes up this mantle in society by managing new deployment of resources and creating new efficiencies. The entrepreneur is seen as an undertaker. 

A second school of thought, Frank Hyneman Knight (1885 – 1972), the founder of Chicago School of Economics, a specialist on the theory of risk and uncertainty, argues that an entrepreneur takes in premiums in return for their willingness to take on risks, as opposed to people in safe jobs. He asserts that an entrepreneur fulfils a social function of risk-taking and is motivated by profit as reward for risk-taking. The entrepreneur is seen as a risk taker. 

On the other hand, Joseph Schumpeter (1883 – 1950), one of the founders of Evolutionary Economics, sees the function of an entrepreneur as turning inventions into innovations by introducing new products, new production methods, new services, new forms of business models, new organisations and creating new markets, thereby destroying the existing market balance through creative destruction. In Schumpeter's mind, the entrepreneur is motivated by a drive for attaining leadership, accomplishment, recognition, and changing the world. The entrepreneur is seen as a creative hero. 

The three views agree that entrepreneurial activity is an important driver for innovation, job creation, and strengthening economic growth and market diversity. It is the same reason why the priority of the OUTSIDE mission is to assist schools across Europe (and beyond) to acquire entrepreneurial skills through the creation of pro-environment and sustainable projects. OUTSIDE subscribes to the initiative to integrate environmental and sustainability issues in entrepreneurship education curricula. Thus, in this session, participants will engage in an activity that will grow their entrepreneurial mindset for a business venture (the output of session 3). This ideology is underpinned with reference to the open access IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science - Development of the green entrepreneurial mindset through modern entrepreneurship education. Inga Uvarova et al 2021 IOP Conf. Ser.: Earth Environ. Sci. 628 012034.

This session looks at the transformational steps that an entrepreneur adopts when evaluating old realities, envisioning new concepts, and engineering new realities. Envisioning new concepts is not the same as having a viable plan of action. Visions are imaginations, feelings, and intuitions of how a new state of reality would look like. Thus, participants will learn, like entrepreneurs, how to combine their vision with their passion for a greater purpose, and in this case, in a way that generates profitability and is environmentally sustainable.

Slide Presentation: Entrepreneurial Mindset for a Green Business Venture (35 minutes):

1. Teacher gives a short slide presentation on what is meant by the term, Entrepreneur.
2. Teacher highlights the values of an entrepreneur with a green business mindset.
3. Teacher reasons that a green-thinking perspective generates sustainable opportunities. 
4. Teacher encourages market search of gaps in current green entrepreneurship.
5. Teacher runs a quiz session at the end to consolidate knowledge and address gaps.