Teaching the Entrepreneurial Mindset

Nicole Brooks

To be an entrepreneur is to take risks, to create and capture value, and to identify needs and wants. In other words: to be an entrepreneur is to have ideas about what could be — and the drive to make it real.

Can this be taught? If so, where do we start?

This “different way of thinking” is a hallmark of the entrepreneur. How do you teach someone to think differently, to be an entrepreneur? Can it be done? Purdue entrepreneurial education faculty answer with a resounding yes — with the caveat that the definition of “entrepreneurship” is sweeping.

The development of an entrepreneurial mindset, one that serves innovation and problem-solving in any setting, is of paramount importance. Purdue alumni have and will continue to procure millions of dollars to launch and lead successful startups. But an appetite for risk-taking, a mindset that equips students to recognize and grab an opportunity — current resources be damned — these are the real end goals of entrepreneurial education.

“At the undergraduate level, we take a broad view of entrepreneurship,” says Matthew Lynall, a clinical professor of management at the Mitch Daniels School of Business. The best path for undergrads interested in entrepreneurship, he says, is to, after graduation, get a position with an established company, build skills, develop their network, gain knowledge and experience, and, when the time is right, follow an entrepreneurial opportunity.

“I encourage students to wait until they have some more work and life experience so they can identify problems from a broader perspective than their current frame of reference,” Lynall says.

In his classes, Lynall stresses venture creation and teaches entrepreneurial behaviors. “We tend to do that through the eyes of an investor,” he says. Investors, he notes, look for vision, persistence, the ability to listen, a willingness to be coached and adaptability. Will you be stubborn? Can you sell?

Students in Lynall’s Management of Entrepreneurial Ventures course study real-world pitch decks prepared by companies seeking seed funding. They pore over case studies and ask questions of visiting investors and founders. They look for the key attributes of an investable company, such as the size of the market opportunity, the significance of the problem they are looking to solve, and the ability of the founder team to execute and adapt.

“We use half the course looking at case studies,” Lynall says, as they provide concrete examples of various entrepreneurs in different industries and are typically designed with pedagogy in mind.

Finding a problem you can solve

When it comes to ideation, Lynall has students consider their personal experiences, problems they observe in their world, and problems they noticed in companies for which they worked or interned. Lynall might suggest “problem spaces” to dive into, such as biotech. Also, talk to people. “Sometimes, through talking to potential customers, students discover that what they thought was a problem is not really such a big problem,” he says.

Lynall asserts that the skills and knowledge students learn in entrepreneurship education are just as applicable when working at a company. “We’re not just teaching students to form a startup. That’s a risky prospect,” he says. “You can create a completely new venture even within an existing business.”

Duval-Couetil concurs. “We have students who left Purdue and started amazing companies. However, those who start ventures immediately after graduation are outliers,” she says.

“We’re planting a lot of entrepreneurial seeds that sprout one, five or 10 years after graduation,” she says. “Some students launch ventures while still at Purdue or shortly after graduating. Others act as intrapreneurs within established companies, applying entrepreneurial thinking to drive innovation. Many also pursue side ventures while advancing their careers.”

Intrapreneurs are employees within a company who demonstrate an entrepreneurial spirit and take initiative to innovate and develop new products or services. Intrapreneurs can create better, more efficient companies. Duval-Couetil recently touched base with an alum of the certificate program whose company had tapped him to start a new division.

“If companies are smart, they will hire graduates who know how to do that,” she says.

Entrepreneurship is all about generating value, wherever that might be, she notes. Success is readily evident when a venture raises millions of dollars, while it’s difficult to measure the impact of entrepreneurial thinking when you work in a company, Duval-Couetil notes.

No matter the path, the entrepreneurial mindset stays with them for life, Duval-Couetil says.

How can you teach someone to develop an entrepreneurial mindset? The answer may be, you can’t. Well, not every facet of it.

“There’s a really important piece you can’t teach, which is the risk factor,” says Purdue University’s Angie Stocklin. “Until you are doing it for real, you don’t understand what that risk feels like. 

“There was a time when I would have said ‘You can’t teach entrepreneurship,’” she says. 

Now a lecturer in Purdue’s Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Stocklin co-founded and served as chief operating officer of One Click Internet Ventures for more than 13 years. The ecommerce business owned and operated eyewear brands, selling sunglasses and reading glasses and gathering awards and attention on the likes of The Today Show, The Travel Channel, The Wall Street Journal, Maxim and InStyle.

“We just wanted to see if we could do it,” she says. “We didn’t follow any of the rules that I teach my students.”

Not following standard procedure worked out for Stocklin and her team. Foster Grant acquired One Click in 2018. The experience inspired Stocklin to reflect on what she most enjoyed about her entrepreneurial adventure.

“I enjoyed the mentorship aspect, helping people figure out how to be their best selves,” she says. Stocklin wanted to help shape our idea of what an entrepreneur looks like. (Close your eyes and picture an “entrepreneur.” Here are a few statistics about the average entrepreneur; Forbes lists names you will recognize in “Here’s What An Entrepreneur Is – And How You Can Become One.”)

Stocklin volunteered at Girls Inc., a long-running nonprofit that supports girls in becoming leaders. Through her network, Stocklin met Duval-Couetil, and in 2020, she joined the ranks of entrepreneurs teaching at Purdue.

Students in Stocklin’s Marketing and Management for New Ventures course practice idea generation and conduct secondary research — what tools can we use? Who is our competition? They talk to working entrepreneurs about pitfalls and defining problems to solve.  

“We spend the whole semester talking about ‘is this a real problem’ and ‘are there investors willing to pay to solve the problem?’” Stocklin says.  

She complements the “Disciplined Entrepreneurship Workbook” with a Medium problem-finding framework article, select posts from Lenny’s Newsletter, a playlist from the Slidebean YouTube channel, and other practical, contemporary online resources.  

Entrepreneurship education

Entrepreneur and educator Steve Blank writes that Harvard Business School’s Myles Mace taught the first entrepreneurship course on a college campus in 1947, marking the beginning of entrepreneurship as a subject in business schools. By the 1970s, a handful of courses related to entrepreneurship were offered at colleges and universities. In 2008, more than 5,000 entrepreneurship courses were offered on college campuses, according to the Kauffman Foundation.

Purdue launched its Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation in 2005 with one course. Administered and funded through the university’s Office of the Provost, the certificate now requires the equivalent of five courses. All undergraduates enrolled in the certificate program take two required entrepreneurship fundamentals courses. The remaining three classes enhance the student’s particular major and goals. The certificate’s student makeup is aligned with enrollment at Purdue overall, Duval-Couetil notes, with the exception of a few majors.

She says there are few graduate-level courses offered at Purdue on a regular basis that focus on entrepreneurship. She’ll co-teach Technology Entrepreneurship & Research Translation in fall 2025 with a College of Engineering professor. Offered jointly by the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering and the Department of Technology Leadership and Innovation, the class helps students working in labs understand intellectual property issues, publishing versus patenting, translating research into products and more.

Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation courses have expanded to Purdue University in Indianapolis: a 200-level course was taught there in spring 2025, and in fall 2025, a 300-level class will be added.

“Our goal is to lower the barriers,” Duval-Couetil says of entrepreneurship education at Purdue. “When students see an opportunity, they won’t say ‘oh, somebody else will do that.’ They’ll say instead, ‘I can do this.’” 

This goal gels with Lynall’s favorite definition of entrepreneurship, from Harvard Business School professor Howard Stevenson: “Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled.” The definition is applicable to startups as well as companies pursuing new opportunities, Lynall notes.

The core principle 

At its core, entrepreneurship is concerned with solving a big problem shared by many people, Lynall says. Restaurants couldn’t afford a dedicated delivery driver = DoorDash (which started out as PaloAltoDelivery.com). San Francisco residents (hosts) struggling to pay their rent opened their apartments to travelers (guests) = AirBed & Breakfast (Airbnb).  

If entrepreneurship starts with a problem you want to solve, that problem had better be worth the effort, Lynall says. Also, never start with a solution. Declaring, “Let’s use AI to solve a poorly defined problem,” for example, is a mistake, Lynall says. “A fool with a tool is still a fool.”

The problem must have a solution you are able to pursue. Recent examples of problems his undergraduates have discussed include how to collect waste from restaurants and turn it into compost and how to find available college football game-day parking spaces.

According to Jorge Romero-Day, the idea that entrepreneurship is concerned with solving big problems is an idealistic one.

“Ideally, you like to find a big problem. But many times, you might just stumble into being an entrepreneur,” he says.

Romero-Day is an executive in residence for the Daniels School’s online programs and advises graduate students as associate director, career development, for the school’s Business Career Services. He teaches an introductory class in the Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation program, as well as a course on global entrepreneurship that he developed.

One might become an entrepreneur because they like their job but hate their boss, he says. Or, one likes what they do, but they don’t like the corporate environment. They may be forced into creative ideation by a lack of job opportunities.

“Entrepreneurial activity many times is more intense in those countries where the political, social and economic environments are more uncertain,” Romero-Day says.

Regardless of the why, there is always risk involved. Fail at a traditional workplace and you might be fired, he says. “If that’s the worst that can happen — you can find another job. As an entrepreneur, you have more skin in the game. You must have an appetite for risk to be an entrepreneur.”

Entrepreneur as risk-bearer 

Some scholars credit Irish-French banker, merchant and economist Richard Cantillon with coining the term “entrepreneur” – a French term with English equivalents including “adventurer” — in the early 1700s. An appetite for risk-taking has been forever tied to entrepreneurship.

“Being an entrepreneur can be lonely. You’re alone out there in the wilderness,” Romero-Day says.

A Purdue grad, Romero-Day went the corporate route and spent most of his career abroad, in Germany, Argentina, the U.K. and other countries. He also developed seven businesses of his own. The largest failed miserably, he says, while the others were moderately or very successful. In 2021, he returned to the U.S. and asked his Purdue contacts how he could contribute to the university.

Romero-Day relishes teaching and sharing with students his insights on being an entrepreneur as well as an intrapreneur.

“I believe that to teach entrepreneurship, it is advisable to have been an entrepreneur,” he says. Romero-Day focuses on skills. “Not all of my students are going to be entrepreneurs — 10-15% of my students might follow an entrepreneurial career,” he says. “The rest will use the skills to develop other types of jobs.”

He covers how to pitch — students practice the 90-second pitch — how to present yourself to a potential customer, and storytelling, which is the best way to sell, Romero-Day says.

In his intro course, he brings concepts from the book “Entrepreneurship: Successfully Launching New Ventures” to life with real-world examples. He welcomes guest speakers for both the intro course and his global entrepreneurship class, for which he eschews a textbook for articles, lectures, and case studies.

“Guest speakers can address complications in real time. When the students read, they’re getting abstract concepts. A professional comes in and talks about the real pain — and the rewards,” Romero-Day says. “Entrepreneurship is challenging but also very rewarding. I would not be here, and so happy, without it.”