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This article was written by researchers Azzura Meoli, Davide Hahn, and Giuliano Sansone, who produced a summary of their research published in the Journal of Business Research via ScienceDirect, which you can consult at this link.
Our research aims to demonstrate that entrepreneurial learning helps people become promoters of initiatives at work, but context and gender influence the results.
Entrepreneurship is often treated as a binary outcome: either you start a business or you don’t. But real careers are rarely black and white. In between, something important happens: many people may never create a start-up, but they still have experiences that teach them how entrepreneurs think and act. This is where entrepreneurial learning (EL) comes in. EL is not simply ‘taking an entrepreneurship course’. It captures the extent to which university studies help people develop entrepreneurial understanding and skills; for example, understanding the values of entrepreneurs, strengthening opportunity recognition and improving networking skills.
It is important to emphasise that EL does not only come from the classroom. It can also be developed through extracurricular experiences such as hackathons, incubation programmes, entrepreneurial challenges or student-led entrepreneurial organisations.
This raises an increasingly relevant question for employers in innovation-oriented companies: if students develop high levels of EL, what do they do with it within organisations, especially when they become employees rather than founders? Our study suggests a clear answer: EL is associated with greater personal initiative at work. And the relationship becomes even more interesting when gender and organisational context are taken into account.
From entrepreneurial learning to initiative at work
The discussion in our article builds a simple argument: EL is not just knowledge, but becomes a resource that people can draw on to take action. If your university experience improves your ability to spot opportunities, develop networks and understand entrepreneurial action, you will be more likely to start businesses without being told to, persevere despite obstacles, propose improvements and shape your work rather than simply doing it.
In other words, entrepreneurial learning can translate into personal initiative: those proactive and autonomous behaviours that organisations rely on when they want speed, adaptability and innovation.
This is a crucial shift: instead of asking whether entrepreneurial learning makes someone a founder, we should ask whether it makes them an initiator.
The initiative is not “just a skill”; it is judged by others
A fundamental insight from the research is that personal initiative is not purely individual. Whether initiative manifests itself in everyday work also depends on whether the workplace makes such behaviour legitimate and rewarding. We use role congruity as a theoretical lens: people may be more or less ‘allowed’ (socially and organisationally) to act proactively, depending on expectations about who they are and what their role is. This helps explain two further findings that are highly practical for employers, managers and anyone hiring early-career talent.
1) Entrepreneurial learning pays off differently depending on gender.
Entrepreneurial learning is linked to greater initiative for everyone, but the drive is stronger for men than for women. The discussion highlights an uncomfortable but common mechanism: in many workplaces, assertive proactivity is still perceived as more ‘natural’ or acceptable when it comes from men. Women may face higher social costs for the same behaviour: for example, being perceived as ‘too pushy’, ‘too confident’ or ‘out of place’. The implication is clear: responsibility is not always rewarded equally. So, if organisations want to convert entrepreneurial learning into an initiative that involves the entire team, they must make the initiative safe and equally recognised. This means: making expectations explicit (‘initiative is part of the role’); publicly and consistently rewarding improvement behaviours; and training managers to recognise biases in how proactivity is evaluated.
2) Entrepreneurial learning has a stronger effect in larger, more mature companies.
This may surprise many people. It is often assumed that small, young companies are the ones where initiative thrives: fewer rules, faster decisions and greater proximity to the founders. However, our findings suggest that the link between EL and initiative is stronger in larger, older organisations. One possible interpretation is that larger, more mature (albeit slower) companies often have more formal mechanisms for channelling initiative: structured projects, opportunities for internal mobility, clearer responsibilities and visible recognition systems. In these contexts, people with strong EL may be better equipped to deal with complexity while continuing to act proactively. As companies grow, structure increases and the risk is that initiative is lost. EL can help maintain it, but only if people are given the space and channels to express it.
The main idea is that entrepreneurial learning is organisational energy if you know how to unlock it.
The discussion leads to a simple but powerful conclusion: EL equips people with opportunity-oriented, network-enabled, action-focused capabilities. But whether these capabilities translate into initiative at work depends on the social and organisational environment. This is not a minor point. Many companies hire ‘entrepreneurial profiles’ and then inadvertently stifle them through unclear authority, inconsistent rewards or cultural sanctions, which are often perceived more strongly by women. If organisations want the benefits of EL, the question is not only who to hire, but also what kind of environment to create for initiative to flourish. (In the photo collage, the three authors: Hahn, Meoli, Sansone)
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