Investment in infrastructure

Creating a physical space such as a materialised Centre for Entrepreneurship provides a strong message that entrepreneurship education is part of the institution. These physical manifestations can also provide space for the HEI and the external ecosystem. Also, for those institutions supporting students to venture into business, these centres can provide affordable office space and help them creating their network within the institutions and the external ecosystem. Building physical infrastructure for entrepreneurship centres can mean huge investments for the institutions. Therefore, it is crucial to consider if the investment is fit for purpose to create value from these investments. I.e., when planning such centres or similar, the location (on-site or close to campus), size and (technical) equipment must be designed carefully.  (Bin Yusoff, Mohd Nor Hakimin et al., 2015; Hyclak & Barakat, 2010).

Providing space for entrepreneurship education is relevant. However, the establishment of an entrepreneurial culture or spirit can contribute to legitimize huge investments.

With structural interventions, we refer to those activities that aim to alter the organisational structure of higher education institutions. In detail, these changes alter existing or establish new roles, positions or even departments and other organizational units in higher education institutions. At first sight, one would not assume that these interventions would benefit the enhancement of entrepreneurial teaching and learning, as they do not offer teaching and learning. Rather, often these structural changes aim to enable this kind of teaching. Frequent examples are the establishment of a “Centre for Entrepreneurship Education” or of a business incubator (Maritz, 2017; O’Connor et al., 2012; Thom, 2017). Thus, these interventions can be regarded as a further structural differentiation and specialisation in which expert positions aim to support strengthening the entrepreneurial nature of the higher education institution (Ortiz-Medina et al., 2016). Often these are large-scale interventions, which include long-term planning, setting clear objectives or vast investments. Also, when altering existing or creating new organisational structures, institutions must consider the need to legitimise this change internally and create approval among staff and students. This legitimation can support those new structures to become better integrated into the institution and that its services are used (Maritz, 2017; Maritz & Brown, 2013). In our sample, the outcomes and impacts of these structural interventions are hardly measured (Smith, 2015).