Key ideas on entrepreneurial learning
If we accept that people can learn to work in entrepreneurial ways, the question is: how? This chapter is based on research which explored how people learn to work in entrepre¬neurial ways and identified the significant processes and experiences in their learning (Rae, 2005b). This is used to develop the entrepreneurial learning model included in the chapter.
We know that entrepreneurship consists of the interrelated processes of creating, recognising and acting on opportunities, by combining innovating, decision making and enaction. Learning is an emergent, sensemaking process in which people develop the ability to act differently. Learning comprises knowing, doing, and understanding why (Mumford, 1995). Through learning, people construct meaning through experience in a context of social interaction, and create new reality, or sensemaking as Weick (1995) termed this process. Both entrepreneurship and learning are behavioural and social processes, so they are not just about 'knowing' but also acting, and they are not simply