Competences for co-entrepreneurship: contribution to the understanding of the concept for entrepreneurial education

Abstract

Considering the current knowledge society where young people need new skills, the aim of this paper is to introduce the concept “co-entrepreneurship"3 based on several studies about competences for the twenty-first century. As well as studies about Collective Intelligence (Lévy, 2000), Network Society (Castells, 2002), Multiliteracies (Selber, 2004) and Meaningful Learning (Ausubel, 2003). The concept co-entrepreneurship is constituted by the prefix “co” which means “collaboration” and the word “entrepreneur” that it’s becomes subject of actions that it performs, the dreamer and makes it happen. This paper aims to identify what educators think about the role of schools, particularly if the formal education should prepare them to be entrepreneurs. This case study focuses on 13 students, educators and researchers of “Agentes Digitais”4 project, who participated during two months on the weSPOT5 online inquiry environment. Participants discussed and reflected on the importance of entrepreneurship using synchronous and asynchronous interfaces collaborate to define the concept. After analyzing the discussions, evidence shows that participants consider co-entrepreneurship a significant issue because born of digital technology as social practices, an educational approach in which young people have dared to investigate, to analyze the local community and promote solutions, thus fulfilling their ideas (their dreams): they have created, shared and collaborated in the realization of their entrepreneurial projects involving digital technologies.