Innovation hub a venture for students’ entrepreneurial talents: a case of college of business education

Abstract

Worldwide, unemployment is a challenging aspect that faces most of the graduate students. Based on that, students in colleges and universities currently, are clearly aware that they have to engage in self-employment through entrepreneurship. Moreover, the establishment of innovation hubs during collaging has propounded to help upbringings different entrepreneurial and creativity treats among students. Apart from performing incubation of the business ideas, the innovation hubs could be a free innovative centre where students, stakeholders, lecturers, and alumnae meet, work, and collaborate on the range of innovative augmented ideas to stimulate entrepreneur intention.  Colleges and universities do not have a proper plan to expose students to practical business environments while studying. Therefore, through mixed research design, this study entails to design and develop a participatory contextual model that will enhance the College of Business Education to establish a free space as the innovation hub for incubating talents, entrepreneurial ideas and research focused on solution-based for students and lecturers. A total of 132 respondents consisting of 20 instructors; 100 students and 12 entrepreneurial practitioners were involved in this study. Data was collected through questionnaires, in-depth interviews, Focus Group Discussions (FGD) and documentary review. The obtained data were analysed through descriptive statistics and thematic content analysis. Based on the findings, it is evident that establishing an incubation and innovation hub within the CBE community is necessary. The findings provide valuable insights into the participants' perceptions and highlight various aspects that should be considered during establishing and implementing the hub. Moreover, the findings stipulate that the incubation and innovation hub should incorporate the prototype environment that includes mindset change programmes, regular training, internship programmes, effective incubation practices, strong mentorship and coaching programmes, and a clear exit strategy that can enhance the entrepreneurial skills and capabilities of incubates