Heuristics and the Choice of Method in Entrepreneurial Marketing Education

Abstract

This article exhibits that entrepreneurial marketing educators recur to their own heuristics to deal not only with the challenges that relate to their mentees’ entrepreneurial projects, but also with the operationalization of their teaching and methodological approaches. Based on the identification of heuristics derived from a convenience sample of 20 entrepreneurship educators, this research characterizes four archetypes of educators: academics, experts, entrepreneurs-in-residence, and mentors. Findings indicate that academics refer to the most common and successful practices, whereas experts qualify methods that fulfill their purposes and follow best practices. Entrepreneurs-in-residence mirror their own startup experiences, involving a certain level of pragmatism, and mentors base their decisions on experience, choosing practices that they judge suitable. Each profile tends to replicate heuristics patterns in the selection of the education method, suggesting an impossibility to separate context and experience from the methodological choices that determine entrepreneurial marketing education, whose learning process is presented as an adapted version of the model originally proposed by Kolb for students. This article contributes to the academic discussion of the role of educators in entrepreneurial marketing, offering an exploratory explanation as to why and how different educator profiles choose their teaching and methodological approaches.