Learning to Be “Me,” “the Team,” and “the Company” Through Entrepreneurial Extracurricular Activities: An Ethnographic Approach

Abstract

A missing research focus in entrepreneurship education is the question of how student entrepreneurs learn through becoming part of the educational extracurricular incubator environment. In particular, how students can continue to develop their identities during their transition to and time in the new learning environment that the incubator represents. Through an ethnographic approach and a unique single case study consisting of an entrepreneurial student team, this paper aims to establish a link between learning and identity development that besides being individual also carries collective identity elements. The findings relate to how students find meaning and make decisions in a business context and how this develops them as individuals, a team, and their company. The development of related identities is a new contribution to research on extracurricular activities. The extracurricular incubator environment not only presents another opportunity for and typology of learning but also becomes an arena for continuous identity development in various forms.