Approaches and good practices for entrepreneurial education

The successful management of a company requires the provision of several aspects that make the enterprise competitive. It is inevitable the importance of a business plan when starting a business, market research, creating a marketing strategy, communicating with customers, etc. However, the quality preparation of each of the elements is largely dependent on the personality and know-how of the entrepreneur. In this sense, the aim of the present study is to identify approaches and good practices that contribute to greatest extent to the development of entrepreneurial skills. Applied methods used to perform the study are desk research, content analysis and comparative analysis. The results show that there are universal elements that any entrepreneurship curriculum (syllabus) should include, and these are mostly related to theoretical knowledge of the subject. A significant part of the trainings also has a practical part with cases, and often they are derived from the specific context. There are also studies that focus on specific personal characteristics. Based on the obtained results, we can conclude that entrepreneurship education should be a balanced complex of three main components. The first is related to theoretical knowledge of the structuring and functioning of any business. Secondly, it is important to have the practical perspective of implementing what has been learned in the specific national context, in the best case, through real cases. And thirdly, there should be an emphasis on developing soft skills and personal qualities that will contribute to high efficiency and sustainability of the business. Furthermore, the opportunities for the students to gain experience from a team of professors (not a single lecturer), to participate in national and international competitions for startup elaboration, to gain experience from successful entrepreneurs using the methods of public lectures and business initiatives is the innovative practice that found realization at university level.