Broadening the entrepreneurial mindset by training a Life Design Attitude

Questions we care about:
What if ‘an entrepreneurial mindset’ involves a too limited focus on value creation in a business context? and What if students need a broader focus and understanding of value- and meaning creation in their lives as such? How can we rethink and redefine ‘the entrepreneurial mindset’ in a way that better meets with the students’s current needs for more life skills?

Our theoretical research hypotheses were:

1.In traditional education life stops when we learn, but learning is continual and needs to be “in sync with life”. In other words, we need to have a stronger connection between practice and real life [Siemens, 2006)
2.Educational institutions focus on work life
3.Students often think of entrepreneurship as market needs, business and work
4.Students have challenges as the ‘entrepreneurial mindset’ does not address life in general, including mental health.


To investigate our hypotheses we:

1.We will use a design approach and take a point in departure in the young peoples’ current needs in the development and definition of a future entrepreneurial mindset: a life design mindset
2.We will address and seeks to meet with students’ current and general needs in life by introducing and offering a life design attitude, that introduces different design activities, skills and ways of being.
3.We will offer a course in entrepreneurship that includes the introduction to Nordic Life Design (Sørensen, 2021) that includes a Life Design Attitude and The 4-foci model: different foci, applying the 4-foci model (Sørensen, 2019). The 4-foci model includes: an outer business focus, an other focus, an outer world focus and most of all an inner focus, that meet particularly with the current needs among students.