Entrepreneurship Education for Owner-Managers: The Process of Trust Building for an Effective Learning Community

Abstract This article explores how higher education institutions (HEIs) might improve entrepreneurship education by developing an effective learning community for small business owner-managers. Drawing on six cases from a successful training programme, the authors identify the reasons for scarce entrepreneurial learning opportunities in owner-managers' daily business lives; they then propose a theoretical model describing the process of trust building for an effective learning community in HEI entrepreneurial education. Conceptually, this study contributes to entrepreneurship literature by enhancing understanding of the process of trust building in peer networks during the entrepreneurial learning process. In practice, this study offers raze and valuable empirical insights into how to design and implement an effective HEI entrepreneurship training programme; most prior studies on entrepreneurial learning are purely conceptual.