A cross-cultural learning strategy for entrepreneurship education: outline of key concepts and lessons learned from a comparative study of entrepreneurship students in France and the US

This paper attempts to analyze the first findings of a survey-driven study of entrepreneurship students at the undergraduate, graduate, and continuing (professional) education levels in France and in the US. Our findings, albeit derived from an early stage of our ongoing field research and more exploratory than normative at this point, indicate that at least on the French side, there are attitudes and perceptions that are less positive towards entrepreneurship and its impact, as well as more cynical towards situational and institutional factors that could provide a supportive environment for entrepreneurial ventures or act as impediments to its growth. Our results could provide insights for both entrepreneurship educators as well as economic development policy makers in identifying the maximum leverage and critical success and failure factors influencing educational programs as well as economic incentives targeted on the development of sustainable entrepreneurial culture and ventures in France and possibly other countries as well. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.