iKEN: A model of enhancing Entrepreneurial Skills of Nascent ...

iKEN: A model of enhancing Entrepreneurial Skills of Nascent Entrepreneurs

H S Krishna Research Associate, Department of Management Studies Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru – 560012 Karnataka, India Email: [email protected] Tel: +0091 94484 68607

Manjula Sridhar Founder, ARGBYTE Co-founder, iKEN Program and iSPIRT Fellow, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India Email: [email protected] Tel: +0091 98804 28675

Prasanna Krishnamoorthy CTO in Residence, Microsoft Accelerator, India Co-founder, iKEN Program and iSPIRT Fellow, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India Email: [email protected] Tel: +0091 94483 53940

1. INTRODUCTION The field of high technology startups has received much importance within the entrepreneurship literature from the past two decades. Gries and Naude (2008) observed that these new, small firms are more likely to grow (Johnson et al. 2000; Lingelbach et al. 2005), create new jobs (McMillan and Woodruff 2002; Audretsch et al. 2006), and promote new and flexible organizational forms (Kim et al. 2006). In particular, small high technology startups have been recognized as being the major drivers of job creation and innovation and thus economic growth (Birch, 1979; Baumol, 2002; Kirchhoff and Spencer, 2008). Kane (2010) ascertained that in the U.S., startups were responsible for all the new job creations for 21 years out of the past 28 years (75% of the time period of study). Some of the leading companies in the technology industry today, such as Apple, Cisco, eBay, Qualcomm, Intel were incubated as tiny startups during their formative years (Barringer et al, 2005; Paulraj, 2012). The startup wave is not confined only to developed economies alone. Startups have started to contribute in such massive proportions to economies worldwide on account of macro-economic changes such as lowering of entry cost for startups, maturing of the institutional finance industry (Venture Capital firms, Seed, Angel investment by firms and high net-worth individuals). Further, the ability to facilitate rapid and global adoption of a new product or service and better knowhow of how to manage these new and young businesses during their initial years of inception and operations have also paved way in enhancing the contributions of startups to the economies. (Startup Genome, 2015). From the Asian perspective, the overall Venture Capital (VC) investment just for Q2 2015 was over USD 10 billion, registering a 45% year-on-year growth. The Asian Internet and mobile startups took about 82% of the worldwide VC funding in Q2 2015, with the Asian region attracting approximately USD 33.5 billion VC funding across the past five quarters (Venture Pulse, 2015). In India, companies such as Flipkart, Makemytrip, and Inmobi are making their presence felt in the global marketplace attracting more than USD 1 billion valuations (Nambiar, 2011). As of 2015, there were eight home-grown Unicorns (startups that are valued at USD 1 billion or more) operating in India (The Times of India, 2015). According to NASSCOM (2014), India has approximately 3100 startups operating in the country and on account of which it has now been recognized as the third largest base for high-tech startups in the world. In the year 2014 itself, about 2 startups got created in India every day, a 100% increase from 2013 which indicates the momentum building up in this sector in the country. While the above data and facts paint a positive picture of how startups are mushrooming around the world, and in the emerging economies in particular, it is important to understand that these startups have significant failure rates. Without the appropriate interventions from policy makers or by private participants of the ecosystem, their contribution to economic development would not sustain. Incubators, accelerators, and science parks have been the mechanisms of such support systems worldwide (Mian, 1994). However, in the case of India, these mechanisms are yet to mature and play an enabling role. Barring a handful of corporate accelerators and private incubators, there are hardly any ecosystem enablement system in place. The government funded technology business incubators and science / research parks have only recently been established and are yet to contribute in the enablement of prospective entrepreneurs in the country (Government of India, 2016). Given the momentous interest in entry to entrepreneurship in India, there exists a significant knowledge deficit and gap in equipping nascent entrepreneurs to face the uncertain journey. To address these gaps, the iKEN program was conceived. The iKEN program is an entrepreneurial training and development experiment, conceived and executed by practicing product entrepreneurs in the Indian startup ecosystem (http://www.ispirt.in/iken/). The purpose of this program is to enhance the effectiveness of nascent entrepreneurs as they embark on new venture creation. Life skills and effectual skills are imparted to the nascent entrepreneurs by a variety of ways – experiential and non-experiential learning methods, in a cohort based setting that encourages creation of new networks and relationships.

As part of the iKEN program design, all participants are introduced to the core concepts of effectuation (Sarasvathy, 2001), using which participants arrive at a baseline of the means (resources) at their disposal, the loss they could afford on account of taking the next step, as well as the other core tenets of co-creation, open-mindedness to leverage unexpected surprises (positive and negative). These concepts are reinforced and validated by way of specific task assignments covering six different entrepreneurial skills. The program is administered in a time capsule of ten consecutive weeks. The participants carry out specific tasks every week based on their convenience. Over the weekend, they attend to a two-hour review of tasks with fellow entrepreneurs and get feedback and inputs on their actions. Over the last year, this program has enabled about 39 nascent entrepreneurs across four cohorts at its Bengaluru chapter, which has resulted in formal incorporation of 13 startups. During the second year, it has expanded to two more locations, Jaipur, India and Atlanta, U.S., with about 36 nascent entrepreneurs currently pursuing this program across the three locations. This paper is an attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of the iKEN program from an entrepreneurial learning perspective. The objective of this paper is to assess the usefulness of the mixed mode of methods in augmenting the skills of the nascent entrepreneurs. The assessment of effectiveness (learning outcomes of trained nascent entrepreneurs) of the iKEN program is examined under six different contexts. To begin with, this paper evaluates whether the program was able to enhance the individual and collective learning outcomes of the entrepreneurs and cohorts respectively, who were trained as part of this program. Next, the impact of mentoring on the nascent entrepreneurs, as part of iKEN is examined. Further, the usefulness of entrepreneurial networks created during the program in enabling a nascent entrepreneur to pursue pre-organization activities is evaluated. The impact of critical feedback from peers in enhancing reflection by the nascent entrepreneur is the fourth context in which the effectiveness of this program is probed. The role of the iKEN program in making the nascent entrepreneur unlearn a few skills that are detrimental to entrepreneurship is the fifth aspect that is examined. Finally, whether the nascent entrepreneur learns more on account of success or failure in the pursuit of pre-organizational entrepreneurial activities carried out during the program is evaluated. 2. LITERATURE REVIEW To begin with, this section will present a review of literature on nascent entrepreneurship and new venture emergence. It then focuses on examining literature on individual skills that are considered necessary for new venture emergence. Further, it reviews existing literature on entrepreneurial learning, and how these have been applied in the context of helping nascent entrepreneurs create new ventures via technology business incubators and accelerators. Based on the literature review of the above aspects, the gaps in enabling prospective entrepreneurs with skills that are required to start a new venture, particularly in the emerging economies like India are identified. The proposed intervention by way of the iKEN program is discussed, paving way to examine if this intervention is indeed yielding the intended results of enhancing nascent entrepreneur effectiveness 2.1 Nascent Entrepreneurship and new venture emergence A nascent entrepreneur is someone who is in the process of establishing a business venture by exploring the viability of an opportunity (Reynolds and White, 1997; Casson, 1982). The exploitation of this opportunity might result in introduction of new products or services, creation of new markets or enhancements to existing methods of production (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000). But before such a venture is actually established, the opportunity is just a venture idea (Davidsson, 2006; Dimov, 2007). The value of this venture idea cannot be established at the time of the inception of this idea. However, over time, the exact economic value of this idea will emerge based on the different set of entrepreneurial activities performed by the nascent entrepreneur (Davidsson, 2003; Dimov, 2007; Sarasvathy, 2001). It is not possible for every venture idea to result in emergence of a new firm. After pursuing a few entrepreneurial activities towards implementing the idea, it may so happen that the nascent entrepreneur deems this idea to be no longer attractive or feasible. On the other hand, the outcomes of the initial entrepreneurial activities in implementing the venture idea might result in the emergence of a viable business. In this sense, over time, the nascent venture can move towards being discontinued or towards

emerging successfully as an operating entity (Dimov, 2010). From an economics lens, according to Dimov’s conceptualization, the nascent entrepreneur was seen as pursuing an opportunity, i.e. a possibility to introduce new products or services, serve new markets, or develop more efficient production methods in a profitable manner. A review of existing literature on nascent entrepreneurship from the economic theories lens, in particular from new venture creation perspective, reveals that multiple constructs and explanations have been provided to explain the phenomenon. Katz and Gartner (1988) and Van de Ven et al. (1984) formulated the concept of pre-organizations to explain the different sets of events unfolding till the formal firm creation. Their studies illustrated the complexity involved in the creation of new high technology startups. Bygrave (1989) stated that every firm’s startup process is a disjointed, discontinuous, and unique event. Continuing on that thought, Roininen and Ylinenpaa (2009) explained that the process of creating a new venture could be viewed as a system of coexisting activities undertaken during different phases, where one event could affect others resulting in complexity, disorder and even chaos some times. The phenomenon of new venture emergence has been examined by various researches through study of the firm organizing activities of the entrepreneurs. Scholars tried to differentiate between the successful and unsuccessful startup efforts based on the activities pursued by entrepreneurs in the firm organizing stage (Delmar and Shane, 2003, 2004; Duchesneau and Gartner, 1990). Baron and Markman (2003) explored how the entrepreneur’s social skills would influence emergence. Davidsson and Honig (2003) examined how the entrepreneurs’ resource endowments would impact the formal incorporation of their new venture. Lichtenstein et al. (2007) observed that these attempts to examine entrepreneurial actions to understand startup emergence has provided diverse results. They pointed out that Gartner and Carter (2003) found only weak links between startup activities and the success at creating organizations by entrepreneurs. But, Delmar and Shane (2003, 2004) found that by performing legitimizing activities such as business planning and incorporation, entrepreneurs would have higher likelihood of their new venture coming into existence. In the context of this study, the boundary establishment activity pursued by entrepreneurs is the focus of examination and analysis (Katz and Gartner, 1988). This act of formal incorporation of the startup by its founders serves as a signal to interpret many different phenomena related to startup emergence that simultaneously are at play. In emerging economies, plagued by insufficient infrastructure and institutional voids, many startups do not often formally register themselves with the government due to the overheads leading to such actions. Instead, they tend to operate informally till such time that it requires them to register formally to continue their exploitation of opportunities. This trigger to formally register may come as a result of the need to show legitimacy (pressure by customers, or by government rules and regulations), confidence of the founding team members about the viability of business and other reasons. Given all these aspects, we model the act of formal incorporation as an important milestone of the entrepreneur’s journey for the purposes of analysis in this study. 2.2 Individual Skills and Entrepreneurial Learning Early research on entrepreneurship focused on unraveling the individual traits of entrepreneurs, in order to understand their actions and activities. Many researchers analyzed the differences between entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs, in a bid to explain their contribution in firm creation and growth process. Mazzarol et al (1999) in their study indicated that need for achievement (McClelland, 1961), risktaking propensity (Brockhaus, 1980), locus of control (Brockhaus, 1982), tolerance of ambiguity (Schere, 1982), and the desire for personal control (Greenberger and Sexton, 1988) as the key differentiating characteristics between entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs. Further, Mazzarol et al (1999) showed that many other background factors related to the entrepreneur’s personality, such as previous employment (Storey, 1982; Ronstadt, 1988), family background (Scott and Twomey, 1988; Matthews and Moser, 1995), gender (Buttner and Rosen, 1989; Kolvereid et al. 1993), education (Storey, 1982), ethnic membership (Aldrich, 1980) and religion (Weber, 1930) have been examined for their impact on the creation of a new venture. However, over the past two decades, as the behavioral aspects of entrepreneurs was examined at length, aspects such as the dynamic nature of entrepreneurship, modeling entrepreneurship as a learning process among many other approaches demonstrated that

earlier research was static in nature and do not help in explaining the dynamic nature of the entrepreneurial process. From an entrepreneurial learning perspective, a nascent entrepreneur needs to possess (ex-ante) or learn the skills required to pursue the entrepreneurial activities and make the right decision based on a variety of internal and external factors that influence the decision of venture emergence or otherwise. Experiential entrepreneurial learning (Aldrich and Yang, 2014), as well as non-experiential learning (Zollo and Winter, 2002) and its transformation into learning outcomes (Kolb, 1984; Politis, 2008) plays a critical role in enhancing the skills of the nascent entrepreneur in the above context. Politis and Gabrielsson (2005) observed that entrepreneurship occurs at the intersection of the individual’s perception of an entrepreneurial opportunity and his or her ability to pursue that opportunity (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000; Shane, 2003). Shane, (2000) further explained that individuals develop different stocks of information throughout their careers, and that these stocks of information influence their ability to recognize, act on and exploit particular entrepreneurial opportunities. However, the type of learning and the effects on the assimilation / accumulation of specifying categories of knowledge depend on the context within which learning occurs, the specific mechanisms favoring the accumulation of experience, and the investments in the processes of codification and articulation (Rivetti and Migliaccio, 2014). Cope (2005) outlined five broad aspects that entrepreneurs need to learn as they go about creating new ventures. The first aspect included learning about the self, which included understanding one’s strengths and weaknesses, balancing family, personal and business needs, awareness of personal motivations and areas of development. The second aspect was about learning about the business. This aspect involved learning about markets in which the individual targeted the business, the opportunities, threats, growth trajectory of the business among others. The third aspect involved learning about the external environment and entrepreneurial networks, which deals with learning how to manage business relationships with customers, suppliers, business support systems and competitors. Further, learning to maximize the social benefits accrued on account of these interactions also formed a portion of learning about this aspect. The fourth aspect of entrepreneurial learning involved learning about the functional areas of small businesses such as financial management, human relations functions, sales and marketing among others. The fifth aspect was discussed to be relevant individually as well as to the previous four learning aspects. This aspect was about learning about the nature and management of relationships with internal and external stakeholders. All these five aspects have guided in creating the course curriculum of the iKEN program. 2.3 Mechanisms of imparting entrepreneurial skills Traditionally, business and technology incubators and accelerators have helped in educating nascent firms across the world to take the right decisions with respect to their respective entrepreneurial ideas. Mian, Lamine and Fayolle (2016) provided a comprehensive overview of the mechanisms that evolved across the world to support the transformation of entrepreneurial ideas into formal new ventures. They noted that science parks, accelerators and incubators have evolved as the mechanisms worldwide to support nascent entrepreneurs to bring their ideas to market. The incubators were conceptualized as places that provide support to pre-entrepreneurial ideas or early stage ventures. Across the world, they are characterized by provision of working space, access to capital, university resources and business support systems to the nascent entrepreneurs (Bergek and Norrman, 2008). These incubators tend to house the startups for a fairly long period of 12 months to 18 months, with the intent of enabling them to survive the initial challenges and grow. The accelerators are fixed-term (usually 3 to 6 months), cohort-based incubators, providing education and mentoring services to startups (Hochberg, 2015). They are known to provide intangible, knowledge intensive support to startup founders, with a goal to accelerate the lifecycle of the new venture (Pauwels

et al, 2016). In contrast, science parks have been mechanisms set up by universities to promote and nurture entrepreneurship (Clarysse et al, 2005). The incubators, science parks and accelerators enable entrepreneurs to develop knowledge useful to conduct a venture, create an environment that facilitates entrepreneurial learning, including through the provision of specific services such as structured external mentoring (Rivetti and Migliaccio, 2014). Entrepreneurs develop practice oriented knowledge (Savage, 1996) and also learn the what, why and how of pursuit of entrepreneurial actions (Williams Middleton & Donnellon, 2014) at these accelerators and incubators. These interventions and activities performed by the entrepreneurs at the incubators and accelerators enhance their codified and tacit knowledge (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). 3. NEED FOR THE STUDY The location of study, India provides a different context to understand and explore the aspects of nascent entrepreneurship and to study the mechanisms available for prospective entrepreneurs to be trained and learn to take the entrepreneurial plunge. From a supply side, there is tremendous interest and intent among the youth of the country to consider entrepreneurship as their occupational choice. However, in the case of India, the mechanisms that are required by these prospective entrepreneurs are yet to mature and provide the required support. Barring a handful of corporate accelerators and private incubators, there are hardly any ecosystem enablement system in place. The government funded technology business incubators and science / research parks have only recently been established and are yet to contribute in the enablement of prospective entrepreneurs in the country (Government of India, 2016). Given the momentous interest in entry to entrepreneurship in India, there exists a significant knowledge deficit and gap in equipping nascent entrepreneurs to face the uncertain journey. To address these gaps, the iKEN program was conceived. 4. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK The conceptual framework to evaluate the objectives of this study is presented in Figure 1. This framework depicts the participants of the iKEN program getting trained/skilled based on the task and narration based activities conducted by the iKEN instructors, leading them to emerge as trained nascent entrepreneurs (iKEN Graduates). Further, the learning outcomes of the participants as they go through the course work is captured across the five different contexts. This information will help in the evaluation of the effectiveness of the iKEN program from an entrepreneurial learning lens.

Figure 1: Conceptual Framework developed for the study

5. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY This section outlines the description of the data and the research method adopted for the study. Further, it explains how the available data is transformed and analyzed using the research method, to arrive at the results. 5.1 Method of Analysis Content analysis has been used as the method of analysis of the objectives for the study. Content analysis is a method of analyzing written, verbal or visual communication messages (Cole 1988). Krippendorff (1980, 2004) defined content analysis as a research method for making replicable and valid inferences from data to their context, with the purpose of providing knowledge, new insights, a representation of facts and a practical guide to action. Neundorf (2002) noted that over the past two decades, content analysis has been used in communication, journalism, sociology, psychology and business, and during the last few decades its use has shown steady growth. Content analysis allows the researcher to test theoretical issues to enhance understanding of the data. Through content analysis, it is possible to distil words into fewer content related categories (Elo and Kyngas, 2008). Given the exploratory nature of the study and the type of data in possession (transcribed narratives and experiences of iKEN program participants), content analysis emerged as the best choice to evaluate the objectives. Content analysis can be used either in an inductive or deductive fashion. In the present study, we use the deductive content analysis for evaluation of the objectives. Deductive content analysis is used when the structure of analysis is operationalized on the basis of previous knowledge and the purpose of the study is theory testing (Kynga¨ s and Vanhanen 1999). Further, content analysis can be used with either qualitative or quantitative data. In this study, we have presented quantitative data where it is appropriate. However, we have derived inferences based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative considerations. Krippendorff (2004) provided a framework for content analysis which details the necessary and sufficient aspects to be met in order to meaningfully benefit by usage of this research method. The framework consists of the following six aspects to be available for any study intending to use content analysis:      

A body of text, the data that a content analyst has available to begin an analytical effort A research question that the analyst seeks to answer by examining the body of text A context of the analyst's choice within which to make sense of the body of text An analytical construct that operationalizes what the analyst knows about the context Inferences that are intended to answer the research question, which constitute the basic accomplishment of the content analysis Validating evidence, which is the ultimate justification of the content analysis

In the context of the present study, we possess the transcribed text of narrations of the participants of the iKEN program, which we wish to analyze. Our research question is to understand the effectiveness of the iKEN program by analyzing the text in possession. The five learning outcomes (benefits of mentoring, leveraging entrepreneurial network, learning from failure, unlearning of certain skills, reflection based on task outcomes) provide the context that needs to be analyzed in the text. The five entrepreneurial skills (courageousness, curiosity, empathy, intrinsic self-worth and journey focused skill) are the analytical constructs against which the context is examined. The results from the content analysis with validated data enables us to provide our inferences, which in turn helps to answer the research objectives of the study. 5.2 Description of Data This paper uses data pertaining to 39 nascent entrepreneurs across four cohorts that attended the iKEN program for the purposes of analysis. Each cohort spanned a duration of 10 consecutive weeks. Data for this study was collected for the first five sessions of every cohort. All the four cohorts of the iKEN program

were conducted in Bengaluru, India. Table 1 provides details of participation and graduation of each cohort that was considered for the study. Table 1: Profile of iKEN participants across the four cohorts Cohort #

Number of Participants

Number of successful graduates from the cohort

1 2 3 4 Total

12 16 05 06 39

5 6 4 6 21

Number of participants who formally incorporated their new venture post iKEN 4 5 3 1 13

The narratives and experiences of all of these participants as they progressed from one task to another during the program were recorded and transcribed for analysis. The learning outcomes of five skills imparted in the program were analyzed under five different contexts. Recording was done using sophisticated audio and visual recording devices during the sessions. Transcribing was performed manually by the authors, since most of the existing transcribing software (NVivo, Express Scribe, Google Text to Speech) were unable to accurately convert the Indian language speech dialect used by the participants to text format. The text fragments that formed a thematic unit was considered for quantitative analysis. The authors used their prior experience and knowledge of the context of study to identify and segregate the manually converted text into thematic units. Figure 2 depicts the hierarchy that was used to converge on the appropriate coding unit for the present study.

Figure 2: Depiction of hierarchy of sampling and coding units A total of about 14 hours of audio/visual content was usable for purposes of analysis. Each participant provided a 5 minute update on each context, but for analysis, the data averaged about 4.3 minutes of

update per participant per context after performing an initial amount of data cleaning to remove noisy content. Therefore, for evaluation of every learning outcome, on an average, the authors had about 167.7 minutes (4.3 minutes x 39 participants) or about 25,155 words average assuming 150 words per minute) of data for analysis. For each learning outcome under study, the thematic text segments were manually examined one by one. For every thematic text segment, the presence or absence of the learning outcome under analysis was noted using a five point lickert scale, with options ranging from ‘Affirmed’, ‘Implicitly Affirmed’, ‘Neither affirmed nor denied’ (irrelevant), ‘Implicitly Denied’ and ‘Denied’. At the end of analysis of all thematic text segments, an inference about the impact of the learning outcome was made, based on the number of occurrences of positive outcomes. 6. RESULTS The results of the content analysis validating for the impact of the learning outcomes of the iKEN program is presented in Table 2. These results were triangulated with feedback solicited from the participants about their learning experience as part of the program. The triangulation exercise helped to interpret the results in a much robust fashion. For the context of participants learning to leverage entrepreneurial networks to perform their pre-entrepreneurial activities, the content analysis results indicated that there were positive learning outcomes overall. Specifically, the participants seemed to have benefited most while executing the tasks related to learning about being courageous, curious and developing relationships with a long-term focus with all participants. When these results were triangulated with the participants’ feedback, 33% of them indicated that they had benefitted and positively exploited the social network created on account of the iKEN program to pursue pre-entrepreneurial activities. Table 2: Results of the content analysis of participants’ narratives Learning Outcome 

Leveraging Entrepreneurial Network

Benefits gained from Mentoring

Learning from failure

Unlearning certain skills

Reflection based on task outcomes

Implicitly Affirmed Affirmed

Affirmed

Affirmed

Denied

Implicitly Denied Affirmed

Implicitly Affirmed Implicitly Denied Denied

Denied Implicitly Denied Affirmed

Implicitly Affirmed Implicitly Denied Affirmed

Affirmed

Irrelevant

Analytical Construct

Courageousness Curiosity Empathy Intrinsic Selfworth Journey Focused

Implicitly Denied Denied Affirmed

Implicitly Affirmed Implicitly Affirmed

Affirmed Affirmed

As regards to the benefits accrued to the participants from mentoring, the results indicate that participants had positive learning outcomes. Barring the task related to curiosity, where the participants need to internalize the concept of ‘strong beliefs weakly held’, and the results indicated that feedback helped them to learn new aspects. The triangulated feedback from participants provided further insight to these results. The participants indicated that they had positive learning outcomes on mentoring related to business aspects; whereas they did not see the mentoring help sort out the technical aspects of their proposed new ventures. The three contexts of learning from failure, unlearning certain skills and reflection based on task outcomes fall under the gamut of learning about oneself. The participants’ ability to reflect upon themselves based on the different task assignments and context pave way for them to gain new insights.

They also guide the learning from other two contexts of learning from failure and unlearning of certain skills. The content analysis on the context of reflection based on task outcomes indicated that participants gained overall. Only one task related to being curious did not result in reflection and new learning, as per the results of the content analysis. The triangulated feedback from participants indicated that apart from the task assignments, the peer feedback also played a role in helping them reflect on the task outcomes. The results from content analysis related to learning from failure indicated that participants gained new insights when they failed to accomplish tasks related to being courageous and curious. Most of the participants acknowledged that failure while performing the tasks helped them to understand that entrepreneurship is a long drawn journey. Responses from the participants post the program corroborated the above results, with about 45% of the participants acknowledging that failure in the task execution helped them to learn new things. However, for the context of unlearning certain skills, the content analysis results did not provide conclusive results. There was no evidence from the text fragments analyzed that indicated or acknowledged unlearning of certain skills from the participants. This result indicated that the task structure perhaps is weak to reinforce the learning of this context. 7. RESULTS ANALYSIS AND INFERENCES The results presented in Table 2 provide us with useful insights based on which we can infer on the effectiveness of the iKEN program. Broadly, we can infer that the task based activities pursued as part of the iKEN program has enabled the participants to be able to learn about themselves better. The results also provide an opportunity to review the tasks that form the curriculum of this program and enhance their effectiveness. As can be recollected, in the iKEN program design, all participants were introduced to the core concepts of effectuation, using which participants had arrived at a baseline of the means (resources) at their disposal, the loss they could afford on account of taking the next step, as well as the other core tenets of co-creation, open-mindedness to leverage unexpected surprises (positive and negative). From an evaluation perspective, all the tasks provided ample opportunities for the study to examine the learning outcomes across all the contexts. A brief description of the tasks that formed the curriculum is provided below to enable context, relate to and infer from the results. To identify the degree to which an individual can ask for new means or initiate a process of co-creation, the first task of testing the courageousness of the participant was included. This task involved two key activities, the first one was to ask money from known circle of acquaintances of the participant, whereas the second activity was to solicit money for the participant’s proposed new venture from a completely In order to complete the task, the participants tried to leverage their existing and new social circles. Some of them who could not, were provided feedback and mentoring to make the ask and enhance their pitch in the subsequent session. The feedback and peer review helped the participants to reflect on the task outcomes, and also to assess whether they had to unlearn a few mental routines to be effective. Further, in some cases, this task helped them to understand their personal reaction to failure of not being able to complete the task. The second task was conceived with the objective of assessing and enhancing the degree of curiosity in the nascent entrepreneur. In this task, each participant was asked to defend their entrepreneurial idea in the first iteration, and after their pitch, based on the feedback they received from the peer group and anchors of the iKEN program, the degree of change they were able to accept to their current state of the entrepreneurial idea was measured (through their narratives). Further, this task enabled the evaluation of how much the nascent entrepreneurs were open to receive and reflect on fact and data based feedback. The third task of empathy was introduced in the curriculum to enable the nascent entrepreneurs to review and assess their ability to understand and empathize with the problems faced by their prospective customers. Each participant was tasked to shadow one or more of their prospective customers, for at least one full day. On the subsequent session, they had to narrate their experiences of shadowing their prospects, as well as the learning and insights obtained from this exercise. Specific objectives and directions were provided prior to the task execution so that the nascent entrepreneurs had the opportunity to learn from all the contexts explored in this study.

In order to enable the entrepreneurs to deal with situations that are not conducive to them, a task on understanding the intrinsic self-worth of the participants was devised. Each participant was asked to identify at least one thing that was very important to them personally, one that they could not let go – and if they did, would cause significant mental trauma. The purpose of the exercise was for the participants of the iKEN program to identify their individual breakdown points. As an example, one participant could not come to terms travelling an entire week using public transport. Another example was that an entrepreneur tried to live as frugally as possible for a week – spending only for bare necessities, to experience how much he could endure. This task was to help prospective entrepreneurs to understand what it means to have entrepreneurial lows, and was designed to make them aware of how they could address these aspects in a simulated environment. The last task under examination for this study was to assess the readiness of the nascent entrepreneurs on their abilities to thrive and persevere for the long haul. The task was designed to assess their outlook and choice of taking a short term view versus a long term view of an activity. A treasure hunt event was planned, involving all participants of these cohorts. Accomplished entrepreneurs, upon invitation acted as intermediate clues to the participants who had to meet them in person – in order to proceed to the next clue. This task tested the participants’ motivations – such as were they relationship oriented or transactional, and whether they made good connections with the accomplished entrepreneurs when they met them in the context of this game. The outcomes of this task and the subsequent feedback provided to participants enabled them to reflect and discuss about their thoughts on this task. With this background and context about the curriculum and the results, we can infer that significant learning outcomes did occur to majority of the participants, as evidenced from the results. The task design was event based. The participants were asked to actually execute entrepreneurial tasks, most of them that were not routine or normal in their current context. These tasks therefore made the participants to come out of their comfort zone, made them exposed to face critical events that are common in the entrepreneurial process and enabled them to understand and reflect how they currently dealt with these aspects. Deakins and Freel (1998) and Cope (2001) have suggested that ‘critical events’ or ‘episodes’ have an influential role to stimulate entrepreneurial learning. Further, Cope (2003) highlighted that such learning from critical events enables significant changes in an individual’s self-awareness. Our results provide further evidence to these assertions. Task execution outcomes of the participants provided them multiple learning opportunities. Based on their prior knowledge, skills and exposure, a few participants performed exceedingly well on some tasks (and in the process did not learn anything substantially new). However, most of the participants did not have the basic skills, background and mental readiness to fathom the myriad challenges posed by the entrepreneurial process. For this set of participants, the iKEN program served as a good mechanism to reflect on their current mental readiness to embrace entrepreneurship, understand their abilities to manage and deal with failures, and further, to become aware of how open they are to learn from new experiences – both positive and negative. Minniti and Bygrave (2001) have explained that entrepreneurial learning happens from both positive and negative experiences. Further, Young and Sexton (1997) indicated that entrepreneurial learning happens only when the prospects are challenged with the problems and / or opportunities. Given the nature of the iKEN program, it is not surprising that most of the participants could not graduate (manage to complete all the tasks and demonstrate a necessary and sufficient level of learning outcome). Since these tasks challenge and in some cases force a change in the perceptions related to personal aspects of the participants, many of the participants cannot deal with the stressful and distressing activities that they had to pursue as part of this program. Merizow (1991) and Cope (2001) showed that there is considerable emotional fallout associated with learning that challenges the individual’s perception of himself or herself. Our results indicate that when tasks related to intrinsic self-worth as well as when participants were provided a window of opportunity to unlearn a few skills, they found it hard to make this change. Therefore, while in absolute terms the task outcomes were not met, we can infer that the learning objectives were indeed met – forcing the participants to reflect on the task outcomes and understand their current limitations and strengths.

The results also enable us to note the impact of the social dimension of learning. The cohort based setting and peer review and feedback mechanisms provided multiple avenues to participants to engage, discuss, reflect and converge on the learning outcomes from these tasks. Makinen (2002) have analyzed entrepreneurial networks as learning systems. Taylor and Thorpe (2004) further studied the impact of the social aspects of entrepreneurial learning that occurs on account of critical learning events. The iKEN program was designed to encourage interaction among the participants, not only during the course schedule but also post the ten week schedule. Tasks updates and regular weekend review provided the right context for the participants to develop and benefit from these entrepreneurial networks. The results from our analysis corroborates these prior discussions with evidence. The present study has attempted to evaluate the effectiveness of an entrepreneurial skills enablement program through the lens of entrepreneurial learning. The focus of this study has been to use entrepreneurial learning lens to review the individual learning outcomes of the participants. While this study has explored the above aspects in sufficient detail, more insights can be drawn if the study were to be augmented with an evaluation of team based learning / collective learning aspects. Further, a higher sample size across multiple locations would provide more robustness to the results inferred from the study. 8. CONCLUSIONS The results provide a better and deeper insight into understanding the effectiveness of the iKEN program from a learning outcomes perspective. In particular, it provides evidence of the particular contexts and mechanisms during which positive learning outcomes emerged. These insights help the course instructors to better refine the exercises and enhance the quality of the program. The results of this study have implications to researchers, entrepreneurial educators, nascent entrepreneurs and policy makers. For the academicians, this study has provided a conceptual framework that can be utilized to empirically examine the outcomes of entrepreneurial ecosystem tools from an entrepreneurial learning lens. For the entrepreneurial educators, it provides valuable insights on the type and kind of entrepreneurial activities that need to be part of the program – which will help increase the effectiveness of the program. For nascent entrepreneurs, the iKEN program offers a fresh and new perspective on assimilating entrepreneurial knowledge as they evaluate their options to pursue entrepreneurship. For government policy makers, the results of the study will help in formulating the right kind of interventions across the numerous technology business incubators and accelerators, which will result in the enhanced quality of startups emerging out of the region of their focus. 9. REFERENCES Aldrich, H. (1980). “Asian shopkeepers as a middleman minority: a study of small business in Wandsworth”, in Evans, A. and Eversley, D. (Eds), The Inner City: Employment and Industry, Heinemann, London, pp. 389-407. Aldrich, H. E., Yang, T. (2014). ‘How do entrepreneurs know what to do? Learning and organizing in new ventures’, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 24: 59-82. Audretsch, D. B., Keilbach, M. C., and Lehmann, E. E. (2006). Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Baron, R. A., & Markman, G. D. (2003). Beyond social capital: The role of entrepreneurs' social competence in their financial success. Journal of Business Venturing, 18(1), 41-60. Barringer, B. R., Jones, F. F., Neubaum, D. O. (2005). ‘A quantitative content analysis of the characteristics of rapid-growth firms and their founders’, Journal of Business Venturing, 20, 663-687. Baumol, W. J. (2002). Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Economic Growth: The David - Goliath Symbiosis. Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance and Business Ventures, 7(2), 1-10.

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