Center of Evidence-based Entrepreneurship Development (CEED)

Welcome to the CEED newsletter, covering the latest news on the Student Training for Entrepreneurial Promotion (STEP) and Personal Initiative (PI) Training!

This newsletter informs you on a quarterly basis about current events, projects, and the implementation of both our training programs STEP and PI. On top of sharing news from our side, we would like to encourage you to contribute to this newsletter so that we can establish it as a medium for mutual updates. Because just like us, you’re gaining valuable experiences with the training programs. In fact, you run great projects that always amaze us and that the whole community should know about!

Therefore, please don’t hesitate to reach out and send us updates on what you are doing, as well as news to share to our CEED e-mail.

Topics of this Newsletter

• Germany: AGYLE Berlin Week
• South Africa: PDW & Symposium on PI Training
• Research: Study on Self-Efficacy
• Egypt, Zambia, Malawi: PI & Train-the-Trainer
• Current PI and STEP training

AGYLE Berlin Week: move-eti hosted a workshop on personal initiative in leadership

The AGYLE (African German Young Leaders in Business) programme of the Agency for Business and Economic Development and the initiative Germany - Land of Ideas brings together African and German leaders. During the AGYLE presence week in Berlin, they come together for networking and learning. move-eti hosted a workshop on personal initiative in leadership for the participating young leaders. Besides introducing and applying the concept of personal initiative, the workshop also focused on the role of leaders as role models and on creating a climate for initiative. The participants presented and shared their ideas for experiments to promote personal initiative in their own companies. All in all, it was an enriching exchange and we look forward to future collaborations.

PDW & Symposium on PI Training accepted at AFAM 2024 in Cape Town

From January 8^th - 10^th 2024, the 7^th Biennial Conference of the Africa Academy of Management (AFAM) will be held at Stellenbosch Business School in Cape Town, South Africa. Founded in 2011, AFAM is a global organization for academics and practitioners who are interested in advancing management education and research in Africa. To promote exchanges between academics and practitioners from a wide range of countries, AFAM organizes a biennial conference. The theme of the upcoming conference is 'Transforming Organizations in the Digital Era: Dignity, Justice, and Prosperity in Africa'.

We are very pleased to announce that through the engagement of Alexander Glosenberg (Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship at Loyola Marymount University), a Professional Development Workshop (PDW) and Symposium on Personal Initiative (PI) Training for entrepreneurs have been accepted for the conference. The symposium will focus on the theory behind PI interventions, use of PI for mentoring, use of PI for refugees, and how PI can help student learning and wellbeing. The PDW has the purpose of sharing insights and best practices around PI training – and is open to anyone able to attend. Several researchers and practitioners will share their experiences regarding PI training and there will be an opportunity to discuss more specific subtopics related to the training (e.g., mentoring alongside PI training) in several discussion groups. We will also try to provide a virtual option for anyone who wants to attend virtually.

We would be very pleased if you would spread the word about both the symposium and the PDW so that a great diversity of scholars and practitioners across the world come together in South Africa to discuss new developments with regard to PI training! We welcome anyone to join the PDW as a participant - and if you want to make a presentation let us know! If you would like to make a presentation and/or attend the PDW, please feel free to contact us at STEP-PI@step-training.com or to reach out directly to Alex Glosenberg.

We are looking forward to seeing you in South Africa!
More general information about the AFAM conference can be found here via this link.

Research: Study on Self-Efficacy

When entrepreneurs become too confident, they oftentimes undervalue the importance of feedback from others. This can have negative effects on their venture progress. But how can entrepreneurs avoid suffering from the drawbacks of becoming too confident?

In their recent study “Unpacking the nonlinear effect of self-efficacy in entrepreneurship: Why and under which condition more is not better” published in Personnel Psychology (2023), Marilyn Uy, Shuhua Sun, Michael Gielnik, Gabriel Jacob, John Lagdameo, Armando Miclat, and Enrico Osi researched the progress entrepreneurs made in developing their new ventures over a period of six months. The entrepreneurs took part in an incubation program at the Ateneo de Manila University (the Philippines). The researchers found that entrepreneurs who were overly confident became complacent, sought less feedback, and made ultimately less progress in developing their ventures. However, entrepreneurs who had a strong error mastery orientation were able to counter the negative effects and continued to benefit from their high confidence. Error mastery orientation involves being able to deal with errors, thinking about errors, and learning from errors. The study underscores the critical role of error mastery orientation for making progress in the venture development process.

If you are interested in learning more, please visit the Wiley Library via this link.

Egypt, Zambia, Malawi: PI and Train-the-Trainer

The last couple of months have taken us (Doorways gGmbH) to different parts of the African continent.

In a project in Egypt funded by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), we first supported the development of a pilot training session for around 40 mostly female small-scale retailers registered with the B2B retail platform MaxAB. Following the successful launch, we will now develop two more training sessions to complement the curriculum and accompany the first implementation on-site.

In Zambia, we trained local trainers from the two Zambian NGOs, Agova and MentorMe, who aim to support entrepreneurs across the country and promote MSME growth to achieve sustainable development outcomes. One NGO implemented the PI Training immediately after the Train-the-Trainer workshop as part of the USAID Zambia Enterprise Development and Growth Enhanced (EDGE) Activity.

One of the Zambian trainers (Susan Chembe) and our colleague Paul Herrmann from Leuphana University also supported us in training 27 local trainers in Malawi as part of the Financial Inclusion and Entrepreneurship Scaling (FInES) Project. The project aims to deliver PI Training to 2,500 MSMEs and improve their access to financial services.

Current PI and STEP training

We would like to inform you about current training projects once a year. This is the first draft of our new rubric, "Current PI and STEP training". Please assist us in creating this new rubric. So please update us on all the STEP and PI training you conduct yourself. We will then add them to our list.

Benjamin Scharweit | Mona Hafner | Janina Peschmann

Carina Bohlayer | Paul Herrmann

Further Announcements

STEP Digital: Starting October 18^th 2023, we offer a pilot version of our new STEP D training as part of the curriculum for up to 50 Students at Leuphana University. In fact, the students will form teams and learn from the idea generation in practical steps through the validation and prototyping of their digital business model. Based on market, customer needs, and competition analyses, they will develop their own digital product or service over the course of the semester, which they will test on customers by designing a suitable marketing strategy. At the end of the seminar, students try to convince relevant interest groups of their company by means of an investor pitch.
Further, each team will contribute to the integrated & iterative development of the training materials by working on an assigned module and exploring other established methods, tools, or practices that can facilitate the learning experience.
For more information on STEP D, please feel free to contact Donald Mekountchou.

For further information on the Center of Evidence Based Entrepreneurship Development, past succes stories and the most important publications, please visit the Website of CEED.

We’d love to hear from you! Send your feedback and thoughts to ceed@leuphana.de.

For more information follow us on social media,
for STEP: Website, Facebook, Instagram,
for PI: Website.