Transforming Nigerian Development through Entrepreneurship Education: The Definition Dilemma

This report, was an outcome of an empirical study that started in October 2024 and ended in December, 2024. The main objective was to propose a framework that will properly define concepts for the development of entrepreneurship education in Africa generally, and Nigeria in particular. It clarified the ambiguity in the definitions of the concepts of entrepreneurship and its subsets by: reviewing existing literature on how entrepreneurship gained its own academic identity worldwide, then explore its distinct trajectory within Nigeria’s education, research, and policy landscapes; identifying and Analysing existing constructs of entrepreneurship; discussing the research findings and Research Implications of the past and current approaches to entrepreneurship studies and conceptual framework; and proposing a theoretical framework of entrepreneurship that can assist researchers and educators forge ahead in entrepreneurship studies. The study attempted to fill the gap arising from observations of some scholars at the international entrepreneurship conference hosted by Obafemi Awolowo University in 2024 at Ile-Ife, Nigeria; lamenting the "inconsistent and sometimes confusing" use of definitions, which contributes to the difficulty in pinpointing the field's unique theoretical contribution. It addressed the underlying ongoing discussion and efforts to define, categorize, and apply entrepreneurship in various contexts, which is often spurred by the lack of a single, unifying conceptual framework that clearly delineates the field's unique contributions to academic discourse. The study used conference based survey method of data collection to collect raw data from a group of 245 entrepreneurship professionals who were randomly selected out of the population of 516 participants who attended the international entrepreneurship conference in OAU, Ile Ife in Nov. 6-8, 2024.The findings revealed that many different entrepreneurship constructs still exist arising from the presence of so many experts in other fields; conducting research in entrepreneurship; using concepts in their different fields to analyse data in entrepreneurship discipline. This chapter also clarifies the definition of some subsets concepts in entrepreneurship, such as differentiating feasibility report from business plan report, and that not all SMEs and big businesses can be classified as entrepreneurial. The study proposed a construct of entrepreneurship that distinguishes it from the other concepts of SMEs and Ventures in order to give clearer meaning to the new discipline of entrepreneurship and consequently, proposed a theoretical framework of entrepreneurship that could assist researchers to forge ahead in entrepreneurship studies by affirming that Entrepreneurship is defined as a tripod that stands on a three tripod legs, namely Risk taking ability, Proactiveness ability and inventiveness/innovativeness ability of the entrepreneur with adequate investment as a bar that binds the tripod stands together. It emphasised that innovativeness and inventiveness are two separate distinct entities in entrepreneurship and should never be used interchangeably as it is done in other disciplines.