Brain-Based Guided Experience Approach to Teaching Entrepreneurship Students the Practice of Innovation

This paper presents a new approach to coaching entrepreneurship students to practice innovation and to identify adequate high-impact business opportunities. The coaching approach is based on the methodology for guided experience learning that was developed by Caine, Caine, McClintic, and Klimek (2009) in 12 Brain/Mind Learning Principles in Action, and on the innovation framework that was introduced by Verganti (2009) in Design-Driven Innovation. The cognitive perspective of creativity explained by Weisberg (2006) in his book Creativity is used to show how the practice of innovation can be learned. The model used for the creative process is based on Wallas? (1926) The Art of Thought, and on recent neurological findings on the deliberate and spontaneous pathways to creativity, that were described by Carson (2010) in Your Creative Brain. For the validation of radical innovations, the effectual process, described by Sarasvathy (2008) in Effectuation, is used.