1. Introduction
The accelerating pace of the climate crisis demands a fundamental reorientation of how societies generate economic value. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its landmark 2023 Synthesis Report — drawing on over 14,000 peer-reviewed studies — underscored that meaningful progress toward climate-resilient development requires not only technological solutions but also a profound behavioural and institutional shift across the private sector (IPCC, 2023). Alongside this, an emerging and rapidly expanding ecosystem of impact finance is beginning to channel capital toward decarbonisation and the green transition of conventional industries, creating both an opportunity and an imperative for new forms of entrepreneurship oriented toward environmental and social value creation rather than profit maximisation alone.
A substantial and growing body of literature has examined green businesses and their potential to contribute to a sustainable economy (Farinelli et al., 2011; Burnett et al., 2011; Lotfi et al., 2018; Tewari et al., 2021). Yet scholars consistently identify significant gaps in this research landscape. Demirel et al. (2019), in a systematic review of 114 scientific papers, concluded that the field of green entrepreneurship remains in relatively early stages, hampered by the absence of comprehensive databases and by unresolved methodological and definitional issues. Muo and Azeez (2019), in a complementary literature review aimed at developing a future research agenda, highlighted the need for interdisciplinary approaches capable of addressing both the innovative character of green ventures and the behavioural change required in firms moving beyond purely profit-driven orientations. Both studies underscore a wider recognition, reinforced by the IPCC (2023), that innovation and behavioural change are inseparable from the structural conditions — including an enabling financial sector and the breaking of disciplinary silos — necessary for a viable green transition.
Central to this transition is the role of startup ecosystems as engines of new venture creation. Although the term “startup” has been in use since the late 1970s (Cockayne, 2019), academic consensus converges on defining startups as organisations in the early stages of activity that search for repeatable and scalable business models under conditions of significant uncertainty (Kim et al., 2018). The climate emergency calls for a specific variant of this ecosystem: what has been termed the green entrepreneurship ecosystem. Thomas et al. (2018) and the IPCC (2023) alike stress that effective green entrepreneurship depends on strong linkages between innovation ecosystems and entrepreneurial ecosystems. Pillado (2024) synthesises the scholarly literature on these ecosystems, identifying shared enabling conditions — a local culture that promotes entrepreneurship and innovation, access to talent and human capital, private investment, leadership, market access, and supportive public policy and infrastructure — that together shape a region’s capacity to nurture green ventures.
While all of these enabling conditions matter, this paper focuses on two that are particularly amenable to educational intervention: (i) the culture and behavioural dispositions that promote green entrepreneurship and innovation, and (ii) the design of higher-education and vocational programmes that can cultivate the human capital such ventures require. This focus is informed by the work of Maisaroh et al. (2022), who reviewed 200 papers on the psychological and contextual determinants of green entrepreneurial behaviour, identifying three clusters of influential factors: psychological perspectives (values, beliefs, perceptions, norms, attitudes); personality traits (including self-motivated behaviour); and contextual factors encompassing cognitive processes and decision-making. Crucially, Maisaroh et al. (2022) and Hameed et al. (2021) both conclude that entrepreneurship education can evoke environmental commitment, but only among individuals who already possess some degree of entrepreneurial intent or disposition — a finding that shapes the pedagogical design of the programme examined here.
Despite growing recognition of business schools’ role in promoting sustainability, effective pedagogical approaches for cultivating ecological entrepreneurial behaviours remain poorly understood (Gast et al., 2017). Traditional entrepreneurship education tends to centre the individual entrepreneur and to evaluate innovation primarily on market potential, thereby neglecting the systemic complexity of sustainability challenges (Lourенço et al., 2013). Fichter and Tiemann (2018) demonstrate that sustainable entrepreneurship requires competencies — among them systems thinking and stakeholder integration — that go well beyond environmental knowledge per se. Ploum et al. (2018) further identify the need for collective-action competencies and normative thinking that can bridge the gap between environmental awareness and entrepreneurial action. These observations point toward a pedagogical model in which entrepreneurship is conceived not as an individual endeavour but as a collective, team-based process — what the TEAMIT+ programme terms “teampreneurship.”
This paper draws on the first edition of TEAMIT+, a European Union-funded, multi-national educational programme (Grant Agreement Nr. 101111560) that explicitly rejects the individual-entrepreneur model in favour of collaborative teampreneurship rooted in cooperative values and social-environmental innovation. TEAMIT+ is structured as a three-module progression: Module 1 raises environmental awareness through experiential, collective engagement; Module 2 connects participants to authentic industry innovation challenges; and Module 3 guides intercultural teams through the creation of social-impact business ventures. Grounded in Nonaka and Takeuchi’s (1995) knowledge-creation theory and in a “learning by creating” methodology that draws on experiential learning (Kolb, 1984), team learning (Senge, 1994), dialogue (Isaacs, 1999), and self-directed learning (Cunningham, 1999), the first edition was implemented across four European countries — Finland, France, Greece, and Spain — in late 2024. We present empirical evidence from this first iteration, focusing on Module 1’s effectiveness in transforming participants’ understanding of climate change and their readiness to engage in green entrepreneurial action, and we situate these findings within the broader argument that an awareness-first, collective approach to green entrepreneurship education represents a viable and replicable pathway for the next generation of sustainability-oriented entrepreneurs.
The paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 sets out the conceptual foundations of the TEAMIT+ programme, articulating the three pillars — collective intelligence, adaptive leadership, and cooperative values — that underpin its design. Section 3 elaborates the learning theories that inform the “learning by creating” method. Section 4 presents the methods and empirical evidence from the programme’s three modules, drawing on pre-post assessment data (n = 122 matched pairs) and qualitative participant reflections collected across four countries. Section 5 discusses the implications of these findings for the design of green entrepreneurship education programmes, and Section 6 concludes with recommendations for future research and practice.
2. Conceptual Foundations: The three pillars of teampreneurship
The TEAMIT+ programme rests on the theoretical premise that the individual-entrepreneur model is structurally ill-equipped to address the systemic nature of climate change. Transformative environmental ventures do not emerge from isolated acts of individual genius; they require the convergence of diverse knowledge, cooperative organisational forms, and the institutional capacity to sustain purposeful action under conditions of deep uncertainty. Three interconnected conceptual pillars — collective intelligence, adaptive leadership, and cooperative values — underpin the programme’s design and distinguish its pedagogical approach from mainstream entrepreneurship education. These pillars are grounded in Nonaka and Takeuchi’s (1995) knowledge-creation theory, which holds that organisational knowledge is generated through the dynamic interaction of tacit and explicit knowledge across individual, group, and organisational levels. The “learning by creating” method operationalises this theoretical foundation by situating knowledge creation within authentic entrepreneurial challenges, as elaborated in Section 3.
2.1 Collective intelligence
The first pillar draws on research into collective intelligence — the capacity of a group to perform a wide variety of tasks at a level that exceeds what any individual member could achieve alone. Woolley et al. (2015) identify a general factor of collective intelligence in human groups that is distinct from the average or maximum individual intelligence of group members. Crucially, their research demonstrates that this collective factor is most strongly predicted not by individual IQ but by social perceptiveness — the ability of team members to read and respond to each other’s emotional states — and by the equality of conversational turn-taking. Groups in which one or two members dominate the dialogue systematically underperform relative to groups in which participation is distributed more evenly.
These findings carry direct implications for entrepreneurship education in the context of climate action. Green ventures require the integration of expertise across scientific, social, regulatory, and commercial domains; no single entrepreneur can possess the range of knowledge such integration demands. The TEAMIT+ programme therefore deliberately constructs intercultural, multidisciplinary teams and uses facilitation practices — including structured dialogue, role rotation, and reflective coaching — designed to cultivate the social perceptiveness and participatory equality that Woolley et al. (2015) identify as preconditions for high collective intelligence. Module 1’s climate negotiation simulation, in which participants must represent perspectives other than their own and negotiate across positions, is a direct pedagogical application of this principle.
2.2 Adaptive leadership
The second pillar is adaptive leadership, understood in the sense developed by Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsky (2009) at Harvard’s Kennedy School. Heifetz et al. distinguish between technical problems — which are well-defined and solvable by applying existing expertise — and adaptive challenges, which require changes in values, beliefs, roles, or ways of working that no single authority can impose from above. Climate change is paradigmatically an adaptive challenge: it demands not only new technologies but new norms, new economic logics, and new forms of collective organisation. Entrepreneurs who approach it as a technical problem — to be solved through the application of a scalable business model — will systematically misdiagnose the nature of the task.
Adaptive leadership theory further identifies the concept of a productive zone of disequilibrium: a range of tension and uncertainty that is sufficient to generate genuine learning and behavioural change, but not so great as to produce defensive disengagement or paralysis. One of the most significant risks in climate-focused education is that accurate information about the scale and pace of environmental degradation tips participants from productive engagement into eco-anxiety — a state of chronic fear and helplessness that inhibits rather than motivates action (Clayton, 2020; Hickman et al., 2021). The TEAMIT+ programme addresses this directly through its team-coaching methodology, which aims to maintain teams within the productive zone by pairing challenge with psychological safety, and by presenting participants with evidence of actionable transition pathways rather than dwelling on the magnitude of the problem alone.
2.3 Cooperative values
The third pillar concerns the organisational values and governance principles that shape what kind of ventures green entrepreneurs create and how those ventures relate to the communities they serve. The International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) defines cooperatives as “people-centred enterprises owned and controlled by and for their members” and identifies seven internationally recognised principles: voluntary and open membership; democratic member control; member economic participation; autonomy and independence; education, training, and information; cooperation among cooperatives; and concern for community (ICA, n.d.). The Mondragon Corporation — one of the world’s largest worker-cooperative networks, headquartered in the Basque Country — provides a living institutional model of how cooperative principles can operate at scale within a knowledge-intensive, innovation-driven economy.
The relevance of this pillar to green entrepreneurship education is both theoretical and practical. Theoretically, cooperative governance structures are better aligned with the long-term, stakeholder-inclusive logic of sustainability than investor-owned firms driven by short-term returns. Practically, the green transition requires forms of economic organisation that can internalise social and environmental costs, distribute benefits equitably, and sustain commitment to purpose across economic cycles. By grounding TEAMIT+ in cooperative values from the outset — not as an ethical add-on but as a structural design principle — the programme positions participants to conceive of their ventures as instruments of collective benefit rather than vehicles for individual wealth accumulation. This orientation is reinforced throughout the programme’s three modules and is explicitly reflected in the business models developed by Module 3 teams.
Taken together, these three pillars constitute what the programme calls “teampreneurship”: an approach to entrepreneurship education in which the team, rather than the individual, is the primary unit of learning and action; in which leadership is understood as a distributed, adaptive capacity rather than a heroic individual attribute; and in which the purpose of entrepreneurial activity is defined in terms of social and environmental value creation rather than private profit maximisation. The following section elaborates the learning theories through which these principles are operationalised in practice.
3. Learning theories underlying the “learning by creating” method
“Learning by creating” is the integrative pedagogical method through which TEAMIT+ operationalises the three conceptual pillars described above. It is not a single theory but a synthesis of four well-established learning traditions, each of which addresses a distinct dimension of how knowledge is acquired, shared, and transformed into competence within team-based, action-oriented environments.
3.1 Experiential learning
Experiential learning, as theorised by Kolb (1984), holds that durable knowledge is constructed through a cyclical process of concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation, and active experimentation. In this framework, learning is not the passive reception of information but an active process in which learners encounter authentic problems, reflect on their responses, derive generalisable principles, and test those principles in new situations. The TEAMIT+ programme embeds this cycle at every stage: Module 1’s climate negotiation simulation provides the concrete experience; structured reflection exercises and team dialogue provide the observational and conceptualisation phases; and Module 2 and Module 3’s applied challenges provide the arena for active experimentation.
A critical feature of experiential learning in the TEAMIT+ context is that project topics and challenges emerge from participants’ own interests and concerns rather than being assigned by facilitators. This learner-centred orientation ensures ownership and intrinsic motivation, both of which are identified in the broader entrepreneurship education literature as preconditions for sustained engagement (Gast et al., 2017). Facilitators act not as knowledge transmitters but as coaches who support the emergence of project ideas and help participants identify and address the competency gaps their chosen challenges expose.
3.2 Team learning
Senge (1994) defines team learning as “the process of committed people, who learn from each other, and are able to perform new actions, enabling them to constantly improve their performance.” Team learning is distinguished from the simple aggregation of individual learning by the presence of genuine collaborative knowledge construction: group members do not merely share what they already know but generate insights that none could have reached independently. This requires, as a precondition, sufficient trust and psychological safety for members to expose their uncertainties, challenge each other’s assumptions, and tolerate the productive tension that accompanies genuine inquiry (Edmondson, 2018).
The TEAMIT+ team-coaching model draws explicitly on this tradition. Teams are given sustained time together across the programme’s three modules — a deliberate departure from the short-duration, output-focused team activities typical of many entrepreneurship programmes — precisely because the development of the interpersonal trust necessary for deep team learning cannot be rushed. The team-development arc follows a structured progression informed by Tuckman’s (1965) stages model and Lencioni’s (2002) five-dysfunctions framework, with coaches actively supporting teams in identifying and working through relational and communicative obstacles to collaboration.
3.3 Learning through dialogue
Isaacs (1999) distinguishes dialogue from ordinary conversation or debate by its orientation toward mutual understanding rather than the advocacy of predetermined positions. In Isaacs’s framework, genuine dialogue requires four capacities: listening without preconceptions, respecting the perspectives of others, suspending habitual judgements, and speaking from authentic personal experience rather than institutional role. These capacities are not naturally occurring; they must be cultivated through deliberate practice and reflection.
In the TEAMIT+ context, dialogue is not merely a communication technique but an epistemological commitment: the conviction that the most generative forms of knowledge emerge from the encounter between different perspectives, disciplines, and lived experiences. The programme’s intercultural structure — bringing together participants from Finland, France, Greece, and Spain — is itself a structural amplifier of dialogic learning, since the presence of genuine cultural difference creates the conditions for the kind of productive cognitive dissonance that Isaacs identifies as the driver of shared understanding.
3.4 Self-Directed learning
Cunningham (1999) defines self-directed learning as “the ability to learn things independently and consciously,” requiring the capacity to plan and manage one’s own learning, seek necessary resources, and take responsibility for one’s learning process. A self-directed learner sets goals, regularly evaluates progress, and understands learning as a continuous rather than terminal process. In the TEAMIT+ context, self-directed learning is both a method and an outcome: participants are expected to take increasing ownership of their learning trajectories as the programme progresses, and the development of this capacity for metacognitive self-regulation is itself one of the programme’s explicit competency objectives.
The relationship between self-directed and team learning in TEAMIT+ is not one of tension but of mutual reinforcement. The team provides the social and motivational scaffolding within which individual self-direction can develop: members hold each other accountable, share resources, and provide the reflective feedback that enables each learner to identify gaps between their current competencies and the demands of their evolving project. As the programme progresses, the locus of learning governance shifts gradually from the facilitated team setting toward the individual learner — a transition that mirrors the developmental arc that sustainable entrepreneurs must undergo in moving from structured educational contexts to the self-organised uncertainty of real venture creation.
4. Methods and results
4.1 Programme design and implementation
The preceding theoretical discussion establishes that green entrepreneurship requires not merely technical knowledge of sustainable business practices, but a fundamental reorientation of entrepreneurial purpose from profit maximisation to environmental and social value creation. However, this raises a crucial empirical question: can educational interventions successfully instil this transformed entrepreneurial mindset, particularly among young people who have been socialised within conventional economic paradigms? Existing literature suggests that environmental awareness alone rarely translates into entrepreneurial action without the development of intermediary competencies. Fichter and Tiemann (2018) demonstrate that sustainable entrepreneurship requires specific competencies beyond environmental knowledge, including systems thinking and stakeholder integration capabilities. Similarly, Ploum et al. (2018) identify that sustainable entrepreneurs need competencies for collective action and normative thinking that bridge awareness and action. This competency gap is particularly pronounced in traditional entrepreneurship education, which Lourенço et al. (2013) argue fails to address the complexity of sustainability challenges that require understanding interconnections between local actions and global impacts.
To address this gap, TEAMIT+ adopts a structured three-module progression. Module 1, implemented in October 2024, was designed as an “Ecological and Solidarity’s Transitions Day,” held simultaneously across four national locations (Finland, France, Greece, and Spain). The day comprised a simulated climate negotiation running in parallel across all four sites, screenings of videos documenting inspiring local transition initiatives, and — following a shared meal — three rotating awareness-raising workshops addressing migratory prejudice, climate justice, and the circular economy. The parallel multi-site structure was a deliberate design choice intended to create a sense of European collective action while preserving the grounding of experience in local contexts.
Module 2 was held on 3–4 December 2024, across Spain, Finland, and Greece. It integrated ESTIA’s “The 24h of innovation®” (Les 24 h de l’innovation in french), an international non-stop challenge established in 2007, adapted to align with the programme’s sustainability pedagogy. The 24 h Innovation format challenges multidisciplinary teams to develop prototype solutions to real-world challenges within a compressed timeframe. In the TEAMIT+ iteration, challenge topics were curated around ecological and social transitions, with participants tasked to create and pitch innovative concepts to industry and academic judges. Teams were supported by experienced coaches and had access to FabLabs equipped with both high-tech and low-tech prototyping resources, enabling rapid translation of ideas into tangible proof-of-concepts. Module 2 served as an intermediary bridge between the environmental awareness cultivated in Module 1 and the sustained entrepreneurial project development of Module 3.
Module 3 represented the programme’s culminating entrepreneurial phase. Following completion of Modules 1 and 2, ten participants from each of the four countries were selected (40 participants in total) on the basis of their prior performance and invited to participate. Over a three-month intensive period, multidisciplinary intercultural teams — working both online and in person — were tasked with developing comprehensive business models addressing social and environmental challenges, guided by team coaches. The module culminated in final presentations to investors, industry partners, and academic judges.
4.2 Evaluation methodology
Module 1 engaged a total of 237 participants across the four participating countries: France (n = 62), Greece (n = 50), Spain (n = 62), and Finland (n = 63). The participant cohort comprised primarily higher education students (72.5%), with vocational education and training (VET) students and participants from immigrant backgrounds representing 7.8% of the total. The primary evaluation instrument for Module 1 was a pre-post assessment design in which participants completed a structured questionnaire on environmental knowledge, awareness, and behavioural intentions before and after the day’s activities. Resoponses were obained for n = 160 participants (67.5% of the total), complete matched pairs of pre-and-post responses were obtained for n = 122 participants (51.5% of the total). Qualitative data were collected through open-ended participant reflections submitted at the close of the event.
For Module 2 engaged a total of 362 participants across 3 sites in different countries: 215 participants in France for the flagship event and 76 participants in Greece, and 71 participants in Finland.
For Module 3, 10 participants per country were selected on the basis of performance in the preceding modules (40 in total). Satisfaction data were collected for all three modules through post-event questionnaires administered immediately following each module’s conclusion.
4.3 Results
Module 1: Environmental Awareness
Module 1 participants’ self-assessed general knowledge of climate change showed marked improvement, with the modal response shifting from 7/10 pre-intervention (31.1% of participants) to 8/10 post-intervention (36.7% of participants). Notably, 99% of participants reported improved environmental knowledge — substantially exceeding the programme’s 80% target and validating the pedagogical design’s effectiveness.
The knowledge gains extended beyond general awareness to specific competencies critical for green entrepreneurship. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of participants reported substantial improvements in understanding environmental legislation and policies — essential knowledge for navigating the regulatory landscape of sustainable ventures. Furthermore, 44.6% demonstrated significant knowledge gains regarding the intersection of environmental and solidarity issues, reflecting the programme’s emphasis on social-environmental entrepreneurship rather than purely market-driven innovation.
The qualitative data reveal a fundamental shift in how participants conceptualise their potential role in addressing climate challenges. One participant’s reflection encapsulates this reorientation: “Before coming to the event I thought I had a great amount of knowledge regarding climate change and sustainability, and now I realise I have so much to learn about”. This acknowledgement of knowledge gaps represents the cognitive disequilibrium necessary for genuine learning and entrepreneurial exploration. More significantly, participants demonstrated evolved understanding of systemic interconnections essential for green entrepreneurship. As another participant noted”I viewed climate change primarily through the lens of individual actions, like recycling and reducing waste. However, I’ve come to recognize the complex interplay between local and global factors, such as policy decisions, economic systems, and social behaviors.” This systems-thinking capability aligns directly with the competencies identified by Fichter and Tiemann (2018) and Ploum et al. (2018) as prerequisites for sustainable entrepreneurship.
Beyond knowledge acquisition, Module 1 achieved meaningful behavioural impact indicators. The majority (58%) of participants expressed strong commitment to reducing their environmental impact, while 64% reported increased awareness leading to intended behaviour change. The thematic areas where participants reported the greatest learning gains — global systemic understanding (61.2%), international impact assessment (60.4%), and consumption pattern analysis (34.5%) — align directly with the competencies required for identifying green business opportunities. The consistent high performance across all four national contexts (overall satisfaction: 44% “quite satisfied” and 53% “very satisfied,” with no significant country-level variations) demonstrates the methodology’s cross-cultural transferability.
Module 2: Collaborative Innovation
Module 2 achieved a 91% overall satisfaction rate. Participants particularly valued the group work and pitching components, and the intensive 24-hour format was consistently described as an “extraordinary experience” that generated high engagement with the real-world challenges posed by industry and organisational partners. The module successfully delivered competencies in creative technology use, digital collaboration, innovative thinking, and collaborative problem-solving.
In the literature, we found many factors that influence the team’s creativity and cohesiveness. Among them, the team diversity (of participant’s profile, or school origin, or country …) is a major question. Especially, during the module 2 we analysed the influence of the diversity of the stakeholders’ profile within student’s group on the performance of the team. In our case, the diversity aspect is the number of different schools or university represented in one students’ team. The performance of the teams is here based our on a jury evaluation composed of 5 experts in the field of innovation. Indeed, during the 24 h of innovation, each jury have been asked to define the 1st, 2nd and 3rd prize and different specific prizes like best prototype, best design, best concept, best creative, best marketing, best presentation …. To help them to converge, we proposed a very simple evaluation matrix to assess all the propositions pitched by the teams based on 3 main criteria: originality, potential, technical and economic feasibility.
For the module 2, here are the results only for the flagship event in France (as the Grece and Finland editions were locally organized with mainly only one the involvement of students coming from one school/university that limited the team diversity.
• total number of participants of module 2: 215
• number of teams that were created during the module 2: 30
• number of teams with diversity: 22
• the number of teams that received an award during the edition: 8
• the number of teams with diversity that received an award during the edition: 6
Implementation challenges included geographical imbalances in recruitment (362 participants against a target of 400, representing 90% of the target), logistical inconsistencies across partner locations, and methodological clarity issues around the adaptation of the Double Diamond design process. Notably, 45% of TEAMIT+ participants entered the programme via Module 2 as an alternative entry point rather than progressing sequentially from Module 1, demonstrating the module’s independent appeal while also highlighting weaker inter-module integration — a pattern that persisted in participant feedback regarding Module 3 connectivity.
Module 3: Venture creation
Module 3 yielded 10 business projects, developed over four months of online and in-person work by multinational teams. The portfolio collectively illustrates how sustainability-focused entrepreneurship education can transform environmental concern and individual agency into structured venture concepts. The projects span interconnected domains — urban food systems (three projects), sustainable mobility (three projects), indoor environmental health (one project), and circular fashion (one project) — demonstrating that green entrepreneurship extends across multiple consumer touchpoints and social strata.
A notable feature of the project portfolio is its engagement with the psychological dimensions of sustainability. Several projects explicitly framed entrepreneurial action as a response to eco-anxiety, operationalising this through community-building, educational scaffolding, and gamified engagement. This aligns with emerging literature suggesting that transforming eco-anxiety into collective problem-solving can mitigate psychological paralysis while fostering sustainable behaviour change (Hickman et al., 2021; Panu, 2020). At the same time, the portfolio reflects a productive tension between individual-incentive and collective-action entrepreneurial models: some ventures leveraged personal reward systems to drive behavioural change, while others adopted reciprocal, network-based models in which value emerges from transparent knowledge-sharing and community participation. This duality mirrors broader theoretical debates in green entrepreneurship education about whether individual incentive structures or systemic, community-oriented approaches more effectively sustain environmental commitment (Volkmann et al., 2021).
Module 3 achieved an 89% overall satisfaction rate. Participants reported enhanced confidence in professional capabilities, clearer understanding of career directions, and the development of comprehensive entrepreneurial competencies including collaborative teamwork, innovative thinking, problem-solving, and intercultural competence. However, 67% of participants identified insufficient connectivity between Module 3 and the preceding modules, suggesting that the entrepreneurial focus of Module 3 felt somewhat disconnected from Module 1’s awareness-raising mission.
5. Discussion
The results presented above provide empirical support for several of the theoretical propositions advanced in Sections 2 and 3. The high satisfaction rates and substantial knowledge gains achieved across four national contexts validate the core argument that a collective, awareness-first approach to green entrepreneurship education can produce meaningful and rapid shifts in participants’ environmental understanding and behavioural intentions. The cross-cultural consistency of these outcomes is particularly noteworthy given the documented variation in environmental awareness and entrepreneurial culture across European countries (Pillado, 2024), and suggests that the “learning by creating” methodology has sufficient robustness and adaptability to function effectively across diverse educational and cultural settings.
The programme’s approach to managing eco-anxiety through collective empowerment — presenting participants with diverse transition pathways and immersing them in collaborative problem-solving rather than dwelling on individual guilt or systemic inevitability — represents a significant pedagogical innovation that merits further investigation. The qualitative reflections indicate that participants experienced the shift from passive information recipient to active agent as empowering rather than overwhelming, which aligns with the adaptive leadership principle of maintaining teams within the productive zone of disequilibrium (Heifetz et al., 2009). The fact that the climate negotiation simulation was consistently rated among the most valued elements of the programme suggests that role-play-based approaches to systemic perspective-taking may be particularly effective for cultivating the collective-intelligence capacities that Woolley et al. (2015) identify as predictive of group performance.
The qualitative evidence of a shift from individualistic to systemic framings of environmental responsibility is perhaps the most theoretically significant finding. The participants’ own articulations — moving from a focus on personal consumption choices to an understanding of the interplay between policy decisions, economic structures, and social behaviours — map directly onto the systems-thinking competency that Fichter and Tiemann (2018) and Ploum et al. (2018) identify as a precondition for sustainable entrepreneurship. This suggests that a single, well-designed awareness module can generate the cognitive reorientation that the literature identifies as necessary for green entrepreneurial action, at least as a first step in a longer developmental process.
The intercultural dimension of the programme, consistently identified by participants as one of its most valued elements, reinforces the theoretical argument for dialogue-based, cross-cultural learning as a driver of collective intelligence. The encounter with genuinely different perspectives — not merely within-group diversity of opinion but the structured juxtaposition of participants from four national and linguistic contexts — appears to have created the productive cognitive dissonance that Isaacs (1999) identifies as the generative condition of dialogue. The Module 3 business projects, developed by intercultural teams over a sustained three-month period, demonstrate that this intercultural learning translates into collaborative creative capacity as well as attitudinal change.
For the influence of team diversity on the performance, we observed during the module 2 that there is no negative influence for the team to work with different profiles even for a short period of 24 hours where the time can be limited for icebreaking, understanding each other’s perspectives/skills/profiles. This observation during module 2 is in line with previous work (Legardeur et al. 2020) and the table 1 illustrates the data that we have collected for each edition of The 24 h of innovation since 2007.
Table 1. Influence of team diversity in in the “24h for innovation” events organized by ESTIA: global data by year for the period 2007–2025.
| Year | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|
| total number of participants | 138 | 176 | 216 | 238 | 243 | 348 | 328 | 334 | 400 | 400 | 444 | 182 | 274 | 138 | 280 | 173 | 215 |
| total number of teams by edition | 20 | 25 | 35 | 25 | 25 | 29 | 26 | 29 | 28 | 26 | 42 | 26 | 36 | 17 | 38 | 20 | 30 |
| number of teams with diversity | 6 | 9 | 8 | 17 | 25 | 18 | 19 | 14 | 15 | 22 | 34 | 22 | 30 | 17 | 35 | 15 | 22 |
| % of teams with diversity | 30% | 36% | 23% | 68% | 100% | 62% | 73% | 48% | 54% | 85% | 81% | 85% | 83% | 100% | 92% | 75% | 73% |
| total number of awarded teams | 9 | 10 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 9 | 9 | 12 | 7 | 11 | 7 | 9 | 5 | 8 |
| number of awarded teams only with diversity | 3 | 3 | 2 | 8 | 12 | 6 | 8 | 3 | 6 | 8 | 8 | 6 | 9 | 7 | 9 | 4 | 6 |
| % of awarded teams with diversity/awarded teams | 33% | 30% | 20% | 73% | 100% | 75% | 100% | 38% | 67% | 89% | 67% | 86% | 82% | 100% | 100% | 80% | 75% |
Several limitations and implementation challenges merit acknowledgement. First, the evaluation data from Module 1 are based on self-reported pre-post assessments (n = 160 responses out of 237 participants), and the administrative burden of completing multiple forms may have introduced selection bias, potentially over-representing more engaged or motivated participants. Second, while satisfaction data and qualitative reflections are encouraging, they do not constitute a longitudinal measure of sustained behavioural change or of actual entrepreneurial action taken following the programme. Third, Module 1’s relatively low engagement from VET students and participants from immigrant backgrounds (7.8% of the total cohort against a higher programme target) raises questions about equity of access that will require targeted adaptation in future iterations.
The inter-module connectivity deficit identified by 67% of Module 3 participants is a structural weakness that requires explicit attention in the programme’s second edition. The current three-module structure appears to function more as a sequence of independent experiences than as a coherent, cumulative learning arc. Strengthening narrative and pedagogical continuity — through explicit cumulative learning objectives, bridging activities between modules, and longitudinal team formation maintained across all three modules — would likely improve both the perceived coherence of the programme and the transfer of competencies developed in earlier modules to the entrepreneurial challenges of Module 3. Additionally, Module 2’s alternative-entry-point dynamic, while demonstrating the module’s independent appeal, further dilutes inter-module integration: participants who entered at Module 2 lacked the shared experiential foundation of Module 1, limiting the depth of collective learning available to their teams.
6. Conclusions and recommendations
This paper has argued that the conventional model of entrepreneurship education (centred on the individual entrepreneur and oriented primarily toward market value) is ill-suited to the challenges posed by the climate crisis. Drawing on the first edition of the TEAMIT+ programme, implemented across four European countries in 2024, we have presented evidence that a collective, awareness-first approach to green entrepreneurship education can produce meaningful and rapid shifts in participants’ environmental understanding, systems-thinking capabilities, and behavioural intentions. Module 1 demonstrated exceptional results: 99% of participants reported improved knowledge of climate change and environmental issues, substantially exceeding the programme’s 80% target, while 58% expressed a strong commitment to reducing their environmental footprint and 64% reported heightened awareness of environmental policy (TEAMIT+ Evaluation, 2024). These outcomes were achieved across diverse participant profiles and in four distinct national and cultural contexts, suggesting that the pedagogical innovations employed are robust and transferable.
Critically, the qualitative data reveal that the programme’s impact extended beyond the accumulation of environmental knowledge. Participants articulated a shift in how they conceptualise systemic interconnections — moving from an individualistic framing of environmental responsibility toward an understanding of the interplay between local actions, policy decisions, economic structures, and social behaviour. This kind of systems-thinking capability is precisely what Fichter and Tiemann (2018) and Ploum et al. (2018) identify as a precondition for sustainable entrepreneurship, and its emergence within a single intensive awareness module is encouraging. Moreover, the programme’s deliberate strategy of managing eco-anxiety through collective empowerment — presenting participants with diverse transition pathways and immersing them in collaborative problem-solving rather than foregrounding individual guilt — appears to have successfully converted potential paralysis into a foundation for engagement.
The evidence also supports the programme’s central premise that “teampreneurship” — entrepreneurship conceived as a collective, intercultural, cooperative endeavour — offers structural advantages over individual-entrepreneur models for addressing environmental and social challenges. Intercultural collaboration was consistently identified by participants as one of the programme’s most valued elements, and Module 3’s outcome of 10 social-impact business projects, developed by intercultural teams and grounded in cooperative values, demonstrates that the progression from awareness to action is achievable within a structured educational framework. The 89% satisfaction rate recorded in Module 3 and the reported enhancement of employability skills further reinforce the programme’s capacity to produce not only environmentally committed but professionally capable graduates.
Several limitations of the present study should be acknowledged. First, the evaluation data from Module 1 are based on self-reported pre-post assessments (n = 122 matched pairs out of 237 participants), and the administrative burden of completing multiple forms may have introduced selection bias. Second, while satisfaction data and qualitative reflections are encouraging, they do not constitute a longitudinal measure of sustained behavioural change or of actual entrepreneurial action taken following the programme; the current assessment framework captures environmental knowledge gains effectively but would benefit from more systematic measurement of entrepreneurial intention and self-efficacy over time. Third, recruitment from VET students and participants from immigrant backgrounds fell significantly below targets, raising questions about equity of access that will require targeted adaptation in future iterations. Fourth, recruitment and selection bias limitations — inherent to volunteer-based programme participation — mean that the cohort was self-selected among students already disposed toward sustainability and international collaboration, potentially limiting generalisability to broader student populations.
A further area for development concerns the coherence of the programme’s three-module structure. The year-one evaluation found that only 67% of Module 3 participants perceived the modules as complementary, with some describing them as stand-alone experiences lacking a clear connecting thread (TEAMIT+ Evaluation, 2024). Strengthening the narrative and pedagogical continuity across modules — through explicit cumulative learning objectives, structured bridging activities, and sustained intercultural team formation — will be important for the programme’s second edition and for any efforts at replication.
On the basis of these findings, we offer the following recommendations for the design of future green entrepreneurship education programmes. First, environmental awareness should not be treated as a preliminary step but as an integrated and ongoing part of the curriculum, embedded within rather than placed before entrepreneurial skill-building. Second, managing eco-anxiety through collective empowerment and presenting diverse transition pathways should be a core pedagogical principle; programmes that emphasise individual responsibility risk disengagement rather than action. Third, the “teampreneurship” model, which combines intercultural team formation, cooperative organisational values, and impact-oriented innovation, should be more widely explored as a structural alternative to the dominant individual-entrepreneur paradigm in entrepreneurship education. Fourth, assessment frameworks should be expanded to capture not only knowledge and satisfaction but also entrepreneurial intention, self-efficacy, and, where feasible, longer-term outcomes such as venture creation or sustained environmental behaviour change. Finally, targeted recruitment and accessibility strategies are needed to ensure that green entrepreneurship education reaches populations including VET students, migrants, and other underrepresented groups whose participation is essential for both the inclusivity and scalability of these programmes.
The IPCC (2023) has made clear that the window for enabling climate-resilient development is narrowing rapidly, and that this window can only be kept open through a combination of policy, finance, and — critically — innovation in the private sector. TEAMIT+ represents one concrete and evidence-based response to this imperative: a demonstration that entrepreneurship education, redesigned around collective intelligence, adaptive leadership, cooperative values, and a genuine engagement with environmental and social purpose, can begin to produce the next generation of entrepreneurs the climate crisis demands. The results presented here are preliminary but promising, and the programme’s second edition (together with the broader replication efforts under way) will provide the longitudinal and comparative evidence needed to establish whether teampreneurship education can deliver on this ambition at scale.
Author roles
Jimenez Ocio conducted the theoretical literature review, contributed to manuscript drafting, and supported conceptualisation of the analytical approach. Legardeur connected the theoretical background, reviewed the final draft and provided critical feedback. Mendizabal led data collection activities and reviewed the final draft. Rubio-Varas conceptualised the study, developed the analytical framework and structure, conducted data analysis, drafted the manuscript, and acts as corresponding author. All authors are active members of the TEAMIT+ project on which this article is based and have approved the final version of the manuscript.
AI use statement
During the preparation and submission of this manuscript, the authors used Claude (Anthropic) to support English-language editing, structural revision, and the preparation of submission-related materials including ethics statements and data availability statements. All content was reviewed, verified, and approved by the authors, who take full responsibility for the accuracy and integrity of the published work. No AI tool was used for data analysis, interpretation of results, or generation of original research claims.
Ethics and consent
The TEAMIT+ programme constitutes assessment of an established educational intervention rather than experimental research on human subjects. Given the non-interventional, low-risk nature of the study, which involved anonymous questionnaires administered to voluntary adult participants within the normal context of a funded training programme, formal ethical review by an institutional review board was not sought or required by any of the participating institutions. The study was conducted in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki.
All participants were adults (aged 18–30 years). Written informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to data collection via a mandatory opt-in checkbox embedded in the online evaluation forms, through which participants were informed of the voluntary nature of their participation, the educational research purpose of the data, and their right to withdraw at any time. Data were anonymised prior to analysis.
Data collection was conducted across the four primary data-collecting institutions: Universidad Pública de Navarra/INARBE (Spain), ESTIA – École Supérieure des Technologies Industrielles Avancées (France), Tiimiakatemia by JAMK – University of Applied Sciences (Finland), and Mondragon Unibersitatea Enpresagintza (Spain).
Data availability
The anonymised dataset underlying the Module 1 pre-post assessment results reported in this article — including matched participant responses (n = 122), satisfaction scores, and thematic outcome indicators — together with the evaluation questionnaire instrument and the Module 2 team diversity and award data presented in
Table 1, have been deposited in the Zenodo open-access repository under a CC-BY 4.0 licence. The dataset is available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20773326. (Jimenez Ocio, L., Legardeur, J., Mendizabal Eizaguirre, M., & Rubio-Varas, M. (2026).)
Qualitative participant reflections are presented in anonymised form within the article. Module 3 project descriptions are documented in the TEAMIT+ project deliverables, publicly available at https://teamit.plus/public-deliverables/.
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