Entrepreneurship is a core competence that is emphasized globally as the future capacity of young people along with the rapid change of labor market and the growth without employment growth. The Innovative Competence/ Entrepreneurial Skills Working Group, one of the agenda of the ASEM ㅡMinisters of Education, was formed in 2013, and in the first phase (2013-2015), the conceptualization of core competencies was discussed and in the second phase (2016-2018), a survey on the perception of innovative competence/ entrepreneurial skills in 6 countries was conducted. This study is based on the analysis of this survey.
As a result of this study, we could find that all education interest groups such as education policy officers, teachers, employers, etc. perceived innovative competency/entrepreneurial skills are very important as the core competence to cope with changing society. However, it is recognized that the culture such as 'tolerance on risk taking' and 'generosity to failure' is not pervasive in each society. The lack of industry involvement in innovation competence/ entrepreneurship education was reaffirmed as in other areas of education. The survey showed that the industry is not actively involved in innovative competency/entrepreneurial skills education and that it lacks systems to support it. Therefore, it is important to have a variety of ways to encourage industry participation in the contents and delivery method of innovative competency/entrepreneurial skills education. Young entrepreneurs who have proven their innovation capability can be invited as role-models for entrepre neurship education.
Risk takers and management competencies should be included and emphasized especially in content competency training. Risk-related factors can include planning and implementation of new projects, mock-ups, lectures by seniors, and performance-based tasks. In addition, since the risk-taking capacity is accumulated by learning and experiencing it repeatedly, we should provide opportunities to take various risk-taking and failure experiences starting from a young age.
Teachers agree on the need for innovative competency/entrepreneurial skills education, but there is limited will or expertise to actually participate. There must be a lot of educational opportunities for teachers' training and professional development. In this respect, many of the international best practices shared during Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the ASEM Working Group could be good reference cases. Based on experience in this working group, it would be helpful to build and operate a platform to share relevant knowledge and disseminate best practices.
The results of this study showed that education interest groups agreed on the necessity, but the integrated efforts such as education policy area, school education, industry collaboration and cooperation were lacking. It is suggested that support system is needed for the expansion of innovative competency/entrepreneurial skills education and should support the ecosystem of entrepreneurship education including industry, school, parents, and government.
Despite the differences in the educational environment, the administrative environment, and the situation of the research culture and administrative support, the survey was conducted in the same frame to discover common trends in different situations and to identify points of significant difference. However, due to financial and time limitations, it is difficult to strictly limit the size and sampling of the subjects to be surveyed. The results of this survey should be interpreted with caution and it is necessary to improve the size of the sampling and the sampling method for the future research.
In addition, the concept of innovation competence/entrepreneurship is a term that is difficult to reach consensus both domestically and internationally. It is necessary to make further discussion and research on innovation competence/entrepreneurship and to make consensus on concept, direction and philosophy.