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Digital corporate culture of an entrepreneurial university

The current stage of social development is characterized by an active digital transformation of all sectors of the economy and, in particular, education, which is manifested in the activities of primarily entrepreneurial universities. Successful digital transformation requires a digital corporate culture that becomes a competitive advantage for an entrepreneurial university. The study of parameters and indicators of digital corporate culture becomes an urgent scientific task. The purpose of the article is to identify such parameters and indicators. The objectives of the article are to consider the specifics of an entrepreneurial university, to substantiate that its digital transformation is a competitive advantage, and to analyze digital corporate culture and the values of its indicators in entrepreneurial universities. The article suggests parameters and indicators of digital corporate culture that can be identified in open sources. It shows that the parameters include: the presence of a digital learning management system, an educational platform, educational and communication applications, the use of digital educational services, a developed strategy for the digital transformation of the university, digital competence of students, staff, teachers. Based on the analysis of websites, applications and educational platforms, the article identifies the values of indicators of digital corporate culture of leading entrepreneurial universities. Read more...

Teaching Entrepreneurial Communications Using Educational Platforms: Russian and Foreign Practices

Entrepreneurial education today is the subject of close attention of the educational community. An important component of such training is the issue of entrepreneurial communication, which affects all aspects of the functioning of any business. External communications are aimed at ensuring the company’s business interaction with such stakeholders as customers, partners, competitors, government authorities, investors, while internal communications are aimed at improving the efficiency of business processes. Therefore teaching entrepreneurial communications is an urgent scientific and practical task. The relevance increases even more in the conditions of intensive development of ICT and especially in the context of the pandemic, when the educational process is moving to a large extent online. The purpose of this article is to provide an analytical review of Russian and foreign practices of teaching entrepreneurial communications on educational platforms. The article clarifies the concept of entrepreneurial communications and presents their consideration as a subject of study, it is shown that in the scientific literature there is no unity in the interpretation of this concept. In most sources it is replaced by the concept of “business communication”. A broad overview of business communications training courses on Russian and foreign educational platforms, such as Open Education, Skillbox, Netology, Product Live, Product Star, Laba, Yandex Practicum, Coursera, Udemy, EdX, MIT OCW, Alison, is presented. The largest number of business communications courses are presented on the Coursera, Udemy and Open Education platforms. The content of the identified courses is aimed at the formation of personal communicative competence in business interaction – the ability to negotiate, speak in public, etc., regardless of entrepreneurial specifics. The use of such methods of teaching entrepreneurial communications as hackathons, meetups, VR and AR technologies is substantiated. It is shown that the following applications can be used to develop entrepreneurial communication: VirtualSpeech, Glue, MeetinVR, Stage. Read more...

Study of Contextual Factors of Pitching Success

The article is devoted to the consideration of the factors, taking into account which an entrepreneur should prepare an idea pitch to ensure the most effective perception by the investor. Since the main task of pitching is to arouse the steady interest of the investor, which must be transformed into a decision to invest, the study of what the investor will evaluate and how it should be taken into account by the entrepreneur when preparing the pitching becomes an urgent scientific task. The article substantiates that in addition to the business factors assessed by the investor during the pitching, the so-called contextual factors play a significant role in making a decision to invest in a project. The authors point out that they should include very diverse factors – from the persuasiveness of verbal and non-verbal communication to the expertise of the team representing the project and the number of cases it has implemented. The article analyzes the pitches of entrepreneurs and feedback from investors in the Sberbank start-up community “Sberstartup-roasting 2022” and feedback on investment pitches from private investors, identifies the factors of pitching that are evaluated by investors, and makes judgments about which of them are insufficiently taken into account by entrepreneurs when preparing a pitch. The concept of contextual factors of pitching has been introduced into scientific circulation, it has been revealed which factors should be referred to as contextual factors, and an indicator of contextual factors has been developed, which can be used to track weaknesses in the preparation of an entrepreneur for pitching. It is noted that important context factors, among others, are the presentation of the “value of the product” and the presentation of the essence of the project from the point of view of the “pain” of the consumer. The content of training programs for entrepreneurs in pitching was analyzed and programs were identified that contain the most comprehensive consideration of the factors that investors are guided by when evaluating pitching. Read more...