ABSTRACT
As the challenge of environmental pressures is added to the business and academic agenda, several studies based on the entrepreneurship and small business management literature have been launched to determine the motives of entrepreneurs who set up green businesses. Given the importance of green entrepreneurs in the transition towards a truly sustainable society, this paper’s main research objective is to illustrate how the teaching and learning approach of a business management program helps to produce promoters and ecopreneurs of sustainable development and entrepreneurship. The research objective was achieved by a survey of questionnaire to undergraduate degree students at Telkom Institute of Management in Bandung Indonesia, a higher education institution under Telkom Education Foundation or Yayasan Pendidikan Telkom or YPT. Those students are given the opportunity to practice their academic-based knowledge outside the classroom, which they are formed into teams and are expected to transfer their relevant knowledge directly into a real world context, in the form of ecopreneurial project, the so-called Green “E-Project”. This project took place from September to December 2012 that occurred in academic year 2012/13. The evaluation of students’ ecopreneurial project, which has been adapted and developed from waste management practices, containing four dimensions of “R”, namely, `Reduce’, ’Reuse’, `Recycle’ and `Rethink’. The four R’s are coined to describe different motives or orientations of the higher education students with respect to the way they start, operate and manage their Green “E-Project”. The ultimate aim is to gain insights for policy makers and educators into ways to foster students’ ecopreneurship in the context of higher education institutions.
Keywords: Entrepreneurship education, Students’ ecopreneurship, Green business, Waste management practices.