Building bridges between universities and primary schools: a powerful collaboration to spread entrepreneurial mindset in pupils

Purpose of the paper: As society is facing epochal challenges, all educational levels are called to contribute to propose new answers and strategies. This paper suggests the collaboration between Universities and Primary Schools as a means to spread the entrepreneurial mindsets in children, to conceive useful answers to social challenges. Methodology: This research is based on an in-depth analysis of an ongoing project that engages a University and three Primary Schools, involving 175 children aged from 6 to 10 years. To evaluate the project efficacy, families and teachers were invited to fill a questionnaire, and a statistical analysis has been done. Results: Findings show the efficacy of the project in terms of the improvement of social orientation, creativity, self-esteem, perseverance, autonomy and proactivity of children. These skills have been registered within the educational context and the social life of children, underlining a positive effect on society. Research limitations: The main limitation regards the evaluation of the efficacy of the project in the short-term. This highlights the need to replicate the analysis also in the long-term. Academic and practical implications: Theoretically, this study contributes to the theory of socio-constructivist and the literature on entrepreneurial education in primary schools by introducing the influential role of UniversityPrimary Schools collaboration. For practitioners, this research offers best practices to inspire other successful cases to spread an early entrepreneurial mindset. Originality of the paper: The study elucidates the relevance of the early entrepreneurial mindset as a means to conceive new answers to the current social challenges.