2025 Theses Doctoral

Breaking the Mold: Business Model Innovation in Entrepreneurship Education

Faustino-Pulliam, Vivian

Entrepreneurship education within community colleges is at a critical juncture, as technological disruption, shifting demographics, and alternative credential providers challenge established academic paradigms. The research informing this dissertation seeks to answer an urgent, broad corollary question: “How do community colleges maintain relevance and competitive advantage in a rapidly evolving landscape of entrepreneurship education?” It probes this question by investigating how three San Francisco Bay Area community colleges can harness business model innovation to strengthen their entrepreneurship programs, enhance student success, and maintain competitiveness in an evolving market. Grounded in the Resource-Based View (RBV) and Strategic Leverage Through Learning (SLL) framework, the study highlights the interplay of tangible resources (e.g., location, funding, facilities) and intangible capabilities (e.g., faculty expertise, industry partnerships) as engines of sustained advantage.

Drawing on a qualitative multiple-case study methodology, the research illuminates how each college strategically aligns curricular design, co-curricular offerings, and external collaborations to amplify practical entrepreneurship training. Semi-structured interviews, surveys, and field observations expose the organizational silos and regulatory hurdles that often limit innovation while also revealing the rich potential for interdepartmental synergy and bold partnerships with local incubators, tech companies, and community stakeholders. By tracing how faculty, administrators, and industry partners co-create experiential learning opportunities—from industry and student-led workshop series, skills-based projects, rapid prototyping, pitch and demo competitions, and pop-up markets to startup accelerators—the dissertation provides a nuanced view of how an entrepreneurial ecosystem can meaningfully bridge theory and practice.

The findings underscore the crucial role of organizational learning in fostering innovation. SLL provides a powerful mechanism by which colleges can align learning processes with institutional goals, allowing them to adapt quickly, share knowledge effectively, and co-create value with stakeholders. This learning model transforms isolated initiatives into system-level innovations, enabling institutions to respond proactively to disruption. Key enablers of success include cross-disciplinary collaboration, inclusive skill-building, robust technological infrastructure, and ongoing faculty development.

This dissertation proposes an open innovation platform grounded in strategic organizational learning, supported by a viable business model for the future of community college entrepreneurship education. By embedding SLL at the core of the open innovation platform, colleges can foster boundary-spanning collaborations for resource sharing, leverage knowledge flows between organizations, academia, students, and other stakeholders, and support experiential learning practices. In doing so, entrepreneurship education is repositioned not merely as an academic offering but as a necessary life skill for socio-economic mobility and institutional strategy for advancing equity, relevance, and student success. The dissertation calls on policymakers, administrators, and scholars to reimagine community college entrepreneurship education as a dynamic, network-oriented enterprise equipped for the complexities of the 21st century.