Theatricalization of enterprise education: A call for “action”

Abstract

Changing environment requires not just creativity, but disruptive creativity. The traditional planning paradigm within business organizations heavily relies on long- and short-term forecasting in order to predict the future and plan accordingly. However, a large share of business development is now characterized by rapid changes, inconsistency and unpredictability. Taking that into account a key task for managers is to explore and innovate in chaotic conditions, but how can owner–managers, business leaders and the employees respond to such rapid changes without the appropriate skillset and educational background? This study calls for the modernization of enterprise education systems in order to provide students and graduates with tools relevant to the changing requirements of the business environment. We argue that such needed mastery of unconventional innovative thinking and acting “as if” rather have a lot in common with art education concepts and theatrical skills. Using videography as an example, we illustrate how advances in digital technology can help incorporate such theatrical concepts into enterprise education. As a contribution we provide insights and falsifiable propositions toward a renewal and revitalization of enterprise education pedagogy.

Keywords

Theatrical skills arts enterprise education pedagogy entrepreneurial business environment

Introduction

Heraclitus’ old adage of “The only thing that is constant is change” may have lost its true meaning in both popular media and academia. However, it is equally important to acknowledge that familiarity with the notion of change and reluctant acceptance of the dynamics of change does not eliminate the very real consequences of change.

In this perhaps unconventional discussion paper, we make the case for the theatricalization of enterprise education based on the current and looming changes in the global business environment and with a learning perspective oriented toward the broader business education (e.g. Baker and Boumgarden, 2015; Sutherland, 2013). Using enterprise education an exemplary platform, we question the relevance, legitimacy, and consequences of the traditional business schooling paradigm when faced with the rapidly changing dynamics of the 21st-century’s social and economic landscape (cf. Bridgstock and Carr, 2013). To address the clearly identifiable issues, we call for business schooling to be modernized. We invite scholars and educators to use theatrical and artistic¹ pedagogical tools to supplement those of the traditional business schooling in order to supply a more engaging enterprise education to future owner–managers, innovators, and business leaders (e.g. Dubini and Raviola, 2016; Nissley, 2010; Taylor and Ladkin, 2009).

This work aims to encourage further discussion and scholarly debate on how and why we should do away with the traditional view that business and the arts are distinct and sometimes contradictory educational disciplines. We contribute to the wider business and management education literature, specifically in the area of contemporary enterprise education pedagogy, by providing testable insights and propositions. We suggest that certain advances in digital technology (videography in this case) can provide educators and students with more opportunities to benefit from these pedagogical tools. It is important to note that, while the extant focus on enterprise education provides a scholarly anchor for our discussion, however, it is also apparent that the issues and insights we discuss are cross-disciplinary.

Understanding the challenges of modern enterprise education

The change

In recent decades, several scholars have emphasized different phenomena influencing the evolution and pursuit of entrepreneurship (e.g. Kuratko, 2005, 2006; Neck and Greene, 2011)—the “pursuit of entrepreneurship” discussed here is rooted in Sarasvathy (2001) and Drucker (1985) definitions and conceptualization of entrepreneurship as: the act of innovation which bestows new and existing resources with new value-creation capacity.

Unprecedented developments in the global business environment generally accompany constant changes in the world’s economic and cultural landscape (Crossan et al., 1996). This generally demands more unconventional tactics and spontaneous innovative behavior from all the organizational players (e.g. Hidalgo and Albors, 2008). Adler (2006) argues that the changes in the economic and cultural environments of this century are fast-paced and more dynamic than ever before. However, the traditional planning standard in the business community relies heavily on long- and short-term planning tools to forecast the foreseeable, and probable future and align an enterprise strategy accordingly. We draw attention to the undeniable fact that the business development efforts of different types of organizations are now characterized by inconsistency and unpredictability. Taking this into account, some scholars have opined that “the key task for managers is to explore and innovate in chaotic conditions” (Crossan et al., 1996: 23). A changing environment demands not just creativity but rather a disruptive creativity (Amis et al., 2004). Everyone must learn to improvise says Adler (2006) in order to actively respond to the changing needs of the 21st-century’s business world (see also, Dubini and Raviola, 2016).

In particular, we argue that entrepreneurial pursuits (see e.g. Drucker, 1985; Sarasvathy, 2001) involve constructively dealing with the chaotic uncertainty and unstructured performance of the current business world (Gartner and Vesper, 1994; Honig, 2004; Neck and Greene, 2011; Zott and Amit, 2007). Working on a novel enterprise initiative in such dynamic environments often creates an emotionally charged experience (Schindehutte et al., 2006) that requires good stress tolerance (Sexton and Bowman, 1984) and a mastery in forming social relationships (Baron and Markman, 2003). Bearing this in mind, a key challenge for educators is finding new way to develop and equip students with relevant competencies in order to prepare them for the chaotic uncertainty of the global business environment.

Teaching beyond subjects and course boundaries

The current practice of teaching disciplines separately does provide deeper insights into each discipline, but at the same time, it often locks students into a one-sided view of problems (Dunne and Martin, 2006). Arguably, the narrow focus of various business school disciplines has produced students with limited thought pathways (Starkey and Tempest, 2009). According to Baker and Baker (2012), “… the frameworks professors teach also limit students’ vision and potentially stifle imagination. Outlined best practices and precisely defined learning goals do not necessarily support the students’ ideation, reflexivity, and ‘out-of-the-box’ creativity. Students look where they are told to look, but have little reason to look further” (p. 716). Teaching has a strong connection to research, and the quality and value of research is often judged based on its journal publications indexes. It is therefore no surprise that the domain-specific specialization of top journals tends to draw researchers and faculties toward these narrow specialization tracks, thus having an unfavorable effect on cross-disciplinary research. As a result, this narrow specialization is unwittingly transferred into the curriculum design and structure of various business degree programs. We argue that such educational systems produce at best narrowly specialized experts (i.e. graduates with narrow problem solving skills).

The existing literature has long emphasized how traditional business school pedagogy has not undergone any significant change over the years (e.g. Mintzberg and Gosling, 2002; Pfeffer and Fong, 2004). Traditional enterprise education therefore inevitably encounters difficulty when trying to explicate the changing environment through this lens. Even though the principal foundations of enterprise education may be here to stay (Navarro, 2008), the insights and delivery of most of the information must change if business schools are to catch up with current developments in society (e.g. Proserpio and Gioia, 2007).

Teaching strategies that reflect the constantly changing world are therefore needed to provide students with critical and creative thinking tools (Baker and Baker, 2012). We believe that Adler’s (2006) call for the “cross-fertilization” (p. 487) of artistic and business leadership skills should begin with the enterprise-education process. For instance, concepts like design thinking, improvisation, acting “as if,” emotional labor/intelligence, storytelling, design logic, creative expressionism, and role-play (among others) are valued elements of an arts education. Indeed, many forward-thinking organizations seek out such qualities.

The overarching questions here, however, are “Why?” and “How?” In other words, why should the acquisition of artistic skills and mindsets matter in enterprise-education? If it does, how should we go about it? With these guiding questions, we elucidate in the following section why it would be in the interest of enterprise educators and students to embrace some of these skills and knowhow from artistic disciplines.

While the wider debate is multifaceted, for the sake of subject clarity and easier sensemaking, we chose to concentrate on an arts-inspired enterprise education. While we recognize and acknowledge that arts disciplines could also benefit from enterprise education, we feel that would be an excellent topic for another paper.

Troubleshooting on the stage

The entrepreneurial process as a performance art?

Simpson et al. (2015) conceptualize entrepreneurship as performing art. One of the most influential definitions of theatre in modern times is that of Grotowski (1968) (cited in Fischer-Lichte et al., 2014: 8) who conceptualized theatre as that which happens between an actor and the audience. This marked a departure from the earlier commonly held view of theatre as a form of stage entertainment performed at a fixed venue² (cf. Carlson, 1993). Following Grotowski’s conceptualization of theatre, we view theatricality in the context of this study as the harnessing of, and application of the principles and methodologies of fine art in the process of providing an experience and/or relaying certain message to a specific audience.

According to, entrepreneurs/innovators often resemble artists in their manner of ideation. The notion of entrepreneur presented in this context is derived from Sarasvathy (2001) conceptualization of the entrepreneur as an individual using effectual logic in pursuit of entrepreneurial action. An effectuator: who seizes contingent opportunities and exploits all means at hand to fulfill a plurality of aspirations (see also, Drucker, 1985). Using imagination to mindfully play out a process, reflecting on experiences, and having certain inner values tends to provide the unique mix needed for the development of ideas (e.g. Simpson et al., 2015). Acting theories help to create metaphors that bridge theatrical performances with the challenges found within organizations (e.g. Schreyögg and Höpfl, 2004: 692). As Anderson (2005) describes, entrepreneurship is about “interdependencies of fact and fiction” (p. 598). According to Gartner et al. (1992), “acting as if” helps business owner/managers to deal with uncertainty. Reinforced reality helps to generate confidence and increases the chances of success (Anderson, 2005).

Emotion as a skill

It is well known that convincingly conveying various emotions at specific points is crucial to a stage performance. Theatrical scripts are therefore loaded with varied emotions that need to be expressed at different stages throughout the performance. From our perspective, it is not too far a stretch to point out the striking similarity between a theatrical performance and the entrepreneurial process (Simpson et al., 2015). Just like in the theatre, different phases of an entrepreneurial journey are laden with strategic checkpoints where the management and/or conveyance of a certain kind of emotion will play a key role in determining the outcome. Furthermore, describe the similarity between artists and business practitioners in their need for an emotional connection to their audiences. Emotions strongly influence understanding (Baron, 2008), and they serve as a direct link to thought and learning processes (Brown, 2000). It is therefore important to understand both the overt and covert feelings that are embedded into a specific entrepreneurial action. Business decisions are often made under a strong emotional influence, so sending and receiving inaccurate emotional messages can lead to a flawed interpretation (Barsade, 2002; Simpson et al., 2015). In other words, business practitioners need a skillset similar to that of artists. Such a skillset would include, but not be limited to, public interaction skills, sense-giving/meaning-giving to intrinsic and extrinsic values, reflexivity in managing feedback, and improvisation within a specific context, time, and place (e.g. Hill and Levenhagen, 1995). Indeed, it is important to acknowledge that the ability to actively deploy some of these skills in a specific moment of interaction is the key to a high quality conversation and/or mutually improvised outcome.

Emotion as an art of experiencing

According to Schindehutte et al. (2006), emotions are an important aspect of an entrepreneurial pursuit, because business practitioners tend to experience powerful emotional involvement when working in new, unpredictable, and/or complex situations, often under the pressure of resource and time limitations (Baron, 2000; Cardon et al., 2012). Strong emotional associations can lead to peak experiences or trigger failure (e.g. Schindehutte et al., 2006), and a reflective understanding of one’s own emotional experiences facilitates “double-loop” learning (Cope, 2005). This underscores why modern enterprise education pedagogy should help students to understand the role of feelings and emotions and not only their effective use in business (e.g. Shepherd, 2004).

An understanding of one’s own emotions lies at the heart of a theatrical education. The famous theatrical educator Stanislavski’s said, “I don’t believe you!” and this best reflects the need for a theatrical actor to make his or her performance and related emotions believable. According to Stanislavski, this can only happen when the actor believes in own role and truly understands it. Thus, the goal of theatrical education is not to teach young actors to mimic emotional grimaces on stage but rather to thoroughly evaluate and understand the experiences of one’s character and live through them during the performance. This provides the actor with the opportunity to re-experience the character’s life on stage, thus provoking genuine emotions that co-actors and the audience can believe in and genuinely respond to. According to Stanislavski, this constitutes the art of experiencing, which is an ultimate goal of a theatrical performance.

Entrepreneurship as an art of communication and experiencing

Interestingly, Goffman (1959) and Stanislavski (1937) have divergent and opposing interpretations of theatrical art and performance. According to Goffman’s view, the ultimate goal of such performance is to manipulate the audience for achieving a favorable result. On the other hand, Stanislavski is of the opinion that the art of performance concentrates on living the role through its cross-fertilization with personal experience, likes and dislikes of the performer. While we refrain from getting entangled in the Stanislavski versus Goffman debate, we do however, suggest that an understanding and mastery of one’s own emotions and how they interact with the audience relies not on rehearsed and memorized emotional expressions but rather, following concepts from theatrical education can help entrepreneurship students learn about enterprise experiences, the emotions connected to them, and their communication with others. With this in mind, we now provide an insightful overview of some key artistic aspects that embody different elements of an enterprise endeavor.

Storytelling

According to Morgan and Dennehy (1997), the storytelling format for conveying information makes it memorable and believable. As Bell (1992) puts it, “A good story can touch something familiar in each of us and, yet, show us something new about our lives, our world, and ourselves” (p. 53). Storytelling is therefore one of the most powerful informational presentation techniques. It is a comprehensive method to expose an audience to various characters and their emotions within the context of a message.

This technique is used in idea pitching and management development (Morgan and Dennehy, 1997) for a variety of purposes, such as to (a) entertain, (b) provoke an emotional connection, and (c) enable a reflective visualization of events and characters within a given context (e.g. Bell, 1992). A story can appeal to people and convince them of the potential of a given enterprise endeavor, so it is therefore a common pursuit among both nascent and established business practitioners . The study of demonstrates the value of presenting a new business as a story rather than as disjoint facts and figures, because it enables investors and stakeholders to reflect on the storyline and relate it to their own experiences, expertise, and expectations. Furthermore, an entrepreneur’s ability to give sense or meaning to a novel idea through storytelling comes more from his or her artistic/theatrical skills than any verbal eloquence (Baron and Markman, 2003; Cornelissen et al., 2012).

Metaphors

According to some scholars, the metaphor is generally gaining momentum within business leadership circles (Adler, 2006; Audebrand, 2010; Cornelissen, 2004; Cornelissen et al., 2012; Gartner et al., 1992; Schreyögg and Höpfl, 2004). Indeed, speaking metaphorically has become a valuable tool that is frequently used by business leaders (Arkin, 1998), and the concept of “an organization as a theatre” (Cornelissen, 2004: 705) has led to tools that help understand the interactions within and between various organizational entities. The use of metaphors in speech and narratives can act as a powerful tool within the new-venture-development process, because they help in the visualization of otherwise complex or vague ideas (e.g. Aldrich and Fiol, 1994; Cornelissen et al., 2012). In addition, using metaphors in a narrative has been found to reduce the uncertainty typically associated with the launch of startups. Entrepreneurs therefore benefit from sense- and meaning-giving when they use metaphors to solicit support for a venture-development idea (Cornelissen et al., 2012; Hill and Levenhagen, 1995).

The use of gestures

It has long been understood that a large part of human communication is nonverbal (Zaltman, 1997: 425). Gestures provide the opportunity to send and receive nonverbal cues in a face-to-face interaction. It also enables individuals to capture and respond to emotional aspects during a conversation (e.g. Ekman et al., 1980). According to McNeill (1985), “Combining a spoken sentence and its concurrent gesture into a single observation gives two simultaneous views of the same process, an effect comparable to triangulation in vision” (p.350). Riggio (1986) places great emphasis on how the nonverbal communication skills of good actors give meaning “to the lifeless verbal scripts.” Mastering one’s own gestures and voice enhances the ability to bring out the full meaning of one’s thoughts and feelings (Riggio, 1986).

Gestures are “an intrinsic part of cognitive processing” (Cornelissen et al., 2012: 217), so they help metaphors have an optimal influence on the audience. Gestures also add a “second channel of interaction” (McNeill, 1985: 350) to the actual narrative, often reflecting a person’s inner emotions. Therefore, from an enterprise perspective, the use of gestures in various organizational communication contexts has the potential to provide additional information and convey complementary messages that enrich the flow of knowledge between entities. The spontaneity of gestures and the mastery of such skills are related to the area of improvisation.

Improvisation

Improvisation is used within a wide variety of organizational processes (Eisenhardt, 1997; Mante-Meijer et al., 1998). It is argued that it helps business leaders to quickly respond to changing situations and business environments (Crossan et al., 1996; Eisenhardt, 1997). According to Anderson (2005), “much of entrepreneurship is improvisation” (p. 589). Eisenhardt and Brown (1998) draw a comparison between musical and business improvisation, because both rely on a few well-determined rules and require significant amounts of real-time communication. In general, business practitioners partake in improvised activities to encourage flexibility and innovative action toward a mutually improvised outcome in any given interaction between an organization and its audience (Schreyögg and Höpfl, 2004). Improvisation becomes especially useful when trying to evoke and capture emotions through a nonverbal expressiveness that accompanies speech, yet this is often neglected in enterprise education settings (Cornelissen et al., 2012).

Scenarios

Eisenhardt (1997) finds similarities in theater and business in the form of using multiple scenarios with the aim of generating and identifying various alternatives. Scenarios are multiple stories with a variety of endings, where an unknown combination could represent the possible future development of an organization (Mante-Meijer et al., 1998). Therefore, in both nascent and established business enterprises, scenario building and simulation play an important role in anticipating a probable future and guiding the enterprise strategy appropriately. However, is it not rather ironic that the very enterprise education that currently shows little or no interest in theatrical knowhow is actually entrusted with preparing many actors in the business world? Understanding how artists are equipped, as well as how their skillsets affect the roles they play and how they play them, should help the enterprise education system to understand the disadvantages of viewing the arts and business as separate disciplines (e.g. Garnett, 2016). This leads us to another related theatrical phenomenon.

Roleplay

There is a strong tendency toward identifying different roles and their interactions within various business development scenarios (Eisenhardt, 1997). Morgan and Dennehy (1997) speak about distinguishing “different voices” (p. 501) within an organization. There may be many different voices—such as the voices of investors, customers, partners, suppliers, and employees—within a new venture’s story (Baron and Markman, 2003). The ability of business owners/managers to distinguish these voices and understand their different yet specific roles within the venture-development process is therefore of the utmost importance. The roles that these various stakeholders adopt at different stages in the venture-development process depend upon the specific voice(s) being listened to and the nature of their messages being perceived. Hence, good roleplay knowledge can help an organization to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the different characters that must interact in the various scenarios of ongoing operations. This then allows an organization to harness the synergies that exist between interacting characters while avoiding potential clashes.

In nutshell, business practitioners play these roles as they are forced to continuously improvise during various venture-creation and venture-development processes. On the enterprise journey, the business owner/manager writes the script, considers different scenarios, acts on these and improvises, receives feedback from the audience, reflects on it, and then improvises once again. Likewise, some enterprise-education students often start work in similar organizational roles during their education and seek real-life skills and support from enterprise education. The time is therefore ripe for the education system to provide these students with a suitable set of tools and a skillset for this process.³

In search of answers

How do we cross-fertilize arts and enterprise education?

It is important to remember that professional artists would never be able to translate their creativity into an organizational setting without having “domain-relevant expertise” (Baker and Baker, 2012: 705). We believe this also applies to the domain of enterprise education in that business disciplines lack the specific domain-relevant expertise to cultivate theatrical knowhow (e.g. Bridgstock, 2013). At the same time, the teachers of creative arts would not be able to educate enterprise education students without a core knowledge of their specific needs. As we explained in section “Teaching beyond subjects and course boundaries”, the highly specialized and narrow disciplinary focus of modern educational faculties does not help much here. Instead, we believe that cross-fertilization (e.g. Adler, 2006) between arts and business pedagogies through cross-disciplinary research, joint seminars, role reversal, and jointly developed pilot projects (among others) will encourage both disciplines to learn from each other. Understanding the core logic and underlying principles of each other’s curricula and looking at issues from a different learning perspective could potentially usher in a new level of awareness and a readiness to co-create an enterprise education pedagogy that is fit for the 21st-century. Furthermore, in response to the identifiable problems, an overarching question regarding the current situation is: How can enterprise educators include theatrical insights into our educational programs in the most constructive and contributive way? To help answer this question, videography is presented in this context as a hypothetical illustration of potential channels (among others) for cultivating artistic skills in enterprise education students.

How can enterprise students learn entrepreneurship through arts?

Learning arguably has much to do with communication and feedback. As such, teaching and learning have benefited much from advances in information and communication technologies—ICT (e.g. Hidalgo and Albors, 2008; Oparaocha et al., 2014; Proserpio and Gioia, 2007; Tejeda, 2008). For instance, ICT innovations such as electronic-learning platforms, email, interactive discussion forums, and so on have made it much easier to teach and manage classroom activities and eliminate a number of prior limitations. Furthermore, students can complete study exercises and submit them electronically, receiving feedback from instructors in the same way, so the need for personal contact between a teacher and student is greatly reduced. However, a key challenge arising from the incorporation of ICT into educational settings is tackling the problem of lean communication. Lean communication (e.g. e-mail, text/instant messaging, chat forums, etc.) tends to suffer from decreased accuracy in terms of the content and feelings being transmitted when compared to traditional face-to-face interactions. Emotions are often miscommunicated through lean communication due to the “delay in feedback” (Byron, 2008: 312), which is less likely to occur during a face-to-face communication. For business practitioners, however, understanding and accurately communicating emotions seems to be a crucial skill (e.g. Proserpio and Gioia, 2007). According to Shepherd (2004: 274), this demands a focus on how students feel rather than on how, or what, they think.

Videography is a powerful communication tool, yet it is easily accessible to almost every student. Most modern mobile phones, digital cameras, and tablet/laptop computers are capable of recording video. This means the vast majority of students, if not all, already has the necessary equipment to film video (Kozinets and Belk, 2006) and stream their content through a variety of digital platforms. Some scholars have lamented the current use of video within enterprise education, however, claiming it is largely similar to the concept of organizational consumption of theater as described by Schreyögg and Höpfl (2004) and Shepherd (2004), where despite their emotional associations, students are merely third-party observers.

In line with a number of other scholars (Belk and Kozinets, 2005; Garrett, 2010; Hunt, 2001; Starr and Fernandez, 2007), we argue that the problem lies not in ICT itself but rather in the choices we make about how to use it, including which ICT platforms to apply in different aspects of the educational process. In reality, ICT actually provides us with some unique tools for learning about emotions. Next, in our proposition, we explore videography as a concrete example of an ICT tool that can effectively serve education, namely in the capturing of, reflection upon, visualization of, and communication of emotions. This therefore includes theatrical insights in a very natural and contributive manner.

The proposition

Unlike with the notion of “observational learning” (Gioia and Brass, 1985), where students are described as passive viewers, we suggest that educators who are willing to incorporate theatrical aspects into their programs should consider students as the scriptwriters, actors, and editors of their own personal learning stories. Therefore, in combination with, submitting written term papers, students could produce a short videos conveying their ideas, plans, and implementations, as well as a reflective analysis of their experiences in video format. Students’ self-made videos could provide them with the opportunity to review the high and low points of their own performances in different situations and reflect upon them. At the same time, students can review their in-class presentations that were also video recorded, and this could provide them with additional insights about their behavior, use of gestures, and storytelling skills, as well as the believability of their overall performance. This then serves as an unprejudiced feedback loop that conveys the believability of their emotional input, therefore enabling students to intuitively identify the weak points of their performances and formulate measures for their development.

In addition, students can reinforce certain emotions by incorporating special effects, editing scenes, and adding transitions and music to the raw content (Belk and Kozinets, 2005). The educator, meanwhile, has the possibility of viewing the self-made and in-class videos of students and then highlight the importance of “believability” to enterprise education, together with describing potential ways to achieve this believability by using aspects from theatrical education. We suggest that providing students with the opportunity to use video to capture, analyze, and develop their performances could enable them to better appreciate these theatrical insights.

Videography is not yet a common feature of enterprise education, so it is important for students to be comfortable with using it. We suggest that the use of videography should be considered as a pleasant option rather than an obligatory burden.

Concluding remarks

Course framework can provide tools and give structure, but during enterprise education, it is “the process of becoming” (Anderson, 2005: 592) that students will benefit from the most (Neck and Greene, 2011; Rideout and Gray, 2013; Vanevenhoven, 2013). There is a demand for artistic skills within the context of enterprise education, because “acting as if,” creating scenarios, using metaphors, expressing emotions, and improvising are daily realities for most nascent and established business practitioners. We therefore need a relevant pedagogical framework that will cater for such needs.

Despite the wide range of existing literature about arts, and business education in general, we did not find any published “instructions” for breaching the barrier that exists between arts and business education. Recent profound changes in the business world call for different aspects of our current educational system to be rethought. With this in mind, we use the context of enterprise education to illustrate the situation at hand and explain why it is in the best interests of all stakeholders to work collaboratively on the creation of a more relevant enterprise education for future business practitioners. Our intention is to evoke a scholarly debate about a number of crucial issues regarding the current enterprise education in the light of the changing societal, technological, and business landscape.

Some two decades ago, Crossan et al. (1996) put forward the opinion that given the changes in the business environment, “the key task for managers is to explore and innovate in chaotic conditions” (p. 23). Today, we echo this message with our own call, namely that a key task for modern enterprise education should be to explore and create innovative pedagogical solutions that will prepare students for the shifting needs of the 21st-century business world. We therefore suggest one potential way to incorporate concepts from theatrical educational into enterprise education. With the help of videography, enterprise educators have the opportunity to teach theatrical insights as a concept relevant to enterprise education, one that contributes to students’ emergent needs for self-expression, reflection, and communication. We suggest that the inclusion of videography provides educators with a rich method for merging theatrical insights into enterprise education by providing students with the opportunity to improvise while also learning to articulate the emotions behind what they do as clearly as they can and learning through this process. We believe this will enable enterprise education students to practice and communicate their theatrical knowhow in and out of the classrooms, as well as encourage a profound reflection on the usefulness of these skills in their future business life.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author biographies

Gospel Onyema Oparaocha is a doctoral student at the School of Computing, University of Eastern Finland. Mr. Oparaocha is a researching contemporary pedagogies of business education in the 21st century.

Pokidko Daniil is currently a PhD researcher at the Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki. His research concentrates on the topics of experiential learning, use of video technology and applying dual-process theory in psychology to entrepreneurship education.

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