In recent years, entrepreneurship has become a buzzword across campuses and industries. But despite the growing visibility of startup culture, hackathons, and innovation challenges, one question continues to surface:
Why does entrepreneurship still feel like it belongs to business students?
This question isn’t theoretical for me—it's one I’ve encountered over and over again while working in innovation across countries, sectors, and institutions. From grassroots hubs and government-backed accelerators to my current role leading student entrepreneurship at Trinity College Dublin, the pattern is clear: entrepreneurship education often struggles to cross disciplinary borders.
The Invisible Divide
Students in nursing, humanities, music, or pure sciences often don’t see themselves reflected in the way entrepreneurship is taught or promoted. And it’s not because they lack ideas or ambition—it’s because entrepreneurship is still too often framed in commercial, corporate, or tech-centric language.
Many associate it with business plans, pitching competitions, or venture capital. While these are valuable elements, they don’t reflect the full picture. Entrepreneurship, at its core, is about creating value, solving problems, and navigating uncertainty—skills that are just as relevant to a historian, artist, or scientist as they are to a business graduate.
So why does this cultural divide persist?
Culture Is the Curriculum
In many ways, it’s not the curriculum itself that creates barriers—but the culture surrounding it. Academic disciplines carry their own values, traditions, and ways of thinking. In some faculties, entrepreneurship is still viewed with suspicion, seen as too commercial or incompatible with critical inquiry. In others, it's simply invisible—never mentioned, never encouraged.
This cultural resistance is subtle, but powerful. It shapes who feels welcome in entrepreneurial spaces, who engages with opportunities, and who opts out before they even begin.
If we want to make entrepreneurship inclusive, we need to do more than create new programmes. We need to shift how we frame entrepreneurship, who we invite in, and how we embed it into the fabric of academic life—across all disciplines.
What We’re Doing About It
At Open Incubator, we’re trying to tackle this challenge head-on.
We support students from any discipline to develop ideas, learn entrepreneurial skills, and connect with like-minded innovators. Whether you're in engineering, nursing, arts, or beyond—you’ll find resources, mentors, and opportunities designed with you in mind.
We’ve introduced tools like:
An AI-powered mentor (yes, you can literally chat with a virtual idea coach).
Interdisciplinary innovation challenges that bring together students from across faculties
Workshops and toolkits built around real-world needs and problems—not just startup pitches.
The goal is simple: to make entrepreneurship feel accessible, practical, and relevant—no matter your background.
A More Inclusive Future
Entrepreneurship shouldn't be a club with a closed door. It should be a creative mindset, a set of tools, and a way of working that’s open to everyone.
By rethinking how we present and practice entrepreneurship—by respecting disciplinary diversity and challenging our own assumptions—we can start to build innovation ecosystems that are truly interdisciplinary.
If you're a student, educator, or just someone with an idea to explore, take the first step. You don’t have to call yourself an entrepreneur to start acting like one.
