The Future of Education

Entrepreneurship education in higher education increasingly emphasises innovation, authenticity and experiential learning, yet limited research has examined how business educators’ personal entrepreneurial practice informs innovation pedagogy. This paper presents an innovation-focused self-study of professional practice that explores how the author’s dual role as a micro-entrepreneur and business educator enriched student learning and supported ongoing business development through the application of the 4Ps of Innovation framework [1]. Drawing on reflective self-inquiry, professional teaching artefacts and curriculum design decisions, the study examines how product, process, position and paradigm innovation were modelled through lived micro-enterprise practice and embedded within entrepreneurship teaching. The findings suggest that using the 4Ps as a reflexive bridge between theory and practice enabled students to engage with innovation as an accessible, iterative and sustainable activity, while simultaneously informing continuous improvement within the micro-business. While context-specific, the study offers analytically transferable insights and a practice-informed framework that other entrepreneurship educators and practitioner-researchers can adapt.