Develop Your Model
of Entrepreneurship
An Evidence-Based Methodology for Teaching Entrepreneurship
The DYME Institute
The DYME Institute was established in 2018, by Dr. John Alver Dobson to provide entrepreneurs in developing economies with access to world-class entrepreneurial education.
The content of our program is based on what we know about effectively teaching entrepreneurship. Combining our team's decades worth of experience in research, practice, and teaching we have developed modules that will help entrepreneurs become more successful. The focus is on developing the necessary skills to improve the lives of entrepreneurs within marginalized communities in the developing world.
In response to the ineffectiveness of traditional entrepreneurial education, DYME Institute also aims to change the way entrepreneurship is taught around the world. The institute offers academic development for entrepreneurial educators, entrepreneurship workshops, and professional training.
Our Services
Academic Development
Faculty Teaching and Learning
Workshops hosted in Boston or your university that introduce faculty to the essence of Problem-based entrepreneurial education.
Curricular and Co-curricular Programming
We work with faculty and staff to develop effective courses and programming for their schools.
Entrepreneurship Pedagogy and Research
We examine the effectiveness of teaching approaches in developing entrepreneurs and create interventions that improve learning outcomes.
Entrepreneurship Workshops
Teaching
We bring together faculty who provide small-scale producers with world-class entrepreneurial education that improve livelihoods and markets through the development of the following skills:
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Entrepreneurship
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Sales/Marketing
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Accounting/Finance
Service Learning
Students are an essential part of our on-site projects. students engage in real-life problem-solving, while they help small-scale producers in developing countries.
Students build a garden for a family, supplementing nutritional needs. Surpluses are sold to earn extra family income.
Professional Training
Creativity and Innovation
We have developed an active learning tool-set igniting entrepreneurship within organizations. Enabling trainers to get the most out of their team.
Teaching and Learning Entrepreneurship
Trainers learn to successfully apply the DYME methodology. Fostering creativity while
creating entrepreneurial agency.
Facilitating Learning
Unpacking entrepreneurial theories to practice. Trainers learn about adult education teaching and learning methods related to how entrepreneurs learn to become entrepreneurs.
An Evidenced-Based Approach
Investments in entrepreneurial education are failing to develop entrepreneurs
Our research was based on the hypothesis that, current entrepreneurship teaching methods are undermining entrepreneurial intention for students interested in becoming entrepreneurs. We explored the effectiveness of traditional teaching approaches, which tend to rely on developing business plans and models that focus on teaching students about entrepreneurship, against a Problem-Based learning approach that uses action-learning methodologies designed to teach students entrepreneurship.
Using the Theory of Planned Behavior, which links one’s beliefs with their behavior, we compared the changes in attitudes and intentions of students in two introductory entrepreneurship courses. We examined results within and between groups. Data was collected at the start, middle, and end of courses.
Results support our hypothesis in that, current teaching approaches undermine students’ intention to become an entrepreneur. In contrast, exposing students to actual entrepreneurship results in statistically different outcomes. But the students must first learn the struggles and failures of entrepreneurship. Once they start figuring out product/market fit their attitudes and intentions about entrepreneurship go up. Students showed an increase in entrepreneurial activity at the end of the semester.