Student Entrepreneurship Mentorship Handbook and Canvas

The Consortium of the Ideas to Impact (i2i) is proud to present the Mentorship Handbook and Canvas. These resources aim to support capacity building in organisations to deliver effective mentorship programmes.

This Handbook was developed through consultation with Programme Leaders at leading entrepreneur programmes in Europe and the United States, including student entrepreneur programmes in university settings.

Additionally, interviews were held with Programme Leaders in emerging ecosystems, who provided excellent insight into the unique challenges of establishing an effective mentor programme with limited resources.

Primarily, guidance was drawn from the startup ecosystem, where mentoring programmes are a well-established norm, and adapted for student entrepreneurship in the Higher Education Setting.

The findings of this work were presented in a virtual training and feedback session in August 2022. Breakout rooms following each segment allowed programme leaders in HEIs to provide feedback on the content, which was addressed in V1.0 of the Handbook and Canvas, presented here.

Feedback questions included: “What would you change?” “What would you omit?” “What would you add?” and/or “What open questions do you have?”. Additional feedback was requested from entrepreneur programme leaders with domain expertise, including staff from psychology departments in multiple institutions to inform the Mindset segment of the Mentor Canvas.