Bioentrepreneurship remains an emerging and conceptually elusive field that requires students to engage with diverse forms of knowledge, judgement and practice across disciplinary and professional boundaries. Yet, little is known about how students experience learning within this field or what these experiences reveal about the knowledge and practices that constitute bioentrepreneurship This study explores what students perceive as troublesome when learning bioentrepreneurship and how they navigate these challenges, while also contributing to the understanding of student learning and to the conceptualisation of bioentrepreneurship itself.
This study uses “troublesome knowledge” and “ways of thinking and practising” to explore what students perceive as challenging when learning bioentrepreneurship and how they navigate these challenges. The study draws on semi-structured interviews with 13 students and alumni and a group interview with four faculty members. The data were analysed using a reflexive thematic approach.
Two themes were developed: (1) “The inherent ambiguity of bioentrepreneurship”, capturing transitions between the integration of natural and social sciences and (2) “Engaging with the practical realities of bioentrepreneurship”, by applying theory, balancing the self and the collective and adapting a (bio)entrepreneurial mindset.
The study combines the concepts of “troublesome knowledge” and “ways of thinking and practising” to explore learning in bioentrepreneurship, offering a novel analytical approach to an emerging interdisciplinary field. By examining students’ experiences, it generates new insights into bioentrepreneurship learning and contributes an empirically grounded conceptualisation of bioentrepreneurship as a practice of navigating and bridging disciplinary, professional and epistemological boundaries.
