Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) presents unprecedented challenges and opportunities for entrepreneurship instructors. This conceptual paper aims to pair insights from the entrepreneurial cognition literature with current research on GenAI to propose a dynamic role-based framework and actionable pedagogic strategies for integrating GenAI into business planning assignments, a central facet of contemporary entrepreneurship education.
The study begins by reviewing the history of business planning in entrepreneurship education, then analyzes GenAI’s strengths and weaknesses across the common stages involved in producing a quality business plan: problem discovery and definition, and solution discovery and definition. Drawing on recent research, the study posits that GenAI is particularly advantageous in the divergent stages of this process (problem and solution discovery). Still, it has limitations in assimilating the complex ethical and situational understandings required to arrive at the “best” and actionable outcomes produced in the convergent stages (problem and solution definition).
The study outlines a holistic pedagogical approach that integrates current and future GenAI alongside cognitive processes typical to business planning and the “soft” and “hard” skills required for successful business planning. This approach ensures that GenAI serves as a complement, not a substitute, for students’ entrepreneurial education by maintaining opportunities for aspiring entrepreneurs to develop the critical thinking and failure-informed resilience necessary to cultivate their entrepreneurial mindsets and competencies.
In this paper, the authors introduce a series of differentiated and dynamic roles that instructors, students and GenAI might adopt during the business planning process. Adopting this roles-based approach to the use of GenAI in business planning pedagogy can enable educators to enhance the quality of new venture assignments without depriving students of the opportunity to experience small failures and develop the critical thinking skills that are antecedents of their future personal growth and entrepreneurial success.
