Teaching Entrepreneurial Negotiation

Despite the importance of negotiation skills for entrepreneurs, the pedagogy of teaching negotiation to entrepreneurship students has not been fully developed. In some entrepreneurship programs, negotiation is covered briefly in a single class. In other programs, courses focused entirely on negotiation are available to entrepreneurship students; however, these classes are aimed primarily at those interested in pursuing corporate jobs within more stable environments. This article provides guidance to educators in designing, developing, and delivering negotiation content with an entrepreneurial focus. We explain why entrepreneurial negotiation education is needed and how it fills current gaps in entrepreneurship education. The article outlines a continuum of entrepreneurial negotiation, identifies the unique challenges faced by entrepreneurship students, unpacks the critical learning objectives in an entrepreneurial negotiation course, discusses how to reinforce core entrepreneurship concepts, and lays out a guide for teaching entrepreneurial negotiation by providing educational content that matches the key learning objectives.