As stated in numerous studies, entrepreneurship education is becoming more and more important everywhere in the world and research in entrepreneurship are growing and getting legitimacy in the scientific communities, however a few scholars have focused on the subfield of entrepreneurship education. Although the key to a successful entrepreneurship education is to find the most effective way to manage the teachable skills and identify the best match between student needs and teaching techniques, there is no universal pedagogical recipe to teach entrepreneurship and the choice of techniques and modalities depends mainly on the objectives, contents and constraints imposed by the institutional context. Education programs in entrepreneurship are a new phenomenon in Iran. These programs vary widely in terms of short term objectives, target audiences, format and pedagogical approach. The first M.Sc. entrepreneurship management program has been initiated in the University of Tehran in 2005. One of the basic courses in this entrepreneurship curriculum is "business planning". This paper attempts to identify the appropriate teaching methods in this course conducting two qualitative studies by semi-structured interviews. Results of the first study on a sample of experts in teaching methods complete the list of teaching methods that could be used in entrepreneurship education. The results of second study on a sample of lecturers of "business planning" course show that appropriate teaching methods of this course are respectively group project, case study, individual project, development of a new venture creation project, and problem-solving. Furthermore, in this study, the appropriate teaching methods in each component of this course have been presented.

Small and medium Enterprises (SMEs) play a key role to innovation, employment, and competitive advantage. One of the requirements for growth, creativity as well as entrepreneurship in societies is to study their failure process. The purpose of this survey study was to investigate factors which affect business failure from successful versus unsuccessful entrepreneurs' points of view. Our sample includes 120 entrepreneurs in newly established small businesses who work in Iranian industry sector. Data was gathered through questioners around general themes of "immediate environment", "general environment", "manager/entrepreneur", and "corporate policy". Our findings show a significant difference between successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs' viewpoints and also prioritize the business failure factors.

The majority of Entrepreneurship studies have focused on Business success while little information regarding Business failure exists. However our knowledge of entrepreneurship is not complete without recognition of the business failure. Also, more researches in this field have been done in developed countries and it is limited studies in those countries where economic, social, cultural and political differ. Individual factors are the main ones affecting the entrepreneurial process. This is a study on a sample of new established small businesses in industry sector. First, in qualitative study, interview analysis of 10 semi-structured interviews lead to identified four groups of individual factors including motivations, skills, capabilities, and characteristics. Then, these individual factors have been evaluated in a sample of 158 unsuccessful businesses and data analysis of 52 complete questioners pointed out that “Lack of crisis management skills” and “Lack of marketing, financial and human resource management skills” are the main individual factors affecting business failure in new established small businesses in industry sector.

In spite of paying much attention to social entrepreneurship in academia, such is not the case in social entrepreneurship organizations. Although to fulfill economic and social missions, managers are required to possess economic and social competencies, only few studies investigated this important subject. The present study aims to identify the social entrepreneurship competencies of managers in social entrepreneurship organizations in the field of healthcare. Purposive sampling was used in the population of managers of social entrepreneurship organizations in the field of treatment and prevention of specific diseases (such as cancer, MS, thalassemia, etc.) and also social entrepreneurship organizations in the field of treatment and empowerment of the disabled. Eight managers in this field were interviewed and data was analyzed by open and axial coding using ATLAS.ti software. In total, 42 competencies have been identified in 10 categories and 5 main dimensions including communication competencies, personal competencies, managerial competencies, social competencies and health professional entrepreneurial competencies.

Despite the impressive growth in the number of firms run by women entrepreneurs, most of these businesses continue to remain small and women-owned firms have not grown as fast as male entrepreneurs. There are many reasons that may help explain the growth limitations in women-owned firms. Among all, growth orientation is an important factor. A common finding in entrepreneurship literature shows that ventures owned by women tend to be smaller than those by men are. This difference can be due to individual, organizational and environmental factors.Since half of Iran's population is women who are more willing to have higher education and contribution in the society, they deal with more challenges rather than their male counterparts. So attention to the factors affecting growth orientation of their ventures is the same as deliberate economic development and national income. This is a qualitative study to identify environmental factors affecting growth orientation of women entrepreneurs. Data analysis of 10 semi-structured interviews on a sample of women entrepreneurs indicated environmental factors in three groups of "economic", "socio-cultural" and "legal" factors.