Founders' values and principles play a crucial role in shaping their company’s culture. However, finding and integrating these values into both personal and professional life can be challenging. The university course “Values and Principles Discovery” aims to help students find their own values and principles. This is crucial as it helps future entrepreneurs integrate their values into their ventures. This study investigates how the course helps founders find their values and principles and learn how to employ them. This qualitative study draws on semi-structured interviews of 51 students who found a company after graduation. The study presents a model illustrating how students discover their values and principles during the course and integrate and continuously re-evaluate their values and principles in their startups. The findings reveal that real-world case studies, guest lecturers, and a group assignment on defining company values contribute to finding their own values and principles and gaining the skill to define company values. These teaching methods help students identify their values, which then guide decision-making, conflict resolution, and finding value-aligned co-founders. Together, they transfer their personal values into company values, initiating the organizational value creation cycle in which they act, lead, and hire new employees who are aligned with their values. Our findings highlight the impact of education on the students’ formation, integration and re-evaluation of values and principles as a dynamic and ongoing process going beyond course completion. Moreover, this study has implications for character and entrepreneurship education and shows how young ventures create organizational culture.

Authors:
David Nawrath, Technical University of Munich, Germany
Jack Fuchs, Stanford University, United States

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