Planting the Seeds of Agility: Adapting the Entrepreneurial Leadership Bridge Model (ELBM) for European K-12 Education

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-599-7_25How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Entrepreneurial Leadership; K-12 Education; ELBM; Entrecomp; Emotional Intelligence; AI in Education; Service Learning; Psychological Safety; European Skills Agenda

Abstract

This chapter adapts the Entrepreneurial Leadership Bridge Model (ELBM), originally designed for higher education, to the developmental realities of European primary and secondary (K-12) schooling. The adaptation responds to a growing recognition that current K-12 systems across the European Union remain anchored in a managerial-transmissive paradigm that privileges procedural compliance and standardised recall over the adaptive, opportunity-oriented competencies that contemporary economies demand. Drawing on developmental psychology, the European EntreComp framework, and the UNESCO AI Competency Framework for Students, the chapter reconceptualises the four ELBM competence domains, entrepreneurial cognition and value creation, self-leadership and emotional resilience, relational and team leadership, and intercultural and ethical leadership, for learners aged approximately six to eighteen. The staged-authenticity architecture of the original model is reframed as a three-level progression: micro-practice through classroom simulations and gamified learning; applied projects through service learning and cross-border virtual collaborations; and ecosystem immersion through school cooperatives and engagement with local innovation hubs. A dedicated analysis examines how artificial intelligence can function as a cognitive scaffold within each domain and level, supporting personalised feedback, scenario generation, and critical evaluation skills, whilst preserving the primacy of human judgement and ethical reasoning. The chapter proposes a K-12 competence rubric mapping all four domains against the three bridge levels, and aligns the framework explicitly with the European Skills Agenda. The contribution moves the discourse from education about entrepreneurship to education for entrepreneurial leadership, arguing that the formation of adaptive, ethically grounded agency must begin well before tertiary enrolment.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this license to share adapted material derived from this chapter or parts of it.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Domagoj Hruška
AU  - Delia Elena Mateiaş
AU  - Oliver Christ
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/07/31
TI  - Planting the Seeds of Agility: Adapting the Entrepreneurial Leadership Bridge Model (ELBM) for European K-12 Education
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Management and Entrepreneurial Leadership for K-12 Education Excellence (LEADK12 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 397
EP  - 418
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-599-7_25
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-599-7_25
ID  - Hruška2026
ER  -