Entrepreneurship has become the second most popular specialisation at leading business schools after finance, according to the latest Top MBA Applicant Survey. Some 27 per cent of MBA applicants would like to run their own businesses after graduating.

Many business schools offer electives on the subject, while there are a wealth of initiatives to encourage any student with a bright idea to test it out and carry it through. In America, Stanford, Wharton and Harvard are leaders in the field. In Europe, IE Instituto de Empresa, Insead and London Business School are investing in promoting start-ups and linking students with venture capitalists.

Meanwhile Saïd Business School’s annual event, Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford, brings leading entrepreneurs and venture capitalists for a networking session with students.

The Moffat Centre For Entrepreneurship at Edinburgh Napier University Business School provides a base where students can develop business ideas, along with advice and support on start-ups. In the past four years 70 businesses have been launched, with 55 still trading.

Susan Laing, director of the centre, says that “applications have escalated within the last three months, from people who have been made redundant or seek a change of career. The marketplace has changed completely but there are probably more opportunities if you have the right mindset.”

About a third of the MBA students at EM Lyon aspire to be entrepreneurs according to the dean Patrice Houdayer. “The school, which was started in 1872 by entrepreneurs from the silk industry, has entrepreneurship as part of its DNA.”

The focus of students has changed in the past few months. “They want to learn more about ethics and economic issues, and risk analysis.”

The advice to student entrepreneurs has also changed, says Keith Willey, associate professor of entrepreneurship at London Business School. “We used to say sketch out the concepts then raise the venture capital, but now it’s essential to start slow, test your ideas, think of different trajectories to take, stay low key.”

Manchester Metropolitan University Business School has appointed Marks Sims, managing director of Armadillo Sports, as an Entrepreneur in Residence for its Innovo Centre. Formerly commercial director of Kellogg UK and Ireland, he aims to help to bridge the gap between academia and industry.

For students, has all this emphasis on entrepreneurship helped them to build their businesses? Jonathan Benassaya was already an entrepeneur when he started his MBA at ESSEC, having founded and sold an online advertising agency. “My dream was to be an investment banker,” he says, “but after nine months I changed. At ESSEC we had two banker brothers teaching entrepreneurship who had built up several successful businesses. It was very exciting to share a vision with them, and they inspired me to start another company.”

Deezer.com, a music playing website that he founded with his business partner Daniel Marhely in 2007, was voted the most innovative website of 2007 ahead of Facebook. Benassaya believes that the technical skills learnt on an MBA course are useful, but it is the people – such as his inspirational professors – who contribute most to aspiring entrepreneurs.

Rob Roscoe also believed that his future lay in banking – in fact before going to Insead in 2004 he worked at Cazenove in New York. “I thought an MBA would be a useful way to go up the banking career ladder, but the dotcom bubble had just burst. Insead had a strong entrepreneurial culture, and I decided to set up a business as part of my management training.”

Four years later, his London-based business, The Handy Squad, a team that tackles household jobs, has a turnover of £1 million. “The most useful lessons of my MBA,” says Roscoe, “was focusing on what was a viable business. But I would have liked more opportunities to talk to business people about the potential pitfalls of setting up and running an enterprise.”

Simon Ling spent 18 months generating the money to pay for his MBA in entrepreneurship at Nottingham University Business School by fitting bathrooms. Clearly a born entrepreneur, he is using facilities at the university’s Enterprise Lab, which provides support at the start-up phase, and is already on the road to setting up his own business providing online support – for start-up businesses.

There is no substitute for experience

When Rob Dixon began a course on entrepreneurship for his MBA at Manchester Metropolitan University Business School he already had ten years’ commercial experience at Iveco (Fiat Trucks) and was running a sideline property investment business that he had started at 21.

The MBA inspired him to go into business full time. He now runs four businesses including Sash Window Restoration, which he started while renovating a house with 50 sash windows. Three years on he employs 13 people, with a £500,000 turnover.

He says the most useful aspect of his MBA was the section on the growth of businesses. “There is a danger that you become too involved in running the business. I try to build in 20 per cent slack to think about improving systems to grow us to the next level.”

But in some areas there is no substitute for real life. “You can theorise about managing people, but only experience teaches you to motivate them.”