“Every historical undertaking,” Merleau-Ponty affirmed, “has something of an adventure about it, as it is never guaranteedby any absolutely rational structure of things. It always involves a utilization of chance; one must always be cunning with things (and with people), since we must bring forth an order not inherent in them.” Despite Merleau-Ponty's warning there are, if not inherent structures in the German and French education systems, at least historical ones that – as just described in chapter 3 – shaped the management education reforms in both countries after the war. Because of their persistence they also affect the insinuation of entrepreneurship studies into the German and French systems of higher education. Before plunging into this subject, however, it is best to begin with some preliminary observations about what constitutes the Americanization of entrepreneurship education, and with a few remarks about how the discussion will be handled.

An Americanization beyond language adjustments and technology transfer

The first chapter briefly considered the language adjustment that encounters with Silicon Valley produced in the French and German worlds of thought and language. This analysis can easily be extended to the language that Europeans used when describing the nature of the entrepreneurial process. A random search through French and German periodicals on start-ups shows as much. The authors' perusal of several publications that were at hand gave the following results: en High Tech, Das Entrepreneurship Forum, bei Start-Ups, le business plan, Businesspläne, le coaching, Coach und gezieltes Feedback, le venture capital, l'incubateur, der Venture-Track, and numerous other instances of fractured French, franglais and German English that American contacts have induced.