Purpose –Entrepreneurship teaching can allow students in technical high schools and universities to develop their management capacity to start new endeavours. Beyond being a career option for these graduates, management competences allow own businesses generate wealth in a locality and contribute to economic development and poverty reduction. This understanding of the social importance values the dissemination of knowledge about entrepreneurship in a more socially deprived region of the Santa Catarina state according to data from the Human Development Index. Design/methodology/approach – The methodological procedures of the research were predominantly qualitative. The used worldview was phenomenological, because it is basically the analysis of the report of the experiences of the authors. A positivist worldview with data treated quantitatively was used in connection with the literature data extraction and document. Originality/value – Federal Institute of Santa Catarina, founded in 1909 by the federal government of Brazil aiming to bring professional and technological education for the most economically disadvantaged sections of society. But only in 2010 Lages campus starts its activities, among them is the dissemination of an innovation and entrepreneurship culture among its students. The article is pierced by the strong farm culture present in Santa Catarina mountainous region, which prints to entrepreneurship teaching in these conditions a unique situation. Farm culture is strongly present in the local society. Searching for appropriated solutions to the local reality is essential in order to achieve concrete results and this feature ensures originality to this article. Practical implications – A society of farm culture traits prints a limiting view of innovation and entrepreneurship. The farm is the place where gives economic and political power to the figure of Colonel (latifundia owner). This farmer struggles to maintain order at the expense of any change. These aspects of tradition are opposed to a culture of innovation and impose an unwillingness to take commercial, legal and personal risks, risks inherent in this entrepreneurial activity. These students inserted in this culture perceive to be more “natural” perpetuate the history of their ancestors that depended on a “benefactor” to subsist. The article presents the design, methodologies used and its first results to demonstrate how it is possible to pierce cultural difficulties and print a sense of creativity, courage and entrepreneurship.
