Entrepreneurship Education is Rapidly Changing

Entrepreneurial qualities such as skills in identifying and catching opportunities, pioneering innovation and technology, persevering through frustrating failures, and motivating oneself in a challenging environment can be learned by studying and practicing the tools and methods of entrepreneurship.

Highlights:

• Innovation and technology are being incorporated into entrepreneurship education.
• The challenge schools face regards teaching students to be creative problem-solvers in a changing and unpredictable environment.

Each trade has a master! So does entrepreneurship. From the belief that entrepreneurs are born, the times have evolved to date when it is believed that entrepreneurs need to be trained and taught, but somewhere they already inherit the traits of being an entrepreneur. To curb that view, we all need to understand that entrepreneurship does not have much to do with family backgrounds, experience, and, most importantly, failures; instead, it requires the insightful characteristic and some degree of interest that may turn into a passion if trained. Indeed, even from the 1980s, Drucker (2014) demonstrated his contradiction to the conviction that ‘business visionaries are conceived, not made.’ Drucker expressed that business enterprise is a discipline that could be educated. Heredity and qualities are not the components that choose the entrepreneurial limit of a person.

In the world of young entrepreneurs and start-ups, we need not to discuss why entrepreneurship is not associated with birth any longer; rather, we do need to enlighten the fact that entrepreneurs are made, and the process of making their demands is immensely programmed rather than merely being a course. Arogundade (2011) contended that entrepreneurship education needs to show future business people the application of self-reliance to create an environment that is socially new and all-around testing. Training is thus believed to help the entrepreneurial understudies with certainty and visionary contemplations, empowering their capacity to settle on choices concerned with social and monetary development.

The growth of Entrepreneurship Education can be measured by the fact that today, apart from being a separate field, entrepreneurship education is also taught and practiced with all other disciplines highlighting the vast scope of entrepreneurship. Also, the emphasis is laid on the proposal of introducing entrepreneurship education in early school. The reason for such an evolved view is young-entrepreneurs like Jack Bonneau, a twelve-year-old entrepreneur who decided to start a lemonade stand- Jack’s position when he was eight and forwarded the idea at ten that how other kids could join the start-up chain. Entrepreneurship Education, like other disciplines, is not just taught and learned but is practiced, and if done from the early stages, it may improve entrepreneurial efficiency. Business schools today invite and encourage students to take courses where they initiate a start-up and go about taking every necessary step that makes a business run, be it preparing the business plan, conducting market research, developing the initial idea, or getting investors to invest in their start-up. In parallel to this, students have mentors to seek guidance from – in fact, even after the course is over and students start a venture – the mentors are always available to guide them wherever needed. Such practices are marking a remarkable rise in the field of entrepreneurship learning.

For more information on the impact of Entrepreneurship Education and Student Innovation on economic growth, read “In the Creative Age, Entrepreneurship Education and Student Innovation are Key to Economic Growth.”

Teaching takes its best shape when it has a learning perspective, which is what entrepreneurship education concentrates on today. When we talk about the learning perspective, we are talking about the output: 1) What should be the output quality? 2) How to reach quality output? – The process. The two answers somehow depend on the other primary dimensions of entrepreneurship education which not everyone has the courage and understanding to deal with. Entrepreneurship teaching inculcates these essentials in the minds and behavior patterns of students or future entrepreneurs to strengthen the business fundamentals. These essential components are:

1. Opportunities: Awareness about identifying opportunities is an accustomed (valuable though) practice now but creating opportunities is the vogue. Creating an opportunity is what an entrepreneur should know because ‘Business is dynamic in nature’ demands an entrepreneurial mind to keep thinking about surviving in business irrespective of the highly competitive market, market penetration level, and other business scenarios. Identifying and creating opportunities is a must-have attribute required at every level, be it recognizing the start-up idea, making a pitch, finding an investor, reaching the masses through advertising or publicity, expansion, or any little aspect of the business. Another precise detail that entrepreneurs learn is about acting on opportunities. Each opportunity may become a big success if given the proper reaction at the right time in the right direction. Opportunities are created either out of challenges or needs and hence call for a different approach to deal with each.
2. Failure: When an individual thinks about starting a business, there are two main thoughts – Success and Failure of the company. No! Entrepreneurship education does not teach how to make enterprises complete success. Entrepreneurship is practical. Therefore, its education demonstrates each associated component precisely and educates about failure as a vital stepping-stone for any business. Failure may occur due to infinite changing, controllable or non-controllable reasons which are not sufficient to question the potential of any individual to be an entrepreneur. The trend in entrepreneurship learning enables individuals to understand that failures are a part of the business, and one needs to constantly demonstrate ideas, willpower, and stress-fighting capacities to overcome and deal with failure. Some schools are also introducing courses like – ‘Ready, Set, Fail’ to serve the same purpose.
3. Innovation and technology: Today, any business would want to reach all across the globe rather than being restricted to geographical limits. The key to getting there is newness and an accessible network that connects the world to that newness. Entrepreneurship learning is enabled by innovative ideas and technological resources that make the understanding and operating of the business environment easier. Entrepreneurship education is of no use if it does not build a framework for future entrepreneurs that makes processes less time-consuming and more relatable.

It feels glad to be a part of today’s growing world where entrepreneurship education is given immense importance. Today, business schools let students recite and practice the mantra- every problem is an opportunity! Contemplating the issues that arise in the surroundings and the world all over into a chance to prove one’s ability to be a visionary, problem-solver, and successful entrepreneur is encouraging. Entrepreneurship teaching, rather than focusing on what business will be profitable, draws the focus on what we need to have around us that makes it better for living and drives success.

Works Cited
Arogundade, B. B. (2011). Entrepreneurship education: An imperative for sustainable development in Nigeria. Journal of Emerging Trends in Educational Research and Policy Studies, 2(1), 26-29.
Drucker, P. (2014). Innovation and entrepreneurship. London, U.K.: Routledge.
Shulman, R. (2018). How 12-Year-Old Jack Bonneau from Shark Tank Is Leading the Way for Kid Entrepreneurs. Forbes. Retrieved 10 June 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/robynshulman/2018/02/23/how-12-year-old-jack-bonneau-from-shark-tank-is-leading-the-way-for-kid-entrepreneurs/?sh=18a67bc9521c.