Can entrepreneurship be taught? LINKEDIN | 20 JUNE, 2016

Two disciplines that have stormed into the academic streams in recent times are innovation and entrepreneurship. There are courses in undergraduate programs and even specialist programs teaching entrepreneurship. The moot question is ‘Can it be taught?’

Academic courses help you acquire knowledge or skills. Where does entrepreneurship fit in? Is it meant to be a bunch of skills or a suite of knowledge? In either case, what are those? And how do you teach them?

Entrepreneurs are supposed to be risk takers. How do you teach risk taking? You may cover topics like risk assessment, but what knowledge or skill will help someone overcome fear with gumption or help that person develop comfort with risks and sleep well? Is there a way to impart the ‘sense’ that confirms the arrival of your idea? Not all entrepreneurs are patient enough to test ideas. In fact, many products and services are borne out of crazy experiments, which would fail in any organized test. So should we be teaching more logic to the students of this field or lateral thinking? How do we then measure adequacy of such ability?

Even in the era of data infestation, entrepreneurs tend to be driven by hunch rather than data. It is part of their psyche to double guess scenarios rather than build them from quantitative insights. They may not be completely data-agnostic but may embrace it when convenient. Is this aspect teachable?

Entrepreneurs do not think sequentially. Most of them will juggle many things at the same time and do not have a clear project plan. Educating them to plan before execution will not fly. Entrepreneurs are also very fuzzy about their thoughts on managerial issues affecting their business, not always for want of ‘how to do’ guides, but more from the urge to be different. In that respect they are rule breakers and may not even want to know the rules. This will require a ‘rule-breaker’ curriculum if it has to be taught!

Entrepreneurs may or may not have a financial plan before launching their business. The nature of product or service may not lend itself to short term forecasting of either costs or revenues. How would Google or Facebook have done their first budgets? Their implicit leap of faith cannot be translated to dollars and scents. How does one train them to develop ‘faith’ when justified and not to have that faith when seemingly not justified? – ‘justified’ according to what principle, any way?

Instinct, passion, belief, courage, confidence, drive to succeed, not taking ‘no’ for an answer, motivating co-investors or colleagues, getting up from a fall, trying again, coping with failure, coping with uncertainty, attitude to financial losses (hopefully small and temporary) and self-teaching ability are some defining characteristics of entrepreneurs. Which one of these can be taught through textbooks or other pedagogical forms? What will a degree in entrepreneurship really impart? How many successful entrepreneurs do we know who had a formal degree in the subject?

Case studies of other enterprises are not always likely to be useful either. The histories of Microsoft, Apple or Facebook are all well chronicled, with detailed accounts of their formative phases. Are we any wiser or more fit to wear our own entrepreneurial hat, based on reading these stories? Does teaching of templates from success stories work?

This begs the question – if they cannot be taught, are entrepreneurs born? I am not sure. I think sustained exposure to entrepreneurial environments does prepare one to appreciate the nuances and even develop convictions that form the basis of an entrepreneurial ‘mindset’. It’s non-algorithmic and therefore, more like learning to practise spirituality as opposed to learning to bicycle or to cook. I can cite a statistically insignificant sample size of ONE – my own case, as I managed to transition from a typical corporate career to co-found a decent-size enterprise and bring it to viability quickly. I may have been fortunate to imbibe osmotically the vital traits from sheer exposure and being in entrepreneurial situations in corporates. (I did not even have entrepreneurial role models in the family!). Apart from kindling the mind through discussions on entrepreneurs and enterprises, formal education in the subject is clearly an unproven quest.