The following is a guest post by Cristian Dorobantescu of Small Business Entrepreneur Blog. He is responding to our post Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught from Tuesday.
Just the other day I read the article Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught? and seeing the comments I thought I might have something to say of my own as evaluating the importance of knowledge only at the College or University level is by no means a complete exercise.
Back in the beginning of 2006 I had the same dilemma. I posted about it Born or taught to be entrepreneur? and I couldn’t decide.
Now, a year and a half later, I think it is taught in more ways than just school and depends on several factors. First, if we think about the school time as the only moment an entrepreneur learns how to be an entrepreneur, we are going down a path with a wrong assumption. Because if you run a business, you start learning day one and stop at the exit day, it’s a continuous process. You go to conferences, you are helped by your legal advisor and you have situations to solve every day. And actually even right now, as you are reading this blog, you are learning entrepreneurship.
Then, it depends on the business owner type: some are Real Entrepreneurs and some are Good Professionals, as I once wrote. The highly trained professional is very good at his day by day job (could be a programmer, a lawyer or anything else) and his 9 to 18 daily work is not sufficient anymore. So he starts a business and some of them are really good at it. Does he have it in the blood or is it a slow and painful trial and error process, a learning process?
Or just look at the statistics. Most companies fail in some way or another in the first 5 years. That means their entrepreneurs didn’t get passing grades at their “entrepreneurship studies”?
On the other hand, entrepreneurship really depends on your geographical location. If you happen to be lets say… from Eastern Europe, then, these countries don’t have an entrepreneurship culture. Most people start their active life as employees, just because in a way or another that’s the way they are taught by their parents who have been employees all their life, by teachers that never tried the entrepreneurship path and by the society that says it’s safer to have a 9 to 5 job.
I always wanted to know more about entrepreneurship and ended up doing interviews with real life entrepreneurs on www.entrepreneur-interviews.com – and you know what? Entrepreneur start doing something, and, somewhere in the process, they learn to do it so well it becomes a business and a successful entrepreneurship experience. But still the word is … learn.
I did attend a business school. I don’t remember much about the classes, but I do know that they taught me think in a “business way”, at least. And I’m sure that if you learn in school how to approach investors, how to make a business plan or how to establish a price it will at least improve your chances to pass the “fail in 5 years myth”. You learn in school, you learn from your neighbor, you learn from blogs, books and everything else. In a way, Entrepreneurship IS taught. Just the teachers might be different.
Of course, entrepreneurship is like driving. Everybody can drive a car, but only a few are pilots.
Mihai Manoliu on August 10th, 2007 at 12:08 am
I totally agree what Cristian said in his article.
It is very hard for me as well to change my mentality from a simple employee to an Entrepreneur. All from my family were employees, and no one has the chance to even think in a different way. The regime of government from our country in the past impose some limitation regarding initiative in this direction.
It is for sure a problem that have been spread through generations until mine.
Passing through many jobs and opportunities my thoughts are different and many ways are opened, mentally speaking.
The faculty indeed was an important step in my life. Even at that time I consider that the classes are useless and many courses are imposed for filling the time, now I realize that all of them have a specific purpose: to change my way of thinking in a most complex way. Until now I didn’t start my own business as many others does, but I actively thinking to do it.
Sincerely,
Mihai