Teaching entrepreneurship

The major business schools are teaching entrepreneurship as a staple of contemporary business education. Some may question if entrepreneurship can be taught, the initial idea might not be able to be taught; that is inspiration, but the process to develop the idea is what is important.

It is argued plenty of young people naturally possess a natural entrepreneurial spirit; many have great ideas, but what they don’t possess is the technical skills to design a new product, process or service, build a business plan to finance and market their idea. In short, the idea is the easy part - making an idea commercially viable is the challenge and that is where networks count.  

A number of major entrepreneurial business were founded on shoe-string budgets. These high profile businesses began in garages and dorm rooms from Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founding Apple Inc in Steve Jobs parent's garage in 1976 to Bill Gates and Paul Allen started Microsoft in 1975 only a year earlier.

Eric Schmidt and Sergey Brin, both PhD students at Stanford University began Google as a research project in 1995; Mark Zuckerburg and Eduardo Saverin began Facebook in Harvard dorm rooms in 2004, but entrepreneurship is not limited to tech start-ups but these businesses are the most conspicuous in the new economy.

Business schools are creating venture labs where projects are developed and budding entrepreneurs are mentored by academic staff and input is provided peers. Industry experts may be brought in to provide technical advice and support; presentations made to angel investors, venture capitalists, bankers or grants officers to finance new ideas.

Business schools are positioned at the forefront of entrepreneurship; I fully believe entrepreneurship should be taught and supported at business schools bringing great ideas to fruition. People have great business ideas but so many start-up businesses fail in the first two years, it is great to see viable business ideas expand and offer employment opportunities to the population.