Future Proof
Surround yourself
with expertise
Dr Spinder Dhaliwal
Reader in Entrepreneurship and Director
of Postgraduate Programmes,
Westminster Business School
Are entrepreneurs born or bred? It may be expected
that you would be more entrepreneurial if you grew
up in a family of entrepreneurs. This is not always the
case. Snapchat founder, Evan Spiegel, was not born into
a family of entrepreneurs; his parents were lawyers in
Los Angeles, and he later went to Stanford University,
where he developed Snapchat as a class project.
The skills young people have today are vital. Young
entrepreneurs are more tech savvy, having grown up
with the internet, smartphones and the instantaneous
nature of social networking. They expect immediate
results. Can attributes such as risk taking, drive and
determination be acquired? I don’t think so. What you
can do as an entrepreneur is surround yourself with
people who possess the capabilities and traits you may
lack. Self-awareness is key.
It’s amazing that some still argue it’s not possible to
teach entrepreneurship, that it’s all about personality
and psychological characteristics. They argue the
requisite talent and temperament needed to be an
entrepreneur cannot be learned. But this could be said
of all professional occupations. No-one would dispute
that it’s possible to learn medicine, law or engineering,
but there are doctors, lawyers and engineers who have
natural talent and others who do not.
Similar reasoning can be applied to entrepreneurship
and entrepreneurs. There is no doubt that it is possible
to educate and train individuals for entrepreneurship,
but – as with the other disciplines we mentioned – you
cannot be certain that these individuals have natural
talent, nor can you guarantee their success.
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Experience over
education
Nigel Lockett
Professor of Entrepreneurship,
Lancaster University Management School
With the number of people registered as self-employed
increasing by 700,000 since 2008, the UK is rapidly evolving
into a nation of entrepreneurs. Freelancing is becoming
mainstream, driven by the 'Uber economy'. This growth
in entrepreneurship has also given rise to 5 million small
businesses which, in turn, employ more than 12 million
people (a third of the workforce).
For many, a portfolio career includes a period of
entrepreneurship. The UK Government’s 2014 Enterprise
for All report stressed the need to “create lifelong experience
of enterprise in education, from primary school to university
and beyond".
But can you really teach entrepreneurship? According
to Enterprise Educators UK, it’s a resounding "yes". But,
then, they would say that, being the UK’s largest network
for enterprise educators. They support their members to
“increase the scale, scope and effectiveness of enterprise
and entrepreneurship teaching within their organisations”.
Again, Babson College in the US, probably the world’s
leading proponent of entrepreneurship education,
says "yes": it has made a business out of educating the
enterprise educators and provides annual Symposia for
Entrepreneurship Educators.
My own experience as an entrepreneur, and now an
academic and educator, confirms a complex mixture of
innate characteristics; skills acquired through education
and experience; and an appreciation of the value of social
networking. Millennials, brought up on social media,
intrinsically appreciate the latter. And, through experiencing
enterprise education, whether at school or university, they
can tick two of the boxes.
They still need entrepreneurial characteristics, however: a
thirst for achievement; over-optimism; a propensity for risk
taking; desire for autonomy; locus of control (belief that you
have control over your environment) and creativity. I accept
that some people are born with more of these characteristics
than others, but experience can bring these out in most of us.