Can entrepreneurship be taught or is it a talent to be born with?

After Wall street journal published the article „Teaching Entrepreneurship Gets anIncomplete“, educators, businessmen and future entrepreneurs started discussing if entrepreneurship can be taught or it is a talent to be born with.  

University of St. Gallen presented a video which denies 10 most common myths of starting a business proving that entrepreneurship can be learned. Entrepreneurs develop businesses using resources they have – their identity, competencies, and contacts. Business is not like baking a cake where you have the perfect recipe and go find the ingredients. It‘s the opposite. You see what you have and decide where you can get with this.

Debbie Kedar from Ben Gurion University notes that „Learning is always enriching - whatever you "do" with the knowledge and skills you gain!! Remaining open-minded and curious, willing and eager to expand your horizons is key to a full life - professional and otherwise.“ Carl Dahlberg, Independent Research Professional, thinks that „it is a good idea to teach many people about entrepreneurship. This type of mindset will help them and the organisations they work for. Will they become "the entrepreneur" probably not but they will bring with them and develop their approach to change and development.“ On the other hand, B.L. William Wong from Middlesex University is sure, that „it takes a certain type of personality to become an entrepreneur, e.g. risk taker, imaginative, wheeler-dealer, opportunist, extremely determined, willing to keep trying despite failure ... knowledge about such skills can be learned; but actually being very good at it requires that special "thing" that some are born with“. And this part calls for identity, which exactly is analyzed in the video as one of the main resources of entrepreneurship. 

An educational initiative ENTANGLE is tackling pedagogical competencies of entrepreneurship teachers promoting Business Model Canvas as a tool to teach students. In May 2014, project partner FITIN has organised ENTANGLE seminar for students interested in business education. 

ENTANGLE workshop in Vilnius, Lithuania

 

Although participants enjoyed the workshop a lot, some of the feedback came „I understood business was not for me“. This example illustrates that entrepreneurship is a mindset and thus requires a certain type of identity to be present. Knowing that, a person might well choose to be an employee instead of employer. On the other hand, companies prefer employees with an entrepreneurial mindset, capable to contribute to business success instead of plainly executing orders. 

To end with, every person is free to step outside the comfort zone and develop one’s personality to meet the challenges of entrepreneurship at one level or another.