Combine Education, Observation
Lewis Carroll once defined education as “reeling, writhing and different branches of arithmetic - ambition, distraction, uglification and derision.” Today’s young people want a better answer, however, when it comes to defining the kind of learning that is essential to a career as an entrepreneur.
Q. I’m a college sophomore and a business major, and would really like to start my own business someday. What type of education should I be seeking and where can I get it?
A. Unlike the sciences and other structured professions such as law and teaching, there’s no proven educational path for those seeking fame and fortune as venturers.
Studies show that, while successful entrepreneurs generally boast educational attainments beyond those of the average person, they typically trail the educational accomplishments of professional managers. Quite a few of the most successful “lead dogs” in venturing, like Bill Gates, dropped out before completing college.
Some experts believe that entrepreneurial talent is gene-sourced; you have to be born with it. However, a much larger body of evidence supports management guru Peter Drucker’s assertion that innovative behavior can be learned … but not in the same way we mastered our A,B,C’s.
Many colleges and universities have adopted one or more “entrepreneurship” courses into their curricula, but few have structured “majors” that focus primarily on discovering and developing entrepreneurial talent. Among the institutions that offer promising concentrations are Baylor, Babson, Wichita State, DePaul, and St. Thomas (Minneapolis).
Karl Vesper at the University of Washington has compiled a compendium of the syllabi of many of the entrepreneurship courses taught throughout the United States.
The most valuable courses have devised means of directly exposing students to information, situations, and knowledge application opportunities that are grounded in reality. When it comes to entrepreneurship, “experience is the best teacher.”
Traditionally, a teacher gave the pupil who gazed out of the classroom window poorer grades than the one who buried his nose in a book. Today, we know that imagination is as important as memorization, and that all the stuff we need to know won’t be found in books.
(As an entrepreneurship professor I always encourage my graduating seniors to supplement their four years of scholarly pursuit with some “how to” adult education courses, a good Dale Carnegie program, and some dancing and golf lessons … to get the tools necessary to profitably apply all of the nice knowledge they accumulated.)
Most entrepreneurs claim that it was what they saw, rather than what they studied, that gave them their key idea and the vision to successfully pursue it. They generally credit “previous experience” and a “keen eye” as the avenues to new venture discovery and the capacity to convert opportunity to profit.
Entrepreneurship is an art, not a science. The Greeks recognized that there were techniques (“techne”) that could not be explained in words, but learned only through apprenticeship and experience.
Therefore, the educational programs that are most successful are the ones that convert ad hoc experience into information, analogies, anecdotes and case studies that can be systematically conveyed.
This is not to say that you should forsake formal education. Experience without the means to understand it and the abilities to tap the potential it offers can produce as much frustration as a trip without a destination.
Brass Tacks Tip No. 29: Learn from everything you do whether it be listening to a lecture or watching ‘toons on TV. Your success in almost any venture will depend on your ability to combine formal learning and personal experience into a unique blend of actionable knowledge. As my ol’ uncle Ollie says: “The true EDGE is in knowlEDGE!”
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Paul Willax The Spokesman-Review