Can Entrepreneurship be educated ?

On January 15th, 2008, I was in panel discussion, under the DEG Symposium http://www.entrepreneurship.org/events.aspx .

The title of the panel discussion was “Entrepreneurship Education “

I had two very experienced entrepreneurship educators, with me as the speaker on the panel. Prof Harkesh Kumar Mittal on behalf of National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board , Government of India and Prof William Scott Green of University of Miami.

Being sometime in Entrepreneurship education , on both online and offline format , I was very eager to ask the question , which I faced many times, while conducting my classes on Entrepreneurship, in Business Schools, earlier in IIM-Calcutta and later in ISB&M Calcutta.

Can Entrepreneurship be educated?

Both agreed, yes it can be.

There was another deeper question , which I ask sometimes to myself , which goes this way.

If ‘Innovation’ is the Key thought and activity surrounding the profession of ‘entrepreneurship’, can a phenomenon as ‘disruptive’ as innovation be created in a structured learning environment ?

I asked this question to both of them .

There reaction was .... that innovation is ‘disruptive’ ,and it is not so easy to create it, in a structured learning environment. However some efforts could be made , that people better understands about innovation and Entrepreneurship. And the most important of it , should be on educating entrepreneurship as a life skill.

My Journey with i2i from 2005 to 2008

In 15th Feb,2005 ,I was a Judge of the Business plan Competetion 'Ideas to Implementation'organised by IIM-Calcutta.There were teams from all over India.And the team from IIT-Kgp SAVedU won the prize.You can get more details about the competetion using the following link -

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050215/asp/calcutta/story_4377522.asp

In 1st Feb,2008 , I was looking after some of the process design of the same Business plan Competetion 'Ideas to Implementation' organised by IIM-Calcutta. The nature of the prizes where different , then the earlier cash prize given at 2005. This time ,wining teams could straight away get the seedfund to start thier venture. Following links carry more details.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080202/jsp/calcutta/story_8852110.jsp

I2i 2008 created a great positive response, from the aspiring entreprenuer ,then the earlier version, due to the innovation on prizing process.

Life , Business & Chess

Life is non linear. Chess is not . It takes things definitly. So the competitors know ,there are fixed movements a pawn can have . It is a pure logical game. You do not have such definite and fixed movements of the pawns , incase of life . There is no fixed rule. Things change .

So there is a very important question come here .

We Can plan things for Chess , But can we do it in case of Life ?

It's right that chess is a kind of ideal enviroment . Plans can work there very well.Infact, it is designed in such a way that plans can work. It is less disruptive . More structured and linear.

Life is not like that . It is suprising . It is disruptive . And it is non-linear. The role what plans play in chess , the same role cannot be in life.

The objective of planning in Life is to make that intial preparation for you that you can hadle change and adapt .

The same happens in case of business , which is also full of suprises. As business is a part of economic life .