Teaching our next generation of entrepreneurs

The perception of entrepreneurial opportunities and the ability to exploit them are strongly associated with social norms that foster risk, such as the availability of venture capital, access to developing technologies, a quality education system for diverse entrepreneurship, and a strong professional infrastructure. This has considerable implications for the UK business economy.

Entrepreneurship education, at all levels, could very effectively prepare and train students to start and run new businesses. This type of education is strong and growing in business schools across the country, but it needs to proliferate outside of business. Very few students take business subjects, and not all business school students are required or choose to take an entrepreneurship course. Therefore, the number of people exposed to high-level business education is relatively small in the UK. Therefore, it is essential that entrepreneurship education be expanded.

Engineering and other technology graduates have the ability to generate innovations that can be the foundation of high-growth companies. They need to learn techniques to discern whether or not such innovations have commercial potential. As such, universities should encourage the integration of their degree requirements between entrepreneurship/management and engineering/technology.

However, there are often many obstacles to such collaboration, including funding issues; credit assignments; faculty teaching loads; schedule conflicts, and lack of available facilities. While a handful of schools are facing and overcoming these issues, there is a real need to see more active collaboration on college campuses.

There must also be a more concentrated effort to introduce entrepreneurship and basic economic principles at the primary and secondary levels. At the primary level, these concepts could be integrated throughout the curriculum. At the secondary level, business skills and basic economic principles could be offered as stand-alone courses. Many people enter the workforce without a college education and do not have the responsibility of exposure to business training.

While not all school graduates have the ability or desire to pursue a higher education, nearly all have the potential to start a new business. The average high school graduate may not start a fast-growing high-tech company, but may start a landscaping business, retail business, or some other venture that will employ other people and contribute to economic adjustment. As such, it is critical to provide at least the basic instruction to ensure that these would-be entrepreneurs have the understanding and some level of proficiency in the skills necessary to implement and run a business.

To avoid duplication problems, several national experts recommend the establishment of a ‘clearing house’ for government programs. A clearinghouse, perhaps web-based, could provide an efficient means for entrepreneurs to gain knowledge about and access specific programs.

In addition, there is also a need to ease compliance pressures on entrepreneurial companies. Simplifying compliance requirements would improve business efficiency at the most critical times in the life of the business. Many new businesses report that they have difficulty staying on top of all the reporting requirements. Additionally, reducing the required paperwork would reduce manpower constraints on new businesses, thus increasing their chances of surviving the first few years.

There is also a reported ‘gap’ in early stage funding. If the gap exists, it may be more pronounced in different industries, different geographic regions, or for different groups of employers. The substantial amount of financing provided through informal channels, orders of magnitude larger than that provided by formal venture capital investments and hitherto unknown and underappreciated, suggests that some mechanisms to fill the gap may have developed without recognition.

There may not be a gap in the availability of such capital, but rather in the entrepreneur’s knowledge of where it resides and how to harness it. Experts may be divided on whether a seed capital gap exists due to the fact that many entrepreneurs choose not to put up with the time, cost, and red tape involved in searching and seizing such capital.

Increasing the visibility of entrepreneurs by highlighting their story could be an attractive way to encourage others to pursue their own business opportunities. It reflects the widespread acceptance of entrepreneurship as a career option in the UK.

In the absence of a more comprehensive long-term research program on the entrepreneurial process, UK government policies towards start-up and growth businesses will continue to fluctuate in reaction to political whims and pressures from special interest groups. . Therefore, it is essential that a greater understanding of the principles underlying entrepreneurship is ensured to ensure sustained growth in the business sector.