The JOBS mentality is a four letter
word. There are ways to make it without looking to someone else to
pimp your skills and ability for a profit. NOT EVERYONE can do this,
but more can than currently do and the world is clamoring for people who
can do it on their own. IF you have a WSJ
subscription this is worth reading for the comments alone. I don't
know if Mr Aulet has ever started or run a business. I have formed
several corporations, made profit, sold them, some failed, some did just
OK but on balance has provided a good living. Most people don't know
how important FAILURE is. You must be prepared to flop and then get
back up again or you will never make it. Fear of Failure is the biggest
obstacle to success. This much I know for sure, those who have never
even run a lemonade stand can never succeed in business. From the
comment section, I agree with this:
Teaching entrepreneurship
is like teaching fishing. You can read up on it, but the only way you're
going to learn it is to DO it.
There are three things necessary to catch fish:
1. This fish gotta be there
2. They gotta be hungry
3. You gotta have your pole in the water
#3 is the most essential. You don't catch fish under any circumstances unless you're fishing.
That's pretty much the way business operates: the customers have to be
there, they have to want the product or service, and you have to be
there dangling the bait in front of their eyes and waiting for them to
bite.
FROM TODAY'S WSJ
Teaching Entrepreneurship Is in the Start-up Phase
Students are clamoring for instruction, but it's hard. There are no algorithms for success.
By BILL AULET
Forget medical school or law school. These days, record numbers of
high-school and college students say they aspire to be entrepreneurs. At
Yale University, for example, over 20% of the undergraduates indicate
that they are interested in pursuing entrepreneurship as a career.
Compare that with 1980, the year I graduated from Harvard. I didn't know
what the word "entrepreneur" meant—and neither did any of my friends.
There is good reason for this trend. Traditional career paths no longer
offer the security they once seemed to guarantee, and startups promise
young people independence, control and the possibility of making good
money.
As head of the Martin Trust Center for MIT MITD +1.92%
Entrepreneurship, I welcome this enthusiasm. But my excitement is
tempered by the reality that meeting the expanding demand with quality
educational offerings will be a significant challenge.
Teaching
entrepreneurship well is really hard. I know this because when I first
started teaching, I did a terrible job. As a former professional
basketball player and an experienced entrepreneur, I fell back on
convenient sports analogies: Work hard, be smart, stay up later, get up
earlier. Be prepared. I chose success, and you should too! My lectures
got high ratings from students, so I assumed they were effective.
I was wrong. Teaching entrepreneurship is difficult because the subject
itself is idiosyncratic, contextual and experiential. Unlike chemistry,
math or computer programming, there are no definite answers in the
startup world. By definition, entrepreneurs are doing the unknown and
the untried, so there are no algorithms for success.
Making
matters worse, there is a limited amount of scholarship and data that
exists on what makes startups succeed or fail. As a result, the
intellectual and scholarly vacuum is often filled by anecdotes. We've
all listened to a version of "it all started in the garage with $20."
Entrepreneurs are prone to mythologizing the early days of their
businesses, yet these stories mislead those who aspire to follow in
their footsteps.
Yes, entrepreneurs need the can-do spirit that
makes them believe they can build a successful company out of a
proverbial garage. But to succeed, they also need excellent execution
skills.
These skills can be taught. I've witnessed this at MIT.
Companies such as Hubspot, a marketing software company that employs
hundreds and is worth hundreds of millions of dollars was born in our
classrooms.
While entrepreneurship will never be fully like
law, medicine or accounting, colleges need to start thinking of
entrepreneurship as a discipline that demands similar academic rigor. At
MIT, we admit students with a passion for building companies; often
they have a particular idea they want to pursue. We bring in real
entrepreneurs who talk about how to meet a payroll, for instance, and
academics who make sure lessons are statistically valid.
The
combination is the key. By the time our students graduate, they should
know to build a successful team and bring breakthrough products to
market.
As the Kauffman Foundation has documented, the majority
of jobs that are created these days come from startups. These companies
are the country's economic lifeblood and often address problems in
critical areas like the environment, health care and education. The
entrepreneurs who devote their working lives to creating these companies
deserve more than what they seem to get from paying $50,000—and often
much more—for a degree.
So here is one pep talk I stand by:
Schools like MIT must do a better job of teaching entrepreneurship.
While we professors should encourage the spirit of a pirate in our
students, we need also to focus on teaching the execution skills of a
Navy SEAL. Our approach must be scalable to meet the surging demand.
If we don't, and students go out into the world lacking the
entrepreneurial skills they need, at some point there will be a backlash
against entrepreneurship as an educational discipline and even as a
pursuit in life. Such a setback is one that the U.S. economy can ill
afford.
Mr. Aulet's book, "Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup," was just published by Wiley.
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