Necessity of Entrepreneurship Education
How much can one learn from behind the desk with eyes locked on a computer screen? A lot; yet not so much.
I am a huge advocate of learning through reading. Reading, I believe, is one of the best (sometimes the only) way to increase ones knowledge as well as the capacity to empathize (to be and to feel from another’s shoes). However, how many articles or books must you read before you can perform heart surgery? Put it differently, how many online articles or books must I read before you can trust me to perform heart surgery on you?
There are clear limitations to what we can gain and learn from merely reading. Argo there are clear limits to what students are learning today from a traditional class structure, wherein students read assignments and then gather for discussion or lecture. With so much information dispersed and shared via internet, technology, and social media, it’s easy to be under the delusion that we already have all the educational resources needed at the tip of our finger tips.
There are clear and evident benefits to simply going out there and trying things. That’s why internships, part-time jobs, and externships exist. These are all valuable. However, I advocate for more. All students (and I mean ALL, irrespective of future major or interest) ought to try their hand in entrepreneurship. The younger they learn, the better.
Entrepreneurship: Truly Holistic Approach
Entrepreneurship is often confused with business education. If so, that’s not the type entrepreneurship experience or education that I am advocating. University entrepreneurship competitions, like the University of Chicago’s New Venture Challenge, for example, provide an opportunity for students from all backgrounds (e.g., undergraduate, medicine, law, business, physics, economics, etc.) to rally under a great idea, form a team, and turn the idea into reality. Through this journey, students quickly learn, among so many other things, the importance of money or funds. After all, all projects, be they for-profit or not-for-profit, have to pay for the intern, the computers, the server, and whatever else is necessary to turn a good dream into reality.
12-Year-Old Entrepreneur
In this way, experiential entrepreneurship truly teaches holistic thinking to students. Take, for example, the 12-year-old entrepreneur Shubham Banerjee. Back in 2013 Shubham receives a flyer asking for donations for the blind. He closes his eyes and wonders, “How do blind people read?” When he asks his busy parents, they buzz him off to just go search on Google, where he finds out about braille and braille printing. The normal cost for a braille printer is $2000. “There has to be a better option,” he thinks. This is that critical moment when Shubham identifies a pain point and begins his entrepreneurial journey.
What Shubham does next is nothing short of amazing. He decides that he is going to try and build his own braille printer. So he gets a lego robotics kit and just goes for it. Shubham becomes an entrepreneur.
It takes some time, but after Shubman finishes his lego version, he doesn’t stop. He keeps at it tirelessly to improve the design and the processor to ultimately build a better version. When he finally sees braille printing smoothly and efficiently from his invention, Shubham decides that he wants to build more to help more people. So he launches a company, Braigo Labs. Within a year, he is building thousands of braille printers and really making a difference in lives.
Entrepreneurship Education is Prep for the Future
Unfortunately, not all students will have the opportunity and ideal conditions that Shubham had. First and foremost, Shubham lives in Silicon Valley. This means that he has access to mentorship, guidance, and community support that is unique and extremely rare for students that are from any other place in the world to come by. Secondly, he had parents (who live and work in Silicon Valley) that understood the value of experiential entrepreneurship education and who did not view Shubham’s pursuit as a waste of time or mere business education.
High School Entrepreneurship Programs
GATSVI, for example, recognizes this pain point and offers immersive summer entrepreneurship programs for high school students from all over the world to live, sleep, and launch a real company in Silicon Valley, the talent hotbed for entrepreneurial experience, development, and transformation. At this summer program I have witnessed teenagers transform from being shy and aloof to being talkative and gregarious. I have also witnessed teenagers go from being aimless to being purpose driven about academics in school. Entrepreneurship puts fire in the belly. It enables students to blend empathy, emotions and intelligence. It empowers students to take action.
The World Economic Forum hails the importance of preparing students for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) (See here). If 65% of future jobs don’t exist yet, then who will create those jobs? The entrepreneurs will. Thus, the important question we pose to educators and parents everywhere, isn’t whether entrepreneurship education is good, but whether we can afford not to give the gift of experiential entrepreneurship to our children.
