Can entrepreneurship be taught?

This is an often asked question! Everything can be taught - the real question is can it be learnt? By Shailendra Vyakarnam

Entrepreneurship is defined as a process of taking an idea and turning it into a business. So the skills, knowhow and concepts for such a process can be taught. But whether the person who takes such a course will actually do it is something else and is wholly dependent on several inter-related factors;

First the individual needs to look in the mirror and ask if this is what they really want to do. Becoming an entrepreneurial individual is hard work, demanding on time and emotion and rewards are not always easily secured.

Secondly, Is the opportunity big and exciting enough? Will the opportunity light a fire in the belly - to provide that determination to succeed, find out everything, do the work, meet people and ensure that the rewards ultimately justify the effort? For some people this might be a quiet small business in the community, for others it may be to solve world poverty and for yet other people it may be to do with some form of a growing venture. Whatever it is - the opportunity must seem to be exciting enough to get going. In reality this perception of reward is linked to risk taking which is our next factor.

Risk taking is yet another myth in enterprise. Entrepreneurs do not set out to take risks. What they have is a higher sense of risk tolerance. Where some people see risk they do not. So, if you flip the coin you might say that people who are not entrepreneurial are those who are "risk avoiders" or have a heightened sense of risk when there is none.  In business, the risks are threefold:- personal reputational; financial and business. The reputational risk is a matter of perception - because unless the individual is being fraudulent or has left common sense behind at home there is no reputational risk, just a wounded ego.  Financial and business risks are real and have to be managed - so this comes down to education, mentoring and taking good advice from people who have been there and done it before. In other words it can be taught and managed.

Is the risk to have tried and failed or to have never tried at all?

In addition to the nature of the opportunity, there needs to be some inner drive or ambition. What difference do we want to make in the lives of others, to the planet, our society, community, family and friends? If we have an ambition to make a difference, this will provide us with a serious source of entrepreneurial intention, which is a good starting place for learning and taking action.  The role of entrepreneurial learning then would be to help unlock this ambition and spirit from which some of the other elements would then lock together.

With ambition the individual will also need bucket loads of confidence and self-belief. Entrepreneurs need to possess a very high level of self-belief, almost to the point of upsetting people around them. They will regularly get so much negative feedback - they will need to have a very strong resilience and belief in their vision and values. If they do not believe in themselves who is to believe in them?

The bottom line is of course that entrepreneurs need skills. They have to be able to operate in small groups, in teams, to raise money, sell, manage people and customers. They need know-what and know-how. Better if they have a strong sense of self-awareness because then they can work in teams and add complimentary skills to their ventures.

And finally they need to have personal circumstances that enable them to get into enterprise. At one level they need to feel "safe" so that they can push their comfort zones. Equally they may have no choice but to take an entrepreneurial career. People who have dependent family, large debts or other constraints may have to delay their entrepreneurial careers.

It does not matter if you believe that entrepreneurship can be taught. It is far more important that you believe you have it in you and in the current economic climate - better try and find out!

Dr. Shailendra Vyakarnam is Director  of Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning at Judge Business School - University of Cambridge