THE RELEVANCE OF ENTREPRENEUR TRAINING OR EDUCATION IN OUR SOCIETY

THE RELEVANCE OF ENTREPRENEUR TRAINING OR EDUCATION IN OUR SOCIETY

INTRODUCTION

Entrepreneurship is a key driver of our economy. Wealth and a high majority of jobs are created by small businesses started by entrepreneurially minded individuals, many of whom go on to create big businesses. People exposed to entrepreneurship frequently express that they have more opportunity to exercise creative freedoms, higher self esteem, and an overall greater sense of control over their own lives. As a result, many experienced business people political leaders, economists, and educators believe that fostering a robust entrepreneurial culture will maximize individual and collective economic and social success on a local, national, and global scale. It is with this in mind that the National Standards for Entrepreneurship Education were developed: to prepare youth and adults to succeed in an entrepreneurial economy.

Entrepreneurship education is a lifelong learning process, starting as early as elementary school and progressing through all levels of education, including adult education. The Standards and their supporting Performance Indicators are a framework for teachers to use in building appropriate objectives, learning activities, and assessments for their target audience. Entrepreneurship education helps student acquire skills and experiences that will enable them to develop the insight needed to discover and create entrepreneurial opportunities; and the expertise to successfully start and manage their own businesses to take advantage of these opportunities.

Who is an entrepreneur?

'Entrepreneur' is an individual who, rather than working as an employee, runs a small business and assumes all the risk and reward of a given business venture, idea, or good or service offered for sale. The entrepreneur is commonly seen as a business leader and innovator of new ideas and business processes. (www.investopedia.com /terms/e /entrepreneur.asp)

According to Schumpeter, an entrepreneur is some one willing and able to convert a new idea or invention into a successful innovation.

Cantillon defined the term as a person who pays a certain price for a product and resells it at an uncertain price: "making decisions about obtaining and using the resources while consequently admitting the risk of enterprise." The word first appeared in the French dictionary entitled "Dictionnaire Universel de Commerce" compiled by Jacques des Bruslons and published in 1723.

Entrepreneur is defined as an individual who organizes or operates a business or businesses. 

An entrepreneur is someone who exercises initiative by organizing a venture to take benefit of an opportunity and, as the decision maker, decides what, how, and how much of a good or service will be produced. (http://www.businessdictionary. com/definition/ entrepreneur.html).

An entrepreneur supplies risk capital as a risk taker, and monitors and controls the business activities. The entrepreneur is usually a sole proprietor, a partner, or the one who owns the majority of shares in an incorporated venture.

According to economist Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883-1950), entrepreneurs are not necessarily motivated by profit but regard it as a standard for measuring achievement or success. Schumpeter discovered that they

1.   Greatly value self-reliance,

2.   Strive for distinction through excellence,

3.   Are highly optimistic (otherwise nothing would be undertaken), and

4.   Always favor challenges of medium risk (neither too easy, nor ruinous).

Successful entrepreneurs have the ability to lead a business in a positive direction by proper planning, to adapt to changing environments and understand their own strengths and weakness.

The entrepreneur is commonly seen as an innovator — a generator of new ideas and business processes. Management skill and strong team building abilities are often perceived as essential leadership attributes for successful entrepreneurs. Political economist Robert Reich considers leadership, management ability, and team-building to be essential qualities of an entrepreneur.

The entrepreneur's creativity finds ways for the ideas to enter the marketplace and be of benefit to all of society. Incidentally, entrepreneurs also reward those who came up with the new ideas in the first place, which encourages them to make more and better creations. People are much more likely to be creative and productive when they are promised a reward than when they are threatened with punishment if they don't create. This promise of a reward is called incentive, and incentives are possible only when there is profit.

The entrepreneur makes sure this situation happens, because when the others profit, so does the entrepreneur. He or she is no different from other members of society: The entrepreneur wants a comfortable life, and he or she realizes that the best way to do this is to get the cooperation of others. That is achieved by appealing to what motivates others, because people tend to do what's in their best interest. In a free market, no one can be forced to do anything against their interest, so the entrepreneur must motivate and organize for everyone's benefit.

What is an entrepreneurship?

Entrepreneurship is the capacity and willingness to develop, organize and manage a business venture with any of the its risks in order to make profit.

For Schumpeter, entrepreneurship resulted in new industries and in new combinations of currently existing inputs. Schumpeter's initial example of this was the combination of a steam engine and then current wagon making technologies to produce the horseless carriage. In this case the innovation, the car, was transformational, but did not require the development of dramatic new technology. It did not immediately replace the horse-drawn carriage, but in time, incremental improvements reduced the cost and improved the technology, leading to the modern auto industry.

Theorists Frank Knight and Peter Drucker defined entrepreneurship in terms of risk-taking. The entrepreneur is willing to put his or her career and financial security on the line and take risks in the name of an idea, spending time as well as capital on an uncertain venture. Knight classified three types of uncertainty:

• Risk, which is measurable statistically (such as the probability of drawing a red color ball from a jar containing 5 red balls and 5 white balls).

• Ambiguity, which is hard to measure statistically (such as the probability of drawing a red ball from a jar containing 5 red balls but with an unknown number of white balls).

• True uncertainty or Knightian uncertainty, which is impossible to estimate or predict statistically, such as the probability of drawing a red ball from a jar whose number of red balls is unknown as well as the number of other colored balls.

Entrepreneurship is often associated with true uncertainty, particularly when it involves something truly novel, such as a market that did not previously exist.

RELEVANCE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP TRAINING

The importance of entrepreneurship training in the new economy also goes beyond empowering people wishing to start their own businesses. Entrepreneurship education has become critical important to people who want to follow the so-called professional routes, like becoming doctors, lawyers, accountants and engineers. The financially successful professionals in the new economy will have to be entrepreneurs as well.

Entrepreneurship education has a positive impact on the entrepreneurial mindset of young people, their intentions towards entrepreneurship, their employability and finally on their role in society and the economy.

The following objectives are to be reached through entrepreneurship education:

1.   Improvement of the entrepreneurship mindset of young people to enable them to be more creative and self-confident in whatever they undertake and to improve their attractiveness for employers.

2.   Encourage innovative business start-ups;

3.   Improvement of their role in society and the economy. The demand for entrepreneurial learning has been and is still steadily increasing.

However, there are a number of obstacles hindering the uptake of entrepreneurship education, such as a shortage of human resources and funding for this type of education. In addition, there has been a tendency in academic/teaching communities to perceive entrepreneurship education exclusively with learning how to start and run a business. More insight into the impact of entrepreneurship education can contribute to overcome these obstacles.

The key role of entrepreneurship education must not be disregarded. In addition to equipping young people with the skills needed for the 21st century, entrepreneurship education is a means to increase social inclusion; it can increase the number of entrepreneurs – social and commercial, and it can be a gateway for a greater integration of the framework for key competences for lifelong learning.

Entrepreneurship education seeks to prepare people to be responsible, enterprising individuals who have the attitudes, skills and knowledge necessary to achieve the goals they set for themselves to live a fulfilled life.

The study shows that entrepreneurship education has a positive impact on the entrepreneurship key competence of individual in the following ways:

1.   Attitude: Entrepreneurship education helps individuals acquire entrepreneurial attitude. An entrepreneurial attitude covers aspects that help individuals to take action including taking responsibility for their own learning, careers and life.

2.   Skills: Entrepreneurial skills concern skills needed to turn ideas into action. Overall, entrepreneurial education indicate that the higher education has given them the skills and know how enabling them to run a business, although the level of application is not estimated very high. The level of skills is assessed based on the following characteristics: creativity, analysing, motivating, networking and adaptability.

3.   Knowledge: Entrepreneur training or education helps student or trainee acquire knowledge, knowledge referring to having a broad understanding of entrepreneurship including the role entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship plays in modern economies and societies.

4.   The entrepreneurship education stimulates the intentions of individuals to become an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurship education will include at least one or more of the following elements:

1.   Foster those personal attitudes and skills that form the basis of an entrepreneurial mindset and behaviour (creativity, risk propensity, self-confidence, independence, etc.);

2.   Raise awareness of students about self-employment and entrepreneurship as possible career options;

3.   Use practice-based methods, where students are involved in project work and / or in activities outside the classroom (linking them with the business world or with the local community);

4.   Provide basic business skills for self-employment or self-management, and knowledge of how to start and develop a commercial or social venture successfully.

Entrepreneurship education should not be confused with general business and economic studies, as its goal is to promote creativity, innovation and self-employment.

Entrepreneurial programmes offer students the tools to think creatively, to be an effective problem solver, and to communicate, to network and to lead. Entrepreneurship is not necessarily a topic - it is also a different way of teaching and of helping young people to fully develop their potential.

The intended goals of entrepreneurship education and intervention logic are further elaborated in the 2010 Commission’s report ‘Towards greater cooperation in coherence in entrepreneurship education’.1 Teaching and learning entrepreneurial

How the knowledge of entrepreneur can lead to productivity  

Entrepreneurship knowledge acquired through entrepreneurial education has its attending benefits which helps in creating jobs and establishment of more business firms in the economy.

Entrepreneurial sector is a large and growing component of many economies, enhancing its performance will generate significant gains for the nation as a whole. Whether the business owner employs two or a hundred employees, it is helpful that he or she frequently measures and focuses on the resources that keep the business continually growing.

Entrepreneur knowledge and activities of entrepreneur lead to productivity in the following ways 

1.   Entrepreneurs boost economic growth by introducing innovative technologies, products, and services.

2.   Increased competition from entrepreneurs challenges existing firms to become more competitive.

3.   Entrepreneurs provide new job opportunities in the short and long term.

4.   Entrepreneurial activity raises the productivity of firms and economies.

5.   Entrepreneurs accelerate structural change by replacing established, sclerotic firms.

REFERENCES

Akeredolu – Alc, E.O (1975). The Underdevelopment of indigenous entrepreneurs in Nigeria. Ibadan: University Press.

Audretsch, D. B. (2002) “The dynamic role of small firms - Evidence from the US.” Small Business Economics 18: 13–40.

Omotoso, F. (2006) Introduction to Entrepreneurship Development in Nigeria. Ibadan University Press.

Ownumere, J. (2000). The Nature and relevance of SMEs in Economic Development. The Nigerian Banker Journal of the Chartered Intituted of Bankers of Nigeria Vol. 25

Onuoha B.C. (1998) Small Business Management / entrepreneurship, Aba, Afri-tower ltd.

Onuoha B.C. (1994) Entrepreneurial Development in Nigeria, Okigwe, Van Global Publication.

Valliere, D., and R. Peterson. “Entrepreneurship and economic growth: Evidence from emerging and developed countries.” Entrepreneurship & Regional Development 21:5–6 (2009): 459–480.