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The following article was published in the Charleston Post & Courier's Business Major, a featured monthly column in the Business Review Section on March 19, 2001. Educators Debate Merits of Teaching EntrepreneurshipBy DOROTHY P. MOORE Special to The Post and Courier Business Major There is an ongoing debate about the teaching of entrepreneurship. One side holds that because entrepreneurs see things that others don't and act on them, entrepreneurship can't be taught. The other side concedes there may be differences in an entrepreneurial personality, but that, like art, starting and building a business successfully can be done best when talent and training are combined. In a recent Coleman Foundation White Paper presented at the United States Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship, G. Dale Meyer, professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado, pointed out that more than 400 institutions of higher education are now offering entrepreneurship courses and programs. That doesn't count offerings in the private sector. With the support of the Kauffman Foundation Center for Entrepreneurship Leadership and entrepreneurial scholars at major universities, the outstanding programs are being identified and brought together in the National Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers. The goal is to improve the entrepreneurial curriculum, research, outreach projects and financial support for entrepreneurship. The South Carolina member, a recent addition, is the University of South Carolina's Faber Center at the Darla Moore School of Business, which has partnered with a Maryland investment firm to create an online forum for pairing entrepreneurs with private investors. The national consortium is definitely a step forward in creating a pool of resources for entrepreneurs, particularly in developing financial links for healthy business survival. Many of the centers focus on family-owned businesses, which represent more than two-thirds of all businesses in the world. A special challenge is making sure entrepreneurship students are getting the best classroom instruction possible. As the number of entrepreneurship courses and programs grew, many institutions took the approach that the best person to teach entrepreneurship was a former entrepreneur. The idea was that if you were once successful you have something valuable to teach. This approach creates a special set of challenges. Chief among these is the recency and relevance of the information the instructor has to share with successive generations of small business owners and entrepreneurs. Granted, there are many entrepreneurs who were once successful and continue to remain on the cutting edge. And this intellectually alive set may yield high quality education. But what about those former business owners and managers who are transferring out-of-date information to students? They may be teaching concepts that worked in specific past situations but are now outmoded in a highly global and technological market. What is needed, Meyer says, is providing a support mechanism through the Lifelong Learning for Entrepreneurship Professionals program, which provides hands-on teaching clinics for adjuncts around the country. There are other ways of meeting the challenge of change. Such an example is the three-part approach to the study of entrepreneurship at the Eugene M. Lang Center for Entrepreneurship at Columbia University. It offers the systematic integration of entrepreneurial situations into the core curriculum, strong elective courses in entrepreneurship, and structured hands on lab experiences. When seeking to update your entrepreneurship education, or in seeking a program in which to enroll, it will be important to check out the offerings. Are the people involved in the program on the cutting edge of research, innovative technology, and global involvement? Will they have the skills to address the added level of knowledge you need in your industry type? Most important, how can you judge all this? I recommend applying some of the principles from the eight-step lesson developed by Neck, Neck & Meyer in 1998. Will the program stifle your creativity? Will you have the ability to think outside the box or the program set by the leader? Will the program allow you to explore and bring your passion to life? Can the program help you "make your life extraordinary?" Will the program provide the opportunity for "creativity to be unleashed" with the acknowledgement that "there is a time for daring and a time for caution?" Will it allow the opportunity to look at and develop different perspectives? For Questions/Comments about this site, contact dot.moore@comcast.net. Site designed by Jackye Cocoros. |