Total Rethink

5Can You Teach Entrepreneurship or are Creative Entrepreneurs Born that Way?

“Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future.”

—Walt Disney

All the top schools and universities around the world now have courses in “entrepreneurship.” It is a fashionable subject, and if you ask them why they have added it to the curriculum, they will tell you it's because the students are “insisting on it.”

If you ask the students to honestly say why they want to be entrepreneurs they will most often say it's because they want to be “rich” and because they “don't want to have a boss.” But no high-quality entrepreneur I have ever met has chosen that path in order to get rich, and if you ask them they will all tell you that they have had a boss or a mentor who has helped them along the way. No one succeeds at anything without the support of others.

So the two things the young people who enroll at the schools and universities are trying to accomplish and avoid are the opposite of the motivation that is actually needed in order to become a great creative entrepreneur. What many of the students are actually saying is that they are hoping the course will show them ways to avoid having to get a job – an altogether less creative ambition.

The students, however, are the customers in this situation, so it's a good thing for the schools to listen to what they want and to react to it in order to provide the courses that will be popular. At the same time, ...