Entrepreneurship education is considered as one of the most influential forces that determine the health of the economy. Hence, ignoring controversies on whether entrepreneurship can be taught, the majority of the top business schools in India offer entrepreneurship education with tailored elective courses to inculcate a wide range of skills encompassing a multi-disciplinary approach among mature management students. However, considering the basic synergies of core management subjects such as marketing and entrepreneurship, both of which provide an opportunity to develop unique solutions to satisfy customer needs, the study of entrepreneurial aspects as a prerequisite for management education and research seems indispensable when specifically catering to the growing entrepreneurial intent in developing economies.
In an interview with the Founder and the CEO, The Entrepreneurship School, Mr. Sanjeeva Shivesh, we came in terms with the world of Entrepreneurial Education.
When you talk about entrepreneurs and innovators, how similar or different are they? Also, can an entrepreneur be an innovator at some point?
There are examples where Innovators have become Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs have not been Innovators. The most ideal combination is when an innovator becomes an Entrepreneur. The skills required for them are very different. Venture building skills are very different from Invention skills or Innovation skills or to build something which is really liked by people.
Talking about the skills, venture building is much more complex, comprehensive and overlapping.
To what extent you can create an experience in classrooms or colleges that is required to become an entrepreneur?
I clearly believe that Entrepreneurship can be taught and it can be taught inside classrooms. And that is exactly what we are trying to do. So as a new trade and a subject, it has started emerging. We see the emergence of new subjects a number of times every time. About 20 years back there was no Fashion Technology and no environment. These are the subjects that have come to stay. Similarly, Entrepreneurship, as a body of language, a lot of things are added to the body of language many courses getting created and they have come to stay.
And the crux lies in how to teach Entrepreneurship. If you make it a dull course, just like the teacher teaching entrepreneurship, perhaps, it will not work. It has to mirror life. Mirroring life means, you have to create the curriculum in a very novel way which replicates the process of Entrepreneurship.
Tell us about your venture, The Entrepreneurship School.
We are a new school for Entrepreneurship. We are 3 years old and based out of gurgaon, In these 3 years, we have build about 50 ventures out of 55 students. And that’s our journey. We are learning and we are trying to institutionalize knowledge, to build the body of knowledge and to build as many ventures as possible.
Our dream is very simple, 1 million Entrepreneurs.
