Do we have right mindset to encourage student’s entrepreneurship?

Increasing ambitions of students combined with the fear of placements have been driving more universities to encourage students to choose a career in entrepreneurship than ever before. Moreover, government policy putting its might by access to funding through Technology Business Incubator like programs. Despite monumental shifts in cultivating an enabling environment for aspiring entrepreneurs, implementation on the ground especially in Tier 2 & 3 colleges (which are majority) have been lacking. I believe there are few roadblocks that needs to be addressed:

1. Academic leadership

They are still measured traditionally based on academic performance, marks, attendance, job placements etc. Entrepreneurship is more of nice to have than any active program to change the culture to take risk. Leadership performance should include how many new ideas students have generated; how many prototypes tested? How many start-ups created? Do they have department level active program to encourage entrepreneurship? If these matrices given more weightage, culture will begin to change.

2. Teachers

They are key to drive change. They interact with students, motivate / encourage them to do better in academics. Ideas, opportunities, entrepreneurship should be part of day to day conversation between students and teachers. Most teachers are not trained to do out of box thinking. They stick to curriculum as they are also measured based on marks obtained by their students. So, preparation for exams becomes sole purpose of teaching. This needs to change. Before management focus on students to become entrepreneur, it is more critical to encourage teachers to become entrepreneur. How many colleges have start-up teams that include teacher as a founder?

3. Students

Fear do not make great entrepreneurs. Students need freedom to start /explore activities. Unfortunately, in most college this privilege is available to “good” students. Irony is future student entrepreneur can be any student. What is required atmosphere of “try and fail”. Students need to be inspired before they can aspire to become entrepreneur.

What is the way forward?

Key for change is to create space for teachers and students to build environment that promotes attributes of entrepreneurship like passion for a change, solving problems, try new ideas, engage with external world etc. Motivation for management should not be fear of placement challenges but building thriving ecosystem for budding entrepreneurs. It is long way to go before entrepreneurship becomes main steam activity in the colleges.