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Pakistan & Gulf Economist, October 14 - 27, 2013
A CLEAR VISION AND MISSIONGood structures and mechanisms to
interact With the outside world
towards entrepreneurship, whichcan bebest achieved by creating centers ofentrepreneurship having no particularcourse or curriculum oftheir own ratherhaving a collection ofmulti-disciplinarycourses and multi-disciplinary education. which can be brought together inthe form of various teams working onvarious technical, social or businessprojects. Then the universities have tobe supported by the government \11 theform of small seed capital, which can beassigned to such teams. Thebusinessesmust Join hands in helping the youngentrepreneurs to put their ideas topractice inthe real business world.The ideasselected should be the ones that havebeen tested in the incubatory environments of the universities' entrepreneurcenters. This willbe a win-win situationwhereby businesses willget a newinjection of ideas and fresh blood, and theyoung entrepreneurs will find a readymarket for their newly developed ideas.The universities can play an impor
tant role by overcoming the myth thatnew business formation or entrepreneurship is only the domain of a selectfew who either come from rich backgrounds or from families which are already well-known for establtshinj newbusinesses. There is no such evidence,which links entrepreneurship with thegenes. However,there can be a lotwhichcan be found in the research studieslinking entrepreneurship and education.Ifwe get back to the great manage
ment guru, Peter Drucker, he said: "Entrepreneurship is not magic, it's notmysterious and it has nothing to dowiththe genes. It's a discipline and like adiscipline, it can be learnt". Ifwe crossthis major hurdle ofmlndset and moveforward, that entrepreneurship can betaught then the universities themselves.can become entrepreneurial centers. .
Wemay quote fivecore elements identified by Bortum clerk in his book "Creating Entrepreneurial Universities, Organizational pathways of transformatlon". The core elements, which he indicated were:
school. Initiator is the basic form of anentrepreneur, whohas the abilityto identifygood market opportunities and possesses the required skills and the passion to lead the effort to followthose opportunities and take risk. Inother wordsinitiators are the kinds of person whoare ready to take risks and go into action. The study mentioned above putsforward the great dilemma of today'seducation system that instead ofcreating the spirit oftaking action and creating new things, the education systems,even inthe developed countries, are stifling the creativity of the young mind.Entrepreneurship cannot be exercise
in vacuum. Our higher educational institutions have to understand that theyoung people have a desire to do something and do somethirig new.They havea desire to create something good andthey have an innate longing to givebackto the SOCiety.So the higher educationinstitutions have to encourage and foster such attributes, which can help theyoung people do the same. Entrepreneurship can be supported and helpedin the most effectiveway by the education system at the higher level.We have to create an Eco-system
whereby various education institutionsand the government have to come together tohelp support the entrepreneurs.Obviously that Eco-system will be incomplete till the time the businessesdon't partner with the higher educationinstitutions and the government. Thehigher education institutions have tocome up with new and innovative waysof imparting education, which is conducive for generating an entrepreneurialmindset. It has been found that just byadding courses on entrepreneurshipalone does not help the young minds totransform into entrepreneurs. Globally,this has been found out that where thecurriculums are broad base or studentsare allowed to-cometogether into teamsdrawnfromvariousdisciplinesofknowledge;likebusiness, marketing, engineering' technology and social sciences, thecross learning, which occurs across allthese various disciplines help the students become entrepreneurs.Our universities have to lookmore into
creating multi-disclplinary approach
Entrepreneurship education has attained a new importance in the 21stcentury on account of various factors.The youth of this modern informationage wants to think outside the box andto identify and pursue opportunities intotally new and innovative ways. Thefounder ofGrameenBank ofBangladeshand Nobel Prize winner MuhammadYunus said, "Mygreatest challenge hasbeen to change the mindset of people.Wesee things the way our mindset instructed our eyes to see."In today's world,social change can be
brought about by the entrepreneurship.The great management guru PeterDrucker said, "What we need is an entrepreneurial SOCietyinwhich innovation and entrepreneurship are normal,steady and continual." A lot of studieshave been conducted in the last fewdecades, which clearly underline theneed forthe modern education's requirement to develop entrepreneurship andentrepreneurial mindset in the youth sothat they can act as a catalyst of changein the social and the economic sector.What is entrepreneurship? Entrepre
neurship can be defined in a number ofways. Acrisp one that I found reads as"the pursuit of opportunity beyond theresources you currently control." Thisdefinition is attributed toStevenson andJarillo. In simple words entrepreneurship is a process that results in creativity, growth and innovation. Entrepreneurship takes various forms and itsbenefits are not limited to starting up ofnewbusinesses or creating newjobs butit leads to overall development in thefields of science, art and culture.Accordlngtoa report on entrepreneur
ship by Kaufman Foundation it wasfound in a number of studies that 25%of kindergarten level children manifestthe characteristics of initiators (wewilldescribe initiators later). But the samestudy found out that the percentage ofkindergarten levelchildren who showedthis trait where more than 25%whereasthe same percentage dropped to 3% ofthe students graduating from high
KASHIF MATEEN ANSARI,Chief Executive Officer,Sachal Energy Development (Pvt) Ltd
ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND THE ROLE OFHIGHEREDUCATION INSTITUTIONS
GROWING IMAGE OF PAKISTAN UNIVERSITIES 1 40
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willbecomejob-makers and the fe~vfac- .tors, which can help this initiative Succeed, would be formation of an entrepreneurial ecosystem as discussed earlier' which would include the interaction ofgovernment with the universitiesand the interaction of businesses withuniversities in a well-linked program.Other important success factor wouldbe developing good teachers who caninstill the qualities and traits required.forentrepreneurship. .Another key area for success would be
development of a curriculum, whichinstead of suppressing the creatrvlty ofthe youth would develop it. Wehave toadopt a strategy where we have to include all the social classes in this process. Especially we have to hunt andgroomtalent by outreaching the studentsof-far flung areas. Obviously a very important key success factor would besustainable funding .•
Funds for the development ofuniversity projects and making them ready for.commercialization
Support of linkages and networkprogramsThereare manyapproaches, which can
be taken by our universities to includeentrepreneurship as a form of mainstream learning. These approaches canbe that:They can develop leadership skillsThey can embed entrepreneurship in
general educationAs discussed earlier, they can take a
cross-disciplinary approachThey can leverage the availability of
technology in the form ofthe technological advances in general and in the.informatton technology in particular.InPakistan, wecan bring about a great
change through the universities by creating a high number of entrepreneurswho, instead of becoming job-seekers
Diversifiedfunding baseInter and multi-disciplinary activitiesAn integrated entrepreneurial cultureIfwe look around in the Internattonal
arena, many universities will come outas great examples of entrepreneur centers, whichare furthering entrepreneurship. In the list of such universities,Stanford-University ranks really high,which is generating patents for almost80% of the amount of funding spent ontheir research. Now that is a great example ofentrepreneurial activity.Acrossthe world governments are helping biguniversities with their initiatives tostimulate links between buslnessesanduniversities. An example of such workincludes:Formation of innovation centersEntrepreneurial university centers
and science parksSupport of collaborative innovation
and research