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GROWING IMAGE OF PAKISTAN UNIVERSITIES
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ENTREPRENEURSHIP
AND THE ROLE O
HIGHEREDUCATION INSTITUTIONS
KASHIF MATEEN ANSARI,
Chief Executive Officer,
Sachal Energy Development
(Pvt) Ltd
Entrepreneurship education has attained a new importance in the 21st
century on account of various factors.
The youth of this modern information
age wants to think outside the box and
to identify and pursue opportunities in
totally new and innovative ways. The
founder ofGrameenBank ofBangladesh
and Nobel Prize winner Muhammad
Yunus said, "Mygreatest challenge has
been to change the mindset of people.
We see 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 Peter
Drucker said, "What we need is an entrepreneurial SOCiety which innovain
tion and entrepreneurship are normal,
steady and continual." A lot of studies
have been conducted in the last few
decades, which clearly underline the
need forthe modern education's requirement to develop entrepreneurship and
entrepreneurial mindset in the youth so
that they can act as a catalyst of change
in the social and the economic sector.
What is entrepreneurship? Entrepreneurship can be defined in a number of
ways. A crisp one that I found reads as
"the pursuit of opportunity beyond the
resources you currently control." This
definition is attributed to Stevenson and
Jarillo. In simple words entrepreneurship is a process that results in creativity, growth and innovation. Entrepreneurship takes various forms and its
benefits are not limited to starting up of
new businesses or creating newjobs but
it leads to overall development in the
fields of science, art and culture.
Accordlngtoa report on entrepreneurship by Kaufman Foundation it was
found in a number of studies that 25%
of kindergarten level children manifest
the characteristics of initiators (wewill
describe initiators later). But the same
study found out that the percentage of
kindergarten levelchildren who showed
this trait where more than 25% whereas
the same percentage dropped to 3% of
the students graduating from high
Pakistan & Gulf Economist, October 14 -
school. Initiator is the basic form of an
entrepreneur, who has the abilityto identify good market opportunities and possesses the required skills and the passion to lead the effort to followthose opportunities and take risk. Inother words
initiators are the kinds of person who
are ready to take risks and go into action. The study mentioned above puts
forward the great dilemma of today's
education system that instead of creating the spirit oftaking action and creating new things, the education systems,
even in the developed countries, are stifling the creativity of the young mind.
Entrepreneurship cannot be exercise
in vacuum. Our higher educational institutions have to understand that the
young people have a desire to do something and do somethirig new. They have
a desire to create something good and
they have an innate longing to giveback
to the SOCiety. o the higher education
S
institutions have to encourage and foster such attributes, which can help the
young people do the same. Entrepreneurship can be supported and helped
in the most effective way by the education system at the higher level.
We have to create an Eco-system
whereby various education institutions
and the government have to come together tohelp support the entrepreneurs.
Obviously that Eco-system will be incomplete till the time the businesses
don't partner with the higher education
institutions and the government. The
higher education institutions have to
come up with new and innovative ways
of imparting education, which is conducive for generating an entrepreneurial
mindset. It has been found that just by
adding courses on entrepreneurship
alone does not help the young minds to
transform into entrepreneurs. Globally,
this has been found out that where the
curriculums are broad base or students
are allowed to-cometogether into teams
drawnfromvariousdisciplinesofknowledge;likebusiness, marketing, engineering' technology and social sciences, the
cross learning, which occurs across all
these various disciplines help the students become entrepreneurs.
Our universities have to lookmore into
creating multi-disclplinary approach
27, 2013
towards entrepreneurship, which can be
best achieved by creating centers of
entrepreneurship having no particular
course or curriculum oftheir own rather
having a collection ofmulti-disciplinary
courses and multi-disciplinary education. which can be brought together in
the form of various teams working on
various technical, social or business
projects. Then the universities have to
be supported by the government 11 the
form of small seed capital, which can be
assigned to such teams. The businesses
must Join hands in helping the young
entrepreneurs to put their ideas to practice inthe real business world.The ideas
selected should be the ones that have
been tested in the incubatory environments of the universities' entrepreneur
centers. This willbe a win-win situation
whereby businesses willget a new injection of ideas and fresh blood, and the
young entrepreneurs will find a ready
market for their newly developed ideas.
The universities can play an important role by overcoming the myth that
new business formation or entrepreneurship is only the domain of a select
few who either come from rich backgrounds or from families which are already well-known for establtshinj new
businesses. There is no such evidence,
which links entrepreneurship with the
genes. However,there can be a lot which
can be found in the research studies
linking entrepreneurship and education.
If we get back to the great management guru, Peter Drucker, he said: "Entrepreneurship is not magic, it's not
mysterious and it has nothing to do with
the genes. It's a discipline and like a
discipline, it can be learnt". If we cross
this major hurdle of mlndset and move
forward, that entrepreneurship can be
taught 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:
A CLEAR VISION AND MISSION
Good structures and mechanisms to
interact With the outside world

3.
Diversifiedfunding base
Funds for the development of univerInter and multi-disciplinary activities sity projects and making them ready for
An integrated entrepreneurial culture .commercialization
Ifwe look around in the Internattonal
Support of linkages and network
arena, many universities will come out programs
as great examples of entrepreneur cenThere are many approaches, which can
ters, which are furthering entrepreneurbe taken by our universities to include
ship. In the list of such universities,
entrepreneurship as a form of mainStanford-University ranks really high, stream learning. These approaches can
which is generating patents for almost be that:
80% of the amount of funding spent on
They can develop leadership skills
their research. Now that is a great exThey can embed entrepreneurship in
ample ofentrepreneurial activity.Across general education
the world governments are helping big
As discussed earlier, they can take a
universities with their initiatives to cross-disciplinary approach
stimulate links between buslnessesand
They can leverage the availability of
universities. An example of such work technology in the form ofthe technologiincludes:
cal advances in general and in the.inforFormation of innovation centers
matton technology in particular.
Entrepreneurial university centers
In Pakistan, we can bring about a great
and science parks
change through the universities by creSupport of collaborative innovation
ating a high number of entrepreneurs
and research
who, instead of becoming job-seekers
willbecome job-makers and the fe~v
fac- .
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 universities
and the interaction of businesses with
universities in a well-linked program.
Other important success factor would
be developing good teachers who can
instill the qualities and traits required
.for entrepreneurship.
.
Another key area for success would be
development of a curriculum, which
instead of suppressing the creatrvlty of
the youth would develop it. We have to
adopt a strategy where we have to include all the social classes in this process. Especially we have to hunt and
groomtalent by outreaching the students
of-far flung areas. Obviously a very important key success factor would be
sustainable funding .•
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