Mentor Journey: Thoughts on Entrepreneurship Education

The future is challenging! Never before have we witnessed so many challenges, that we, as a species, must face head on. Many believe that we have the technologies and the resources to face them. Yes! I agree. We do. But we have an even mightier weapon still to be unleashed: The spirit of the entrepreneur!!!

We can create a better future with entrepreneurship, but we must start today! Preparing the world's young spirits for entrepreneurship is like preparing troops for war. If you think this is an exaggeration, most probably you are not an entrepreneur and you have never been part of an entrepreneur's journey. It is a tough journey that requires mental and physical strength fit for a veteran navy seal.

In previous articles, I talked about the entrepreneur's journey and how it is divided into two separate yet entwined journeys: The mindset and the startup journey.

To prepare entrepreneurs for what they are about to face, we, the educators, mentors, trainers, investors, program managers and all other stakeholders, must consider investing our time, efforts and money in developing the entrepreneur's mindset first, guide them towards sustainably impactful purposes and a successful startup will be just a matter of time.

This article is dedicated to the people working in the "entrepreneurship" support and ecosystem creation. It is also dedicated to the entrepreneurs who are yet to discover their impactful and sustainable business model innovations.

The Mindset:

Before starting anything, grab your popcorn, and watch this documentary!

What is the key takeaway of this documentary?

Being an entrepreneur is not easy and it is not for everyone!!!

That is right! Like being a navy seal is not for everyone, entrepreneurship is not for everyone!! Promoting entrepreneurship as something anyone can do, is like promoting nuts for people with potential nut allergies; it can only end with disastrous results. So please, promote entrepreneurship with a disclaimer that it is not for everyone. It is not that non entrepreneurs are less than others. You either have the stomach for it or you don't. And if you don’t, that is ok too!

It is not enough to teach entrepreneurs about accounting, finance, marketing, etc... This MBA type of education is designed for executives who "execute" and should be executing perfectly their tasks. For entrepreneurs, it is a different story.

The following characteristics are critical to shape an entrepreneur's mindset into a weapon strong enough for the challenging journey of creating a startup:

Employe Empathy To The Challenge Perception

Appreciating the human aspect of the journey. By rushing to discover not rushing to solve. Let the customer and the problem dictate the solution. Find a problem worthy of solving and understand and appreciate it. Then go for a solution! Rush to discover insatiably, then rush to solve patiently. In that order. Do not focus on pleasing investors with a glittery solution, rather dazzle your customer with your understanding of their pains, gains and jobs!

Apply Critical Thinking to Validation

Seeing beyond the data, to be able to understand the difference between collecting data and actually making sense of the data (like the difference between seeing the dots and actually connecting those dots). Even if you embrace the Lean mentality and you push your startup forward with validation with experimentation on steroids, if you do not stop for a moment, take a deep breath and look for what the data is actually telling you, you are just burning valuable time and scarce funds. It is not how much data you have collected, rather why you seek to collect this data is what is important to ask first. Validation will never give you 100% results, but it will give a clearer sense of direction and better understanding of what your customer is trying to accomplish. It will reduce your chances of creating a brand new and wonderful worthless thing. So use validation as a quest for answering valuable questions!

Manage Uncertainty with Scientific Progress

Being an entrepreneur is like going to explore the North Pole and all you have is a heavy coat and a compass. In short, it is a very tough and uncertain journey. By working scientifically, you are able to progress with proofs and not opinions. It is important to understand that your journey will progress only when you are able to turn your assumptions into test worthy hypothesis that can be proved / disproved in the real world with real people. Sometimes intuitions and leap of faith is important to make progress, but it is better to back up them with tangible proof than to blindly go forward with them.

The Startup:

"A  startup is a temporary organization used to search for a repeatable and scalable business model." Steve Blank.

To search for and create a repeatable and scalable business model, it is important to teach entrepreneurs the following:

1. Interviewing and research skills (ethnographic interviews, Anthropology)
2. Basic communication and public speaking skills ( Theater )
3. Basic personal management skills ( Psychology )
4. Reading a new book every week! ( Knowledge is Power )
5. Prototyping and learning by doing ( Design )
6. Basic estimation math skills ( Middle School )
7. The concept of Value Innovation as described in the awesome Blue Ocean Strategy book!
8. Basic Business Design Tools (note: don't fill canvases, use them to ask good questions and find answers)

Once an entrepreneur has managed to create a repeatable and scalable business model, it is time to go for a deep dive of learning by doing scaling activities! I recommend the Lean Analytics and Blitzscaling books as a starting point.

These are some thoughts about entrepreneurship education and how it can make an impact for creating the next generation of entrepreneurial mindsets.