By: Brendan Daly
Can entrepreneurship be taught? Initially, my answer to this question would have been no, entrepreneurship takes a certain individual. In fact, some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs are not classically educated at all, having dropped out of the traditional college system. Take Steve Jobs for example. He is arguably the most iconic symbol of innovation and entrepreneurship of all time, yet he dropped out of Reed College in Portland after a mere six months. Case closed right? Not so fast. After dropping out of Reed College, Steve Jobs spent much of the next two years crashing in dorm rooms and dropping in on classes, including a calligraphy course, that Jobs says, “was largely responsible for the Mac’s multitude of typefaces”. By tailoring his academic program to suit his interests, Steve Jobs was able to tap into his entrepreneurial flair and created a competitive advantage for Apple. Thus, the issue in Steve Jobs’ education was the relevancy of the material being taught to his ultimate career path.
The standard paradigm of teaching for highly disciplined courses, such as law, science and engineering, requires lengthy assignments, complex calculations, and theoretical discussion. This approach, however, does not work when teaching entrepreneurship and innovation because these topics revolve around addressing dynamically changing problems. It’s not that it can’t be taught, it just needs to have a different approach – one based on action and experience.