But the essential passion, drive and creativity of an entrepreneur cannot be measured or taught. There are those who continue to insist that entrepreneurship cannot be taught. They argue that entrepreneurship is confusing, uncertain and unpredictable and therefore there is no single method or map to impart to budding entrepreneurs, especially if it is a teacher or teacher who has no experience in the business world. Entrepreneurship is a team sport, not an individual effort, and you can only learn by doing it in the real world.
The skills that an entrepreneur needs to succeed go beyond business skills that are “easy to teach in the classroom (e.g. finance, accounting, and economics) and include personal skills, such as leadership and management, that are best learned through experience. Overall, Larsen says that entrepreneurship, like any skill or field of study, is taught. While some people are self-taught, everyone learns from practice, Larsen argues.
After all, he says, if you took a three-year-old Steve Jobs and put him on a desert island, he wouldn't have become the best pitcher of all time. Jobs learned by immersing himself in an environment and creating learning experiences. Entrepreneurial skills can be taught; entrepreneurial qualities, such as determination and risk tolerance, are innate. According to some people, entrepreneurial skills can be taught in higher education institutes and in secondary schools.
Others believe that entrepreneurship can only be taught to people by other entrepreneurs who have practical experience in the field. And finally, there are people who believe that entrepreneurship cannot be taught by someone. It's something that every entrepreneur can only learn while doing it. There are more business education courses and programs than ever before, and demand for them continues to grow.
According to some people, entrepreneurship can be carried out in higher education institutions and high schools, and even many institutions have launched entrepreneurship programs in academic sessions. Some evidence shows that entrepreneurship learning reflects the impact of entrepreneurship on the economy and society; it has been identified on the basis of three basic skills and aptitudes that make an entrepreneur successful: persistence, ability to assess risk, and adaptability. You need to be knowledgeable about how to improve business education in the best possible way, and you need to be willing to put things into practice with consistency and focus. Many people believed that entrepreneurship could not be taught; they believed that it was simply too different from other subjects, and that much of the success of entrepreneurs could be attributed to innate personality traits (see studies on entrepreneurial mentality here and here).
Others believe that entrepreneurship can only be taught by entrepreneurs who have gained practical experience in the field. Many college graduates go directly to postgraduate work and remain in employment until they retire in their sixties or seventies, never considering entrepreneurship for their journey. There are currently more than 5000 entrepreneurship courses with more than 400,000 students a year enrolling in them, responsible for around 9,000 teaching positions. These tools and programs have revolutionized business education by finding a more realistic way to support entrepreneurs, rather than the older and more passive methods of “researching and writing a business plan” to teach entrepreneurship.
