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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