Last week, I attended the Junior World Entrepreneurial Forum Pakistan Conference 2011 jointly hosted by World Entrepreneurship Forum, France and Lahore School of Economics, Pakistan. The Conference was aimed at creating “awareness about the world in 2050 and also to develop thinking and generating ideas through an entrepreneurial mind.”
The World Entrepreneurship Forum (WEF) is a global think tank of entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs, experts and politicians, chosen for their entrepreneurial achievements and their commitment to society. Presently, 110 members of 55 countries (including Syed Babar Ali and Iqbal M Khan from Pakistan) are active in the World Entrepreneurship Forum. The think tank is working for a more entrepreneurial world, creating wealth and social justice through four key levers. Creating innovative and high-growth companies to create millions of jobs around the planet, disseminating entrepreneurship at the “base of the pyramid” to alleviate poverty and create new markets. Shaping entrepreneurial cities, being tomorrow’s centers for innovation and implementing entrepreneurial education to disseminate entrepreneurial mindset, skills and competencies throughout society, on a permanent basis.
The Junior World Entrepreneurship Forum (JWEF) – students’ version of the WEF – brings together hundreds of students from different countries for events lasting four days. The objective of the JWEF is to empower the younger generation of students with entrepreneurial skills for the future. This year Pakistan hosted its inaugural Junior Forum Conference 2011 at Lahore School of Economics (July 27-30, 2011) that was attended by large number of young scholars from UET, LUMS, UCP, Punjab University, FAST, NUST, IM Sciences, and Lahore School of Economics. Notwithstanding myths, “this issue has been settled now and everyone believes that entrepreneurship education is a must,” says Senor Entrepreneurship Fellow Iqbal M Khan. A research study says, “five years after graduation, the average annual income for entrepreneurship majors and MBAs who concentrated in entrepreneurship at the school was almost 27 per cent higher than for other business majors and students with standard MBAs. Moreover, entrepreneurship graduates were three times more likely to form new companies. Even those entrepreneurship graduates who took jobs within large companies earned bigger paychecks.” Another research on the subject shows that “the more entrepreneurial classes taught at the MBA level, the more likely students are to become entrepreneurs.”
In Pakistan, many business schools (including Lahore School, LUMS, GC University and IBA) are already teaching entrepreneurship. Business schools can best provide platforms for entrepreneurial activities; a strong focus on entrepreneurship education will certainly spill over to non-business students and help promote an entrepreneurial spirit. Viewing business schools as mediators of skills, entrepreneurship students pursuing an entrepreneurial career are equipped with a set of skills that will help them identify new business ideas and provide them with a practical approach to entrepreneurship. “By putting students in an environment of entrepreneurialism, you can encourage them to try becoming an entrepreneur,” says Professor Iqbal M Khan. Entrepreneurship education can inculcate willingness to take calculated risks in terms of time, equity and career; the ability to formulate an effective venture team; the creative skills to organise needed resources, and fundamental skills of building solid business plan and finally the vision to recognise opportunity. The students can develop entrepreneurial perspective that they can exhibit in their careers.
Pakistan requires a dynamic approach towards entrepreneurial education to ensure socio-economic growth. If Pakistan (also other courtiers) has to meet the challenges set by the WEF, entrepreneurship education must be given more importance. The need of the hour is to adopt and utilise entrepreneurship in current education system and bring it into the mainstream. Only then, we can hope to see the entrepreneurial spirit, which would grow individual entrepreneurs at all levels by year 2050 and beyond.
The writer is Deputy Controller of Examination at Lahore School of Economics. He blogs at http://logicisvariable.blogspot.com and can be reached at [email protected]
