Being entrepreneur
With technologies, the whole world is wide open with more opportunities than ever before but you must seize them before somebody else take them away. That is why technology students should be taught about entrepreneurship in college to take advantage of these opportunities. With proper training, students can create startups, hire people and grow their company. If succeed, the company can create more jobs with good salary to others and improves the economy of a country. For this reason universities should provide entrepreneurship trainings and encourages young people to start their own business.
College students are very creative and can do much more than expected but they need an environment to demonstrate their talents. If you look at successful startups in the past thirty years, over 80% of them were created by college students. Bill Gates started Microsoft when he was student in Harvard. Mark Zuckerberg also created Facebook as a student in Harvard. Sergey Brin and Larry Page developed Google when they were in Stanford. Today in every university, students who are working on innovations and many have succeed. For example Kevin Systrom created Instagram, a mobile photo sharing app that worth several billion dollars, Naveen Selvadurai developed foursquare, a social location app that worth over $500 million dollars, David Karp who found Tumblr, a social blogging platform that worth over $900 million dollars. The interesting fact is these college entrepreneurs have not even reached 30 years old yet.
If we look beyond the money value, startups also contributed significantly to the economy. It is estimated that in the U.S alone, startups has created over a million new jobs and all of them are high paying jobs. An economist wrote: “The U.S. has overcome the financial economic collapse in just five years because of startups when Europe and Asia are still struggling. Japan has tried to improve its economy for over 20 years without success because its economy is still dominated by large companies and these companies are still reducing jobs. In this technology driven economy, big companies with governments subsidize and tax benefits are the wrong solution. The real solution is startup with high paid technology workers and to do that technology education and entrepreneurship must be considered the highest priority.”
Entrepreneurship training encourages students to use their technology skills to come up with new idea but idea alone does not make money unless it solves problems or fulfill a need. In my entrepreneurship class, students start with identify problems first before develop ideas or solutions. Only knowing the problems well enough will allow them to create solutions that could be developing into a strong startup. Only with knowledge of technology, they can decide which technology can be applied as good solutions. Without knowing the problem but start with an idea is a common mistake among enthusiastic students. Every time they suggest an idea, I always ask: “What problem are you trying to solve?” or “Do you know the problems well enough?”, “Is there a need for it?” “How do you know there is a need? Did you ask somebody or just guess?” Of course, students feel uncomfortable at first but when they conduct more research and asking more people, they learn that either their idea is not good enough or there is no need for such thing. In that case they do not making the mistake of “Creating a solution then looking for problem to solve.”
Students must be taught about strategic competition or how to develop new positions that take customers from others or get new customers into the market. For example, online store offers specialized products can take market share away from large retail stores that offer general products and lure customers who want convenience on shopping online instead of going to the store. Students must be taught about “Barrier of entry” or competitive factors that prevent a startup from entering a particular market. Students must understand these barriers or defense factors before entering any market. If they enter a market with strong barriers, they will be at disadvantage because it is difficult to overcome them. For example, it is very difficult to compete with well known “Brands” such as Apple, Microsoft or Google due to their popularity and high spending on advertising. By identify opportunities in new market where barrier forces are weak, then it is easy to get in and quickly build barriers so others cannot get in. They have to understand that customers can also force them to lower prices by manipulate them and their competitors to get into a price war against one another. To maintain position, they must know how to set barrier of entry by prevent other competitors to come into their market. They must know that other entrepreneurs with new ideas or new products can lure customers away and customers who are searching for the best price may change their buying habit.
In the globally connected world, new startups enter the market in a constant stream with new ideas, new products and new solutions. By analyzing these competitive forces, students learn how to understand the entire market and be able to identify new trends early, so they can take advantage of them before somebody else does. Student must learn all of these factors as well as their mistakes in class so by the time they graduate; they already have enough knowledge not only on how to create startups, but also on what is needed to be successful. By learning from mistakes in school, they avoid making mistakes in life and build their confident that they can build something into successful startups.
For many years of teaching entrepreneurship, I found that college students have unlimited innovative ideas. They also have a lot of energy and courage to achieve their goals and willing show what they can do. The key benefit of being an entrepreneur while still in school is they have access to a lot of resources to help them to succeed. Schools offer the free use of computers with internet connection; professors are willing to give them advice on both technical and business aspect; they also have many friends who they can talk to and exchange ideas with. Being entrepreneur means they work for themselves and not anyone else and whatever success they make is theirs. Being students gives them many opportunities to start their own company and all they need is proper training, guidance and support from the school.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
