Entrepreneurship that can be taught
Latest press releasesSuccess in starting a business is not confined to the charismatic few, but is something that can be taught, says a group of international professors. The launch of the new International Journal of Entrepreneurship Education at Warwick Business School and the Mercia Institute of Enterprise today confirms that an understanding of venture finance, economics and strategy, more consistently than personality types, determines whether new ventures succeed or fail.
Dr Andrew Burke (Warwick Business School & UCLA), one of the Journal's founding editors, states, "Contrary to popular myth, personality, psychological make-up and life experiences are very limited predictors of who will become an entrepreneur. Indeed what makes a successful entrepreneur varies across industries and even within firms at different stages of their evolution. The constant features that are associated with successful entrepreneurship are skills and perspectives that can largely be taught. A good understanding of the economics of the entrepreneurial market in which the firm operates alongside a grasp of core business skills are helpful for any entrepreneur, regardless of their type. These are the skills which the Journal will be promoting."
Professor Josh Lerner (Harvard Business School), a member of the Journal's editorial board, argues that entrepreneurship education has far too often relied on inspirational stories rather than the types of rigorous analysis that characterise accounting, finance, strategy, and other disciplines typically found in business schools. "Such an approach may have been a feasible one to cater to student enthusiasm during the 'bubble years,' but is unlikely to be sustainable in the long run," says Professor Lerner. He goes on, "If entrepreneurship is to achieve a permanent place in business school education, a more intellectually rigorous approach with strong ties to the mainstream academic disciplines must be adopted. The Journal will play a critical role in this."
Dr Andrew Burke argues that the skills students learn on a course should help them to run a new venture more effectively. However, rigorous business analysis can frequently show students the tough side of entrepreneurship, namely the high failure rates and what it takes to do good due diligence. Dr Burke explains, "This can have the controversial side effect of reducing the number of students who start up their own business. But as long as it deters the certain failures and raises the skill level of start-ups with potential, a university entrepreneurship course can reduce the quantity but increase the quality of new ventures causing a net increase in entrepreneurship. Our research has shown this effect to be true for university education in general."
Warwick Business School teaches entrepreneurship to its own undergraduate students, as well as to engineering and science faculty undergraduates within the University. It also teaches three enterprise modules on the Warwick Skills Certificate. Warwick is part of the Mercia Institute of Enterprise, a consortium of nine West Midlands Universities and three University Colleges created in January 2001, to encourage an entrepreneurial culture amongst graduates in the West Midlands. Dr Andrew Burke is a Reader at Warwick Business School and the Mercia Institute of Enterprise.
Further background information follows:
The International Journal of Entrepreneurship Education's Editorial Board is made up of professors from the world's leading international business schools and economics departments including Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, UCLA, Warwick, Cambridge and INSEAD. The aim of the Journal is to focus on the aspects of entrepreneurship that can be taught. The Journal is devoted to the publication of peer reviewed articles to keep professors, students and practitioners abreast of the latest research on entrepreneurship as well gaining access to case studies on entrepreneurial ventures.
Articles in the first issue of the International Journal of Entrepreneurship Education include:
What Entrepreneurship Research can do for Business Policy and Practice by Per Davidsson (Jönköping University, Sweden). Davidsson's paper outlines a stark argument that is at the core of the raison d'etre of the International Journal of Entrepreneurship Education. It is a warning to the dumbing down approach to entrepreneurship by government and big business. He states that " I hope that our research-based teaching of students and counselling for change-oriented practitioners will do a lot of harm to the 'fat cat', conservative and risk-averse practitioners who are not willing to take entrepreneurial risks. I also hope that entrepreneurship research will continue to make life hard for policy-makers of the kind that with well-intended but over-ambitious support measures make the entrepreneurial spirit choke rather than flourish."
Another article You Say You Want a Revolution? focuses on the launch of the music site MP3.com and its subsequent take-over by Vivendi Universal. MP3.com was originally founded by individuals with a radical vision of transforming the music industry and in the process to undermine the power of the major record labels. The article highlights how even a well planned and executed new venture can be vulnerable if any key aspect of business is overlooked. In MP3.com's case the presumption that the site could allow people to store music which they had already bought on CD under 'fair use' terms of copyright law proved to be unfounded. This miscalculation caused MP3.com to be sued for millions of dollars by the major record companies. The end result was that MP3.com had to suffer the indignity of seeking rescue from one of the companies it originally sought to shake up. The article gives a detailed insight into how MP3.com was built from the ground up as well as the dynamic competitive process in the online music industry.
Other articles in the Journal include features on university spin-out ventures, the schooling experiences of subsequent high-technology entrepreneurs, and updates on the latest research on entrepreneurship.
The Journal publishes lectures, updates/overviews of the latest research on entrepreneurship, case studies/business experiences of entrepreneurial ventures, and research on the impact of entrepreneurship education.
The IJEE will be publishing a special edition on university spin-out ventures. This is being sponsored by the Mercia Institute of Enterprise who are offering 4 prizes worth US$1500 each for the best four articles on the topic published in the IJEE.
More information on the Mercia Institute of Enterprise is available at www.merciainstitute.com
The IJEE is published by Senate Hall Academic Publishing. Details are available at www.senatehall.com
Dr Andrew Burke (Warwick Business School & UCLA), one of the Journal's founding editors, states, "Contrary to popular myth, personality, psychological make-up and life experiences are very limited predictors of who will become an entrepreneur. Indeed what makes a successful entrepreneur varies across industries and even within firms at different stages of their evolution. The constant features that are associated with successful entrepreneurship are skills and perspectives that can largely be taught. A good understanding of the economics of the entrepreneurial market in which the firm operates alongside a grasp of core business skills are helpful for any entrepreneur, regardless of their type. These are the skills which the Journal will be promoting."
Professor Josh Lerner (Harvard Business School), a member of the Journal's editorial board, argues that entrepreneurship education has far too often relied on inspirational stories rather than the types of rigorous analysis that characterise accounting, finance, strategy, and other disciplines typically found in business schools. "Such an approach may have been a feasible one to cater to student enthusiasm during the 'bubble years,' but is unlikely to be sustainable in the long run," says Professor Lerner. He goes on, "If entrepreneurship is to achieve a permanent place in business school education, a more intellectually rigorous approach with strong ties to the mainstream academic disciplines must be adopted. The Journal will play a critical role in this."
Dr Andrew Burke argues that the skills students learn on a course should help them to run a new venture more effectively. However, rigorous business analysis can frequently show students the tough side of entrepreneurship, namely the high failure rates and what it takes to do good due diligence. Dr Burke explains, "This can have the controversial side effect of reducing the number of students who start up their own business. But as long as it deters the certain failures and raises the skill level of start-ups with potential, a university entrepreneurship course can reduce the quantity but increase the quality of new ventures causing a net increase in entrepreneurship. Our research has shown this effect to be true for university education in general."
Warwick Business School teaches entrepreneurship to its own undergraduate students, as well as to engineering and science faculty undergraduates within the University. It also teaches three enterprise modules on the Warwick Skills Certificate. Warwick is part of the Mercia Institute of Enterprise, a consortium of nine West Midlands Universities and three University Colleges created in January 2001, to encourage an entrepreneurial culture amongst graduates in the West Midlands. Dr Andrew Burke is a Reader at Warwick Business School and the Mercia Institute of Enterprise.
Further background information follows:
The International Journal of Entrepreneurship Education's Editorial Board is made up of professors from the world's leading international business schools and economics departments including Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, UCLA, Warwick, Cambridge and INSEAD. The aim of the Journal is to focus on the aspects of entrepreneurship that can be taught. The Journal is devoted to the publication of peer reviewed articles to keep professors, students and practitioners abreast of the latest research on entrepreneurship as well gaining access to case studies on entrepreneurial ventures.
Articles in the first issue of the International Journal of Entrepreneurship Education include:
What Entrepreneurship Research can do for Business Policy and Practice by Per Davidsson (Jönköping University, Sweden). Davidsson's paper outlines a stark argument that is at the core of the raison d'etre of the International Journal of Entrepreneurship Education. It is a warning to the dumbing down approach to entrepreneurship by government and big business. He states that " I hope that our research-based teaching of students and counselling for change-oriented practitioners will do a lot of harm to the 'fat cat', conservative and risk-averse practitioners who are not willing to take entrepreneurial risks. I also hope that entrepreneurship research will continue to make life hard for policy-makers of the kind that with well-intended but over-ambitious support measures make the entrepreneurial spirit choke rather than flourish."
Another article You Say You Want a Revolution? focuses on the launch of the music site MP3.com and its subsequent take-over by Vivendi Universal. MP3.com was originally founded by individuals with a radical vision of transforming the music industry and in the process to undermine the power of the major record labels. The article highlights how even a well planned and executed new venture can be vulnerable if any key aspect of business is overlooked. In MP3.com's case the presumption that the site could allow people to store music which they had already bought on CD under 'fair use' terms of copyright law proved to be unfounded. This miscalculation caused MP3.com to be sued for millions of dollars by the major record companies. The end result was that MP3.com had to suffer the indignity of seeking rescue from one of the companies it originally sought to shake up. The article gives a detailed insight into how MP3.com was built from the ground up as well as the dynamic competitive process in the online music industry.
Other articles in the Journal include features on university spin-out ventures, the schooling experiences of subsequent high-technology entrepreneurs, and updates on the latest research on entrepreneurship.
The Journal publishes lectures, updates/overviews of the latest research on entrepreneurship, case studies/business experiences of entrepreneurial ventures, and research on the impact of entrepreneurship education.
The IJEE will be publishing a special edition on university spin-out ventures. This is being sponsored by the Mercia Institute of Enterprise who are offering 4 prizes worth US$1500 each for the best four articles on the topic published in the IJEE.
More information on the Mercia Institute of Enterprise is available at www.merciainstitute.com
The IJEE is published by Senate Hall Academic Publishing. Details are available at www.senatehall.com
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