Opinion
Issue No. 20 - December/January 2005
Creating Go-getters
by Peter Balan
Can we teach entrepreneurship? This is one of the most frequent questions I have been asked during the years that UniSA's Centre for the Development of Entrepreneurs has been presenting courses in entrepreneurship and new venture creation.
Many people see entrepreneurs as people who take big risks, who have hundreds of ideas popping up all the time and perhaps have difficulty in picking the right one, who may be unethical because of their desire to succeed at all costs and to get rich quickly, and who are born, not made. However, these are just popular myths that have been given credence by the behaviour of a few individuals. The problem is that these myths are misleading and often scare away would-be entrepreneurs and cause others to think of them as mysterious and high risk takers.
Research into entrepreneurial intention has identified motivations for independence and control over one's destiny that drive a person to setting up their own business so that they can 'be in charge'. These are the motivations that drive people to see a business opportunity in their work or in their social activities and then devote their energy and knowledge to building this idea into a business activity, perhaps starting as a home-based business.
There are also external reasons that drive entrepreneurial behaviour, and these include loss of employment due to company failure, downsizing or outsourcing. This situation has faced many employees in South Australia over the past 15 years.
A further source of entrepreneurial activity is corporate venturing, where a business will encourage innovation inside the organisational structure with the hope that a new business idea will result in either a renewal of the whole business or a profitable spin-out business. At the international level, 3M is one of the best-known exponents of this approach to building its business.
We need more successful entrepreneurial activity in South Australia. There is p...
