I have just arrived back from the USA where I attended the annual meeting of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor project in which Wales has participated since 2000.
The event brought together researchers from all over the world to examine entrepreneurial activity and its effect on economic activity. As it is ten years since the GEM project was established, it was an interesting meeting to reflect on what has been achieved to date and our agenda for the next decade.
As discussed on Friday, the meeting was held at Babson College (above), which is recognised as the leading entrepreneurship centre in the World.
As a small private college of less than 3,500 students wholly dedicated to enterprise, its mission is “to educate men and women to be entrepreneurial leaders in a rapidly changing world, and prepare them to identify opportunities and initiate actions that result in genuine accomplishment”.
For example, its flagship course - Foundations of Management and Entrepreneurship - was recently rated as being the most innovative entrepreneurship education course in the USA by the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship.
This is not surprising, as the all first-year undergraduate students have to participate in the Foundations of Management and Entrepreneurship course, where student teams create their own for-profit ventures over the course of twelve months. The college even loans the potential entrepreneurs £1500 to get going, with all profits from these student ventures donated to local community projects.
As far as I am aware, no other business college engages its students in this manner from day one.
After an immersion in the real world of enterprise, the undergraduates then go on to study areas such accounting, marketing, finance, management operations, organisational behaviour, and economics in one integrated course. They are taught by a team of professors who relate the interaction of each subject studied with each other, rather than being taught as stand- alone subjects as we see in many UK business schools.
In their final year, they can focus on one key aspect of business including areas such as economics, family business, finance, global business management, leadership and retail supply chain management.
It is a highly innovative approach to teaching business and management to students but one that clearly works, given the continuous high rankings achieved by the Babson College every year.
Through connecting theory directly with practice, Babson has been able to infuse entrepreneurship education throughout all the courses it teaches.
Of course, excellence in enterprise education is not only about cultivating new businesses but about creating a state of mind where innovation, market awareness, entrepreneurship and leadership is second nature not only to those who develop a start-up for the thousands who will work in large firms, the public sector and within charities and voluntary organisations.
Perhaps the one question that springs to mind is why we haven’t done this here in Wales?
Certainly, the statistics show that whilst over 450 graduate start-ups have been created since 2002, the vast majority remain lifestyle businesses with an average of one employee each.
In addition, it would seem that only one academic institution has taken the whole area of enterprise education seriously during the last decade, although one would question whether the millions that have been spent on various programmes have actually produced the outputs expected.
If there is to be a step change in the economy of this country, then we need radical solutions. Given the general reluctance of academic institutions across Wales to take enterprise education seriously, then perhaps there should be pressure to create a dedicated Welsh institution along the same lines as Babson College.
However, that is highly unlikely in the current political climate and perhaps the best that anyone can hope for is that enterprise education is integrated properly into higher and further education across Wales and that it is not just seen as an add on to existing courses.
The Welsh economy is not only crying out for entrepreneurs, but for entrepreneurial managers to help take our existing businesses to the next level with new ideas and innovative products and solutions. Traditional teaching of traditional standalone business subjects will not do anything for our economy.
With Wales facing a major economic challenge over the next few years, I hope the time has now come for politicians and policymakers to take this issue seriously and ensure that we have a 21st Century management education system for a 21st century economy.
The event brought together researchers from all over the world to examine entrepreneurial activity and its effect on economic activity. As it is ten years since the GEM project was established, it was an interesting meeting to reflect on what has been achieved to date and our agenda for the next decade.
As discussed on Friday, the meeting was held at Babson College (above), which is recognised as the leading entrepreneurship centre in the World.
As a small private college of less than 3,500 students wholly dedicated to enterprise, its mission is “to educate men and women to be entrepreneurial leaders in a rapidly changing world, and prepare them to identify opportunities and initiate actions that result in genuine accomplishment”.
For example, its flagship course - Foundations of Management and Entrepreneurship - was recently rated as being the most innovative entrepreneurship education course in the USA by the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship.
This is not surprising, as the all first-year undergraduate students have to participate in the Foundations of Management and Entrepreneurship course, where student teams create their own for-profit ventures over the course of twelve months. The college even loans the potential entrepreneurs £1500 to get going, with all profits from these student ventures donated to local community projects.
As far as I am aware, no other business college engages its students in this manner from day one.
After an immersion in the real world of enterprise, the undergraduates then go on to study areas such accounting, marketing, finance, management operations, organisational behaviour, and economics in one integrated course. They are taught by a team of professors who relate the interaction of each subject studied with each other, rather than being taught as stand- alone subjects as we see in many UK business schools.
In their final year, they can focus on one key aspect of business including areas such as economics, family business, finance, global business management, leadership and retail supply chain management.
It is a highly innovative approach to teaching business and management to students but one that clearly works, given the continuous high rankings achieved by the Babson College every year.
Through connecting theory directly with practice, Babson has been able to infuse entrepreneurship education throughout all the courses it teaches.
Of course, excellence in enterprise education is not only about cultivating new businesses but about creating a state of mind where innovation, market awareness, entrepreneurship and leadership is second nature not only to those who develop a start-up for the thousands who will work in large firms, the public sector and within charities and voluntary organisations.
Perhaps the one question that springs to mind is why we haven’t done this here in Wales?
Certainly, the statistics show that whilst over 450 graduate start-ups have been created since 2002, the vast majority remain lifestyle businesses with an average of one employee each.
In addition, it would seem that only one academic institution has taken the whole area of enterprise education seriously during the last decade, although one would question whether the millions that have been spent on various programmes have actually produced the outputs expected.
If there is to be a step change in the economy of this country, then we need radical solutions. Given the general reluctance of academic institutions across Wales to take enterprise education seriously, then perhaps there should be pressure to create a dedicated Welsh institution along the same lines as Babson College.
However, that is highly unlikely in the current political climate and perhaps the best that anyone can hope for is that enterprise education is integrated properly into higher and further education across Wales and that it is not just seen as an add on to existing courses.
The Welsh economy is not only crying out for entrepreneurs, but for entrepreneurial managers to help take our existing businesses to the next level with new ideas and innovative products and solutions. Traditional teaching of traditional standalone business subjects will not do anything for our economy.
With Wales facing a major economic challenge over the next few years, I hope the time has now come for politicians and policymakers to take this issue seriously and ensure that we have a 21st Century management education system for a 21st century economy.