This is the topic of a talk I gave to students recently to kick-start the commencement of their entrepreneurship curriculum. It gladdens my heart that there is a gradual shift in thinking in educational establishments with regard to incorporating entrepreneurship into the school curriculum. The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) has also incorporated entrepreneurship as part of the 2-week orientation program.
Entrepreneurship is a subject that should be taught from junior secondary school or even earlier. There is no point in preparing young people for a world that no longer exists. Employees are becoming endangered species. The future belongs to entrepreneurs.
We are now in the information age. Many historians regard 1989 ad the year the industrial age came to an end. This is the year the Berlin Wall came crumbling down and the World Wide Web went up. Information is now open source and companies or employees that do not adapt to the new economy may become part of the debris left behind by change. The company no longer takes care of you for life. Your career, your finances, your health, your well-being, you name it, is now your responsibility. We are now self-employed. If your skill becomes obsolete, you are fired.
Before the industrial age, our forefathers were all entrepreneurs. Everyone cultivated his farm and the labor force came primarily from the immediate family. With the industrial age, most people migrated to the cities to get a job. Schools sprang up to produce employees for the factories and soldiers for the armed forces. To succeed in a job, you needed to go to a school, get good grades, and get a good job. Today, a good degree does not guarantee a job. School dropouts dominate the marketplace while those with good degrees work for them.
There is an entrepreneur in everyone. While everyone may not have what it takes to run a successful business, we can all innovate either from the inside as intrapreneurs or on our own as entrepreneurs. In the new economy, employers are looking for intrapreneurs – employees with an entrepreneurial spirit, employees who don’t simply settle with doing what they are told or stick with their job description but also innovate. Employees who bring new ideas to the table and can run with them when given the opportunity, employees who can run a business profitably. Such employees are hardly let go no matter the strength of the economic headwinds. Rather they become more valuable and grow to become partners or key shareholders.
In the era of downsizing, outsourcing, asset optimization, mergers and acquisitions, and growing unemployment, the future belongs to those who discover who they are, what they have to give, and where they want to go and get on with it. The future belongs to those who are ready to take the bull by the horns and take their destiny into their hands rather than wait for circumstances to change. The future belongs to entrepreneurs.
