Developing entrepreneurial mindsets

Sarojini Rao is the principal of Indus International School & advisor, Indus Startup School, Bengaluru 21st century India is re-discovering its entrepreneurial roots. It is now among the world’s top 5 countries for the number of start-up enterprises. However, according to a 2017 IBM Institute for Business Value and Oxford Economics Study, 90 percent of Indian startups fail within five years. Though most promoters ascribe this high failure rate to inadequate funding, the majority of them fail because of deficiency of entrepreneurial competencies, particularly creativity, risk-taking and ‘antifragility’. The resilient entrepreneur bounces back to square one. On the contrary, antifragile entrepreneurs thrive in chaos and emerge stronger than before. Although politicians and bureaucrats who have promoted over 500 public sector commercial enterprises countrywide seem unaware, every business enterprise is a risk-bearing venture. Therefore, fear of failure is not unusual. But the distinguishing feature of successful entrepreneurs is that they have risk-bearing capability, and aren’t afraid to fail. They understand that the first rule of business — or indeed any enterprise — is ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’. Unfortunately, despite the subcontinent’s long and successful history of private enterprise, in contemporary Indian society there’s considerable stigma attached to failure arising from risk taking. Therefore, the general preference of the middle class is for safe and secure employment, especially in government jobs where long tenure, steady promotion and inflation-proof salaries and perquisites adding to several multiples of per capita income, are guaranteed. Yet the national development effort requires a large and ever growing number of entrepreneurs — job creators rather than seekers — to step forward to promote greenfield enterprises, philanthropic trusts and charities and social welfare organisations. In the 21st century milieu, the country’s schools and colleges must foster an entrepreneurial culture to encourage children to become risk-taking entrepreneurs unafraid of failure. Case studies need to be collated and entrepreneurial stories celebrated and disseminated. The first step towards resuscitating our historically strong tradition of private enterprise is to overcome fear of failure which is pervasive in Indian society. School managements should encourage students to practice design thinking and to apply knowledge to real-life situations to creatively and collaboratively solve problems. Design thinking is a solutions-based pedagogy developed to find innovative solutions to problems. It was developed by IDEO (an international design company) based on models ideated in the Stanford Design School. In simple terms, design thinking means collaborative effort to identify problems, and generating creative solutions. I believe the design thinking process (DTP) should be integrated into every subject in all classes, starting with one subject per grade. By practicing DTP, teachers can compact several periods of teacher and textbook-driven teaching into meaningful experiences for students. As a result, the latter will be stimulated to research, collaborate, brainstorm, ideate, reflect and develop valuable life competencies. DTP is a life skill at the macro level and an instructional strategy at the micro level. To create an ecosystem that encourages students to become risk-takers and overcome fear of failure, evolved educationists recommend heterogeneous teams…