Choosing careers: Instilling the urge to pursue entrepreneurship

Educational institutions need to step up to promote culture at primary level

KARACHI:

Every society has a culture it follows varying from discipline and obedience to parents to a general sense of rules and regulations. The respect youth is expected to extend to parents goes beyond the family structure and into the career choices they will make when entering the job market.

I completed my FSc in the late 1970s. My college mates talked about pursuing either a career in engineering or medicine. A few thought about helping their families’ business, while some wished of joining armed forces. These were the traditional choices.

But what stood out was that no one gave a second thought to starting their own venture – especially if there was little precedence for it in their families.

In Pakistan, young graduates do not traditionally choose entrepreneurial careers. On the positive side, there seem to be a few cases where graduates have pursued the option of setting up their own ventures, but these are mostly those who have drawn inspiration from the west or studied in elite schools.

As far as the overall economy of Pakistan is concerned, these start-ups are just a drop in the ocean. In the west, nearly 80% of economic growth has been claimed to come from ventures in their first five years of start-up.

Pakistan’s future economic growth is clearly on risky grounds. To address this shortcoming, fundamental changes need to be made at the school and college levels.

Start early

To attain this goal, opportunities need to be created at the start with skill development and education based on promoting entrepreneurship. In developed countries, this process starts in primary schools, is further strengthened in secondary before colleges provide courses, programmes and even incubators and mentors to pursue business ideas.

The unfortunate bit is all this action is missing in Pakistan. With the growing youth population, no existing economic sector has the capacity to meet the swelling demand for jobs over the next decade or so.

New green-field opportunities have to be created and that will only be possible if thousands of youth pursue start-ups, franchising ventures or entrepreneurial enterprises.

However, the biggest hindrance in the way of entrepreneurship remains the lack of awareness about risk taking, innovation and teamwork. In order to promote entrepreneurship as a career option, students need to be exposed to basic business skills such as economics, marketing, sales as well as rudimentary local commercial laws.

All this needs to be coupled with specific entrepreneurship teacher training. Teachers should be given incentives to learn basic business concepts and impart this knowledge to students.

Necessary activities need to be incorporated into the school curriculum, helping to enhance business behaviours such as creativity, initiative taking, team spirit, leadership and curiosity. Schools should organise day trips to businesses where they can interact with employees and management, and ask questions to enhance their understanding.

One way to kick-start this process is to learn from institutions that have already incorporated entrepreneurship education into their programmes. These include institutions such as IBA Karachi/Aman CED, IBA Sukkur, KITE and Punjab University. At the primary level, Injaz Pakistan is trying to bridge the gap between institutions and the market place.

Public-private partnership is another key model that can be pursued to further the cause of entrepreneurship education. The Higher Education Commission needs to lead this effort through the 30 Offices of Research, Innovation and Commercialisation (ORICs) that have been created to make research a top priority for sustainable economic growth.

In addition, the private sector needs to be leveraged to sponsor entrepreneurship training and skill development.

Time is running out and if we do not take immediate action of incorporating entrepreneurship and business skills education into our curriculums, the rest of the world will pass us by.

The writer is associated with the corporate sector and a supporter of many social enterprises and foundations

Published in The Express Tribune, October 13^th, 2014.

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