Young entrepreneurs may be an endangered species, but universities are pumping tons of resources into attracting the next startup cool kids. Campuses are investing in startup labs, incubators and courses in entrepreneurship. But how effective are such programs for helping students turn their novel idea into a business venture? To get an answer, I reached out to Scott Gerber, the founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC).
I think entrepreneurship can be an opportunity for those who understand it. But for the ones who are getting into it for the wrong reasons, they’re likely going to fail because they have no concept of what what it actually means to be an entrepreneur.
How do you teach an appetite for risk?
The reality is we have a risk-adverse culture. This is why entrepreneurship was foreign to most young people five-to-seven years ago. It’s hard to teach them risk, especially for millennials who have been coddled in their upbringing. The reality is, the best entrepreneurs are not risk takers, they are risk mitigators. The challenge is to teach this generation to think in that way. It’s about mitigating risk, not creating more challenges. The experiential side of this is crucial: Learning by doing. Failure. These are the best life lessons.
Curated from Can You Actually Teach Entrepreneurship? [LinkedIn]
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