The Revolution of Entrepreneurship Education

My entrepreneurship education journey began in 2004 as the coach for Bond University's Moot Corp teams. With my career in investment banking and private equity developing, I mentored teams of students to develop 40-page business plans for emerging high-growth firms and coached them to deliver a 15-minute investment pitch to a panel of judges. At the time I thought this was world-class. With enlightened eyes I realise it was an excellent first attempt.

The "Nudleman" team in 2005!

The focus at that time was on the startup: student performance was measured as an attachment to the success of the venture. The inherent fallibility of early-stage firms translated into students' assessment of their own entrepreneurial capability, confounding the educational effects and, at times, demotivating otherwise exceptional performance.

We were assessing the incorrect attribute: it was the entrepreneur we were attempting to educate, not the venture.

The following years were spent exploring the theoretical foundations of entrepreneurial capability and experimenting with ways in which to embed them into curriculum. There were false starts and amazing successes, most of which were co-created with external parties. Highlights include our first Bond Business Accelerator in 2014, Gold Coast Demo Day the same year, and embedding business modelling into the foundation subjects for our Bachelor of Business.

When I look at the activities I oversee today at Bond University I see a focus on the individual. We have designed a suite of curricular, co-curricular and extra-curricular interventions to develop the antecedents to entrepreneurial capability, delivered by a mix of academically-trained and professionally-experienced educators. This is driven by a complex understanding of the entrepreneurial method and strong links to practice. Entrepreneurship is both a mindset and a set of skills inextricably wrapped in a process and must be developed accordingly. In the words of Jeffrey Timmons, it is "a way of thinking, reasoning and acting."

Educational institutions would do well to recognise they are in the human capital industry. We should focus on our areas of relative expertise and leave commercial endeavours to others far more capable. This demands close ties to industry aligned with respect for academic rigour: a difficult but necessary relationship to balance. The good news is that our understanding of the discipline of entrepreneurship has never been so complete, and there exists an existential need to develop these skills and capabilities in our workforce to drive the future of our economy, society and environment.

If you have yet to be exposed to the work of Sir Ken Robinson, I encourage you to watch these two Ted talks: Do schools kill creativity | Bring on the learning revolution. The message is clear: our education system has lagged the progression of society and it needs revolution, not evolution, to be useful for today's youth. I am haunted by his closing plea, and have shared it below for you to consider. It connects with my soul and drives my passion to enact change. I hope it does the same for you, and is much better consumed straight from Sir Ken's mouth than from the words on a screen:

"Now in this room, there are people who represent extraordinary resources in business, in multimedia, in the Internet. These technologies, combined with the extraordinary talents of teachers, provide an opportunity to revolutionise education. And I urge you to get involved in it because it's vital, not just to ourselves, but to the future of our children. But we have to change from the industrial model to an agricultural model, where each school can be flourishing tomorrow. That's where children experience life. Or at home, if that's what they choose, to be educated with their families or friends. 

There's been a lot of talk about dreams over the course of these few days. And I wanted to just very quickly -- I was very struck by Natalie Merchant's songs last night, recovering old poems. I wanted to read you a quick, very short poem from W. B. Yeats, who some of you may know. He wrote this to his love, Maud Gonne, and he was bewailing the fact that he couldn't really give her what he thought she wanted from him. 

And he says, "I've got something else, but it may not be for you." He says this: 

"Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, 

Enwrought with gold and silver light, 

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths 

Of night and light and the half-light, 

I would spread the cloths under your feet: 

But I, being poor, have only my dreams; 

I have spread my dreams under your feet; 

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." 

And every day, everywhere, our children spread their dreams beneath our feet. And we should tread softly."