Essay: Entrepreneurship skills and knowledge

An Entrepreneur is a person who organizes and operates one or more businesses, taking on greater than the normal financial risk in order to do so. However, being a successful entrepreneur means more than starting a new venture, it means having the right attitude, resolve and grit towards a business venture to achieve success. To start a business, one basically needs to do their research about their chosen industry, draw up their business plan, select their serving location and demographic (customer base), register their business with the government and apply for applicable licenses and permits. Most people don’t need a college or university degree to become successful entrepreneurs. There are many real-life successful examples who acquired the basic skills and knowledge required to run and manage a start-up venture from places other than a college or university and although most of them started college or university education while still dropping out after some time, they hardly studied anything related to business management.
There are many real-life successful examples “Beyond Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, some of today’s most successful entrepreneurs didn’t graduate from college (Nisen & Giang 2013). The recent list includes Matt Mullenweg, starter of WordPress, University of Houston, 2nd year drop-out, Arash Ferdows, co-founder of Dropbox, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 3rd year drop-out, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, also attended MIT, 3rd year drop-out, Daniel Ek, co-founder of Spotify, who dropped out of MIT after merely 8 weeks. There are other successful people that didn’t even attend a college or university, Daniel Karp, founder of Tumblr and Pete Cashmore, founder of Mashable” [1]. All the entrepreneurs mentioned above are highly successful entrepreneurs today who at some point in their life realized they didn’t need a degree or certificate from an educational institution before they could change and impact the world in a powerful way.
The basic entrepreneurship skills and knowledge required to run and manage a business with the aim of succeeding doesn’t necessarily need a college or university education as they can be acquired from alternative sources that’ll save them time and get them started as soon as possible such as the internet, documentary videos etc. Entrepreneurs in nascent phase use skills learned from reading and lessons acquired from the failures and mistakes of other entrepreneurs before them and those they currently look up to for advice [2]. The information available through the internet is more than sufficient for self-growth and knowledge development in an individual’s chosen business industry. There are books and documentary available to the public for free or for a price about people who succeeded, people who are in industry-leading executive positions and people who failed along the way trying to get where nascent entrepreneurs want to get to that they can learn from. M.A. Mamabolo, M. Kerrin and T. Kele wrote the journal article “Human Capital Investment as Sources of Skills”. The writers carried out a survey with 6 hypotheses of one being that “nascent entrepreneurs use skills learned from reading books” and “skills acquired from failure and mistakes”. The survey was supported by the Investment Bank for Reconstruction & Development – World Bank. The survey is recent, last updated on the 15th of June 2017 with Entrepreneurs and Skills being their keywords. Just as the basic skills and knowledge to start, run, and manage a business successfully can be gotten from the internet and other sources such as biography books and documentaries, the legal knowledge to start, run and manage a business successfully can also be gotten from multiple sources other than a college or university. This supports the idea that the money an entrepreneur would use to pay for college or university tuition for 2-6 years can be saved up and be used as an early stage investment into their business/idea if they decide not to attend or choose to drop out during the course of their studies as the mental resources and knowledge they are seeking to acquire from a college or university can be acquired from many different sources that’ll cost substantially less than attending a college or university such as part-time online courses, home schooling/tutoring, and self-teaching from the unlimited resources, information, documentary videos and text journal and articles on the internet. Some argue that the legal procedures and formalities of getting a business off the ground (starting a business), are one of the biggest drawbacks of becoming an entrepreneur. However, as pointed out earlier, legal information, help and guide are no exceptions from the internet.
The basic legal requirements to start a business venture doesn’t necessarily need a college or university degree or certificate. The steps outlined by the Canadian government on starting a business venture are as follows: Plan the business, choose the business name and then register the business with the government. Afterward, they apply for the necessary business licenses and permits if applicable. The government went more in debt with a link going in deeper, explaining each step with more detail. All the information can be found at www.canada.ca/en/services/business/start.html. The Canadian government offers a lot of support and guidance for individuals seeking to start-up their own business in Canada by making available special programs such as the start-up visa, entrepreneurship grants and loans and competition. The information and guides on the government’s website(s) are very helpful, understandable and easy to follow and execute for individuals who didn’t attend a college or university and its free to access and open to the public at every time of the day to get their business started and become successful. A lot of guides and help come from the government who plays a key role in the rules that govern the business activities of its country. There are also none government firms that provide guides and step by step legal guides, articles, and research to the public for free such as Price Waterhouse and Coopers (PWC).
Becoming an entrepreneur in no way requires a college or university degree or certificate. However, becoming a successful entrepreneur has to do with having some certain executive and leadership principles, guidance and knowledge among many other qualities. This behaviour and attitude requirements don’t mean that one can’t get, grow and groom these qualities without attending a college or university. There are multiple resources, failures, and mistakes to learn from those people who have gone through the early stage entrepreneurship stage have made that people could learn a whole lot from. The internet has unlimited resources to help one grow their knowledge about something they’ve never heard of before with approximately one week of study to the level of a 1-year college student or more to make them successful in their chosen area of a venture.