Teaching people to be employers

Can you really teach someone to be an entrepreneur? It is a job with highly individual traits such as ambition, optimism, risk-taking and a sense of urgency.

Universities are focusing on innovation and entrepreneurship as the Government looks to small and medium enterprises to deliver jobs and economic growth.

Professor Howard Frederick, director of the New Zealand Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Unitec, says you probably cannot teach people to be entrepreneurs.

But part of the solution lies in education and training, he says.

"In New Zealand there is an emphasis on management whereas at Unitec we teach people to be employers rather than employees."

With the right programme students can learn new entrepreneurial skills.

An entrepreneur takes innovation and gives it a commercial application, but it is rare that one person performs both roles.

So what does that mean for New Zealand - counted in the Bartercard New Zealand GEM report among the most entrepreneurial countries in the world - and with its reputation for No 8 wire innovation?

We may be so blessed but that has not translated into sufficient growth to sustain living standards on a par with Australia.

Frederick's research for the New Zealand arm of the global GEM study shows New Zealand entrepreneurs often lack a sense of urgency about growth.

"If the country is to get ahead ... we need to take entrepreneurship more seriously."

There are signs that the Government is taking it seriously, backing programmes to help innovative companies survive the start-up phase and grow.

The University of Auckland Business School offers courses, as does Waikato University.

But it is Unitec that has attached its educational brand most firmly to the study of entrepreneurship.

Unitec's dean of the Business Faculty, Gael McDonald, hired Frederick to run the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship from his role as the Sir David Beattie Chair of Communications at Victoria University in Wellington.

South African Pieter Nel was appointed head of the faculty's Management Innovation and Entrepreneurship school last year, after initiating masters and bachelors programmes at the University of South Africa.

"New Zealand has lagged behind other countries in the study of entrepreneurship, which is established in other countries," said McDonald.

"It is important that universities get out there working alongside business, as Unitec is doing with its business development unit."

In New Zealand, entrepreneurship gained the academic respectability of degree status two years ago when Unitec launched its post-graduate Masters in Business Innovation and Entrepreneurship (M. BIE).

Next year, Unitec will introduce undergraduate papers leading to a bachelor's degree, or B. BIE.

Peter Mellalieu, associate professor of creativity and innovation, says the masters course started two years ago intending to teach entrepreneurship.

"But when you look at high-growth entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, it is apparent you need to be identifying people with different entrepreneurial talents and then enhancing them," he says.

Start-ups frequently begin with a partnership between an innovator and an entrepreneur, but as a company grows a single entrepreneur might not be enough.

The GEM report says natural-born entrepreneurs who have all the right character traits but no specific training do exist, but are the exception rather than the rule.

"What we do is develop entrepreneurial strengths rather than try to patch up weaknesses," says Mellalieu.

"We help people with, say, four out of seven or eight key entrepreneurial talents and show how to work within complementary teams.

"But the traits that bring growth and create wealth - such as a passionate belief in their idea and a tight focus on seeing it through - can be a negative when they have to work together as a team."

A team from Unitec's M. BIE programme recently competed in an international Students in Free Enterprise competition.

Mellalieu says they developed a "stunning presentation, great concept, utterly focused and won the New Zealand competition".

"But when we took the presentation to Europe, despite having professional mentors, everyone was burned out, falling out and the team had multiple goals.

"It's called the Apollo complex, when you bring together creative individuals who want to succeed but end up neutralising ideas.

"It is something we study here ... but in the aftermath we've looked at this practical example of what can go wrong."

Unitec: NZ Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Herald feature:
Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Report - 2002