Are entrepreneurs born or made?
The same question could be asked of musicians, writers or painters. Some people seem to come straight out of the womb singing on pitch or selling candy out of their lockers in gradeschool.
But like the majority of people who bloom later, aspiring entrepreneurs can learn the skills that allow them to partake in the roller coaster ride of starting a business.
“I do believe that entrepreneurship can be taught,” said Sadan Kulturel-Konak, who has been the director of Penn State Berks’ Flemming Creativity, Entrepreneurship and Economic Development (CEED) Center since its inception in 2008. She is also the coordinator of the college’s entrepreneurship and innovation, or ENTI, minor, offered to any student regardless of his or her major.
But Kulturel-Konak was quick to add that entrepreneurship can’t be taught in the same way that a subject like statistics can be taught, through lectures, reading and tests in a classroom. The courses in ENTI are designed to include large portions of experiential learning, with an interdisciplinary approach, to give students a sense of what starting a successful business is really like.
Gregory F. Flemming, for whom the center is named, is a retired IBM executive who returned to his native Berks County in 2005, having left at age 21 and lived all over the world, and was “shocked by the lack of job opportunities,” he said. “I felt strongly that we needed an entrepreneurship program here.”
After three years of lobbying Penn State, his idea finally was approved, and Kulturel-Konak was installed as the director. Her background in industrial engineering, applied math, management information systems and entrepreneurship – she has taught it locally, nationally and internationally – helped her design the program, which she describes as “an entrepreneurship ecosystem.”
That ecosystem begins with six core courses: entrepreneurial mindset; entrepreneurial leadership; social, legal and ethical environment of business; small business management; managing an entrepreneurial startup company; and the capstone, new venture creation.
But it doesn’t end there.
To enhance the courses, the center also provides a mixture of workshops; a speaker series in which successful local entrepreneurs (including some graduates of the program and Penn State alumni) talk about their experiences; external and internal mentors, including investors and members of the center’s advisory board; a Student Entrepreneurship Club; the chance for students to compete in “Invent Penn State” with their business models; and a six-week, STEM-related entrepreneurial boot camp for three-member teams (a student, academic and business mentor, including members of the community) who go through an application process to be accepted.
“People can come up with a great idea, but they have to learn how to come up with a nice business model that investors are looking for,” Kulturel-Konak said. “They have to learn how to do a market analysis. Engineering students are good at technology, but they don’t always have the ability and skills to bring their ideas to market.”
She said most of the coursework is done through “problem-based learning,” in which the students, often working in teams, solve problems in class after doing background reading. Business owners and other guests also come to classes to work with students.
As they move through the program, she said, students are disabused of some of their misconceptions about starting a business.
A common mistake, she said, is that “they come up with an idea, and they don’t test it. They don’t go out there and talk to potential customers face to face to validate the idea. That’s unrealistic. People don’t do customer discovery and customer validation at all if we don’t teach them.”
Another illusion is that investors will magically appear after three months of working on a project.
“It has to be polished many, many times before you pitch your idea,” she said. “We do mock pitches; we call ourselves ‘Berks Shark Tank,’ because we give them hard questions, so they see it’s not easy.”
Kulturel-Konak is also taking entrepreneurship into the surrounding community, particularly the Reading School District. In the center’s Creativity and Entrepreneurship Workshop, middle- and high-school students are invited to Penn State Berks to come up with ideas and present them, with the help of members of the Student Entrepreneurship Club.
And Kulturel-Konak has taken Penn State students to Kenya and Nicaragua to teach entrepreneurship to disadvantaged children and adults.
“Most people need a foundation (to start a business),” Flemming said. “If we push students out too quickly, and they don’t have a good foundation, they’ll fail.”
Kutztown University
Shawn Riley, an associate professor of management who teaches entrepreneurship in Kutztown University’s Department of Business Administration, in the College of Business, agrees that entrepreneurship can be taught, although “certainly some folks are more inclined toward or successful in entrepreneurship,” he said. “But I think anyone can increase the degree to which they can be creative, innovative and a successful entrepreneur.”
Intangible qualities such as the ability to bear risk, persistence in the face of obstacles and a passion to create something from the ground up, are enhanced, he said, by a good background in how the startup world works.
Riley, whose Ph.D. is in business administration with an emphasis on strategic management and entrepreneurship, came to KU in 2012, and for the past four years has taught entrepreneurship and small-business management in addition to strategic management.
The college offers a minor in entrepreneurship for any KU student, regardless of major. The minor consists of four required courses (including an internship) and two or three electives. Students learn skills such as creating a business plan, leadership, marketing and other relevant topics.
Riley said the department is in transition now; he is part of a task force exploring the possibility of an additional minor for business majors only, which would be more challenging and require more prerequisite courses.
He and Saewa Hong, who also teaches strategic management and entrepreneurship, working are on a proposal to create a major (or “track”) in entrepreneurship within the business administration department. This would be in addition to the four current tracks: accounting, finance, market and management.
“We’re expanding our entrepreneurship offerings because of demand in the local market for entrepreneurship training,” he said.
In his courses, Riley said, he tries to overcome students’ lack of confidence in the first week of class.
“I spend time proving students can be creative through in-class exercises,” he said.
Every student has to come up with a feasible idea, he said. He helps them discover “pain points” by thinking through their daily routine to find things that aggravate them, like parking problems or high textbook fees.
Another way to find an idea, he said, is “to recognize someone else’s solution, like Velcro, for instance, and apply it in another context.
Students have to pitch ideas three times during the semester, beginning with a one-page proposal for a business idea; the proverbial 30-second elevator pitch.
Later, the student writes a feasibility analysis and presents it with a short PowerPoint to the class. At the end of the course, students form teams of four, and each team picks the best idea and comes up with a full business plan.
Riley said he encourages his students to take their idea to the KU Business Idea Competition, held each year. Last year, all three winners had taken his course.
He said the KU Small Business Development Center is a great resource for his students to experience entrepreneurship up close, through “dozens of assistantships throughout the year.”
Contact Susan L. Pena: 610-371-5049 or businessweekly@readingeagle.com.
