Teaching the Right Attitude

What is Intrapreneurship and Entrepreneurship?

Entrepreneurship: someone who is an entrepreneur. A person who starts a business and bears full risk of his failure but also benefits from the success.

Intrapreneurship: someone who has got an entrepreneurial attitude. A person, who works for someone else but with the right attitude that adds value to his employer. Someone who can take risks and be creative and who aims to turn ideas into profitable finished products or services.

I would personally talk about just entrepreneurial attitude and forgot this division into entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship. In today's world both, employers and employees, need the right attitude to be successful in his business or career. Some of us just need to be willing to take also all the financial risks.

Can it be taught?

It is easy to teach how to set up a business, and also all the business subjects such as financing, marketing, operations management etc. It is harder though to teach the right attitude. But it can be taught and should be taught by every teacher regardless the subject or level.

Only by teaching the attitude, we can create more successful businesses. It is important for an entrepreneur to know how a business operates, but without the right mindset he most likely ends up becoming a manager and not an entrepreneur. In my opinion, entrepreneurship education should firstly support the right attitude, and secondly teach business subjects.

I have already covered some ideas how to support the right attitude among the students. You can read more from my previous posts.

According to David A. Kirby (2006), we should focus on developing the following skills, attributes and behavior of successful entrepreneur when educating for (not about) entrepreneurship:

• communication skills, especially persuasion 
• creativity skills 
• critical thinking and assessment skills 
• leadership skills 
• negotiation skills 
• problem-solving skills 
• social networking skills 
• time management skills 

My teacher practice took place in the UK. Entrepreneurship is not one of their core subjects in the secondary education. Even though I was teaching business subjects, I was not expected to teach entrepreneurial attitude or behavior. Still, I could have promoted those skills and attributes by choosing my teaching methods differently.

One group was for example working on a business plan for an existing business. I think creating a business plan is a great way to teach about setting up a business, but it could also be used for supporting creativity. If I had been the one planning the course, I would have asked them to come up with their own business ideas. That would have supported creativity. Now they were just repeating pretty much what the owner of the existing company had told them. Yet, I was challenging some of the students, and asking them to think critically how their decisions affect the business.

If I had have more lessons with the same students I could have carried out a coursework, where the students had been asked to:

• take roles (who is the leader, who makes sure the task is done by the due date..) 
• manage the time 
• solve a problem and think critically 
• be creative and take risks 
• communicate as a group 
• assess the process and the final products

I used role playing in one of my lessons during my practice. I could have used also for example debating and networking tasks.

What kind of effect would the development of Intrapreneurial skills have on me as a teacher? Person?

I think I have the right attitude. I am willing to take risks and be creative in my work. I am also motivated. As a teacher this may actually cause me some problems: I find the school world being a bit too slow and bureaucratic sometimes. Anyway, I will keep my motivation up. Only then I can show example to the students.

References

Kirby, David A. (2006) "Entrepreneurship education: can business schools meet the challenge?" International Entrepreneurship Education. Issues and Newness. Retrieved March 14, 2013 from http://www.google.fi/books?hl=en&lr=&id=8FCUJQYaufYC&oi=fnd&pg=PA35&dq=teaching+entrepreneurship+to+business+students&ots=pewqUFl3CI&sig=Vo3TQZc6XT7W1r5Ds8Moiod-mKM&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=teaching%20entrepreneurship%20to%20business%20students&f=false