4 ways Heuristic, the world’s first start-up game, can help attain entrepreneurial skills
"Scale of India's development needs is huge. Need to achieve it is urgent. We cannot simply continue on traditional paths to development."
- Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India (Startup Konnect 2015)
Imagine growing up in a society where everyone expects childrens to get a decent job after college or prepare for exams to land a better career prospect. In infrequent scenarios, as a student you would find parents, families, or even society encouraging to take up entrepreneurship as a future prospect or take up something innovative that could primarily affect others.
The old saying, "everyone wants to be a job seeker, and no one wants to be a job giver," holds true in today's scenario when the emphasis on becoming a job generator is greater than ever in history. Every stable government worldwide wants its future to be secured so that its population does not have to face the brunt of poverty or unemployment.
As per the data provided by the International Labor Organization, there are 808 million people below the age of 35 in India, which comprises 66% of the country's total population. Training minds to generate entrepreneurial skills is more important than ever.
"Entrepreneurship- The pursuit of a goal without regard to current resources controlled" –
Howard Stevenson
Let's first put an end to an old debate about whether entrepreneurs are born or made?
Nature or Nurture: Decoding the Entrepreneur
Entrepreneurship is really not a fate yet a capability. The research "Nature or Nurture: Decoding the Entrepreneur," a report based on a survey of 685 entrepreneurs worldwide and in-depth interviews, concluded that -
Nearly 60% have worked in a corporate setup, and 33% say working in a professional workspace was vital to the accomplishment of their business.
45% of entrepreneurs start their first business after the age of 30.
10% of entrepreneurs have started ten or more companies.
Entrepreneurial leaders are characterised as much by their initial business experience, social foundation, and outside condition as they are by any intrinsic individual qualities. Nurture, not nature, appears to be progressively significant in forming the entrepreneurial outlook.
The research data shows that comprehensively 95% of entrepreneurs are made, and just 5% are born, and this gives us a strong foundation to truly nurture entrepreneurship at the grassroots level.
The general realities which are pushing entrepreneurship education as the need of the hour are contracting the employment market, a growing population of youth and employment searchers, and pressure on the government to offer employment; however, in the light of the fact that the current education system has bombed its fundamental order of nurturing 21st-century skills and self-reliance among students and this is, where entrepreneurial education becomes increasingly significant as it offers holistic growth and encompassing development for the young minds.
Let us look at the void in the current approach towards entrepreneurial education and ecosystem, especially at the school and college levels.
Present ecosystem and methodology to impart entrepreneurial education depend on the regular old and conventional classroom-based models like-
teacher to student spoon feeding,
mentor to a mentee, or
tech-based online courses
Every one of them is generally a one-sided interaction-based model; a greater amount of instructing or lecturing is involved than doing or learning through the application-based model. The final result is that the vast majority of instructing and lecturing is lost within hours of the session, and most of it is either exhausting or non-relevant to the student.
Since it is non-interactive, most students cannot connect it with reality, and lastly, it brings home nothing as it's not application-based learning.