Urban Echo

Last Tuesday I received an email from 4Ps Business & Marketing requesting inputs on 'Why B-Schools should focus on entrepreneurship' for their next issue - a 'B-School special issue'. The magazine should hit stands sometime mid next week. Anyways, I thought this write up coupled well with my last post - Generation Y(ikes)! Here is what I had to say:

"Can you imagine what would have happened if the founders of Twitter, Haldiram’s or Café Coffee Day had stuck to their original business plans? These brands would never have become the household names that they are today! It was the radical changes that they made to their initial models that helped them become what they are. This makes it clear that there is a growing importance for the pedagogy of entrepreneurship in India today.  Why should business schools focus on the field of entrepreneurship? Simply put, focusing on the wide-ranging areas that form an entrepreneurship program could help individuals beat the odds and grow their business (which in turn drives the economy).

Every successful, established or aspiring entrepreneur with every new venture (be it starting something new or adding to an existing company) has a base plan. Being an aspiring entrepreneur myself and having interacted with many entrepreneurs over a period of 5 years, I can safely say that 95% of us believe our base plan will work. I've even gone as far as imagining how I'd look on the cover of Inc. magazine. The truth is - I was almost always wrong.

Entrepreneurship is not just about an "idea"; and an "idea" is not what dictates ultimate success from failure. The ability to design a plan-B after every failure, the ability to morph the initial model into a viable  business model  is what makes a successful  entrepreneur. This is where B-schools play a pivotal role. Knowledge is key, and with a focus on entrepreneurship, B-schools have the ability to arm students with creative and thoughtful perspectives about how to   think unconventionally, evaluate situations, overcome obstacles, acquire the know-how to successfully combat and conquer situations, and be in-tune with their environment. Effective entrepreneurship programs allow individuals to retroflex convention, do their own thing, make it rain without letting their income own them, control what’s worth controlling, and not stress about the things that aren’t or can’t be controlled.  On a personal note, having studied entrepreneurship atIIPM, I've not only learnt the art of quantitatively addressing key elements while developing business models, but I've also learnt the importance of advocating an operating doctrine based upon agility, assertiveness, cohesiveness and subtlety.
 
Entrepreneurship is an evolving discipline, and B-schools today should strive to be at the vanguard of that evolution. Programs should be powered by leading-edge technology and breakthrough business research, offering extraordinary opportunities for those wishing to study entrepreneurship. Contrary to popular belief, entrepreneurs cannot be born, they have to be made.

Without question, public and private organizations have entered an era of socio-economic globalization. In such a global market un-par quality, competitive and innovative changes are neccesities to survival. Besides, the numerous challenges of our aging populous and poverty driven illiterate rural mass is an ever surging adverse factor.  Now or never is the case with B-schools in India to not only implement and sustain innovative strategies to enable growth, but to also adopt an outcome-based approach to mass steer entrepreneurs so that India can sustain its economic growth and social programs to justify Incredible India!

As a final note, B-schools should pay closer attention to the shift in scenario - we had entrepreneurs of the 1990s, followed by the social entrepreneurs of the 2000s. This new decade seems to have set the stage just right for a new breed - cultural creative entrepreneurs."

Generation Y, also known as the Millennial Generation or Generation Next or Net Generation, describes the demographic cohort following Generation X.

A random text message session with a friend last night got me thinking on why I know I will succeed tomorrow. I wrote this article in May for a friend and thought it'd be worth a read.


No matter how different the various education systems might be, schools across the globe follow the same template - it's less about us getting work done and more about them teaching us how to do work. Exams, assignments, sweet talking seniors - decide our fate at the end of every term; if we play our cards right we're placed right at the top, we're told how talented and gifted we are. We get to university - the same story but with a little more intensity. We finally land a job - stoked and excited, looking for a change - BUT its the same story again...just way more intense than the previous two phases. Exams and assignments are replaced with deadlines and sweet talking our seniors is replaced by ass kissing our bosses.

No matter how much you tell yourself you're going to stick to a job and rise up the ranks, its not going to happen. You're going to work 2 years, switch jobs...jump companies maybe every 4 years and industries every 6 years. Statistics show that most individuals (starting with college all the way till their 40th birthday) would have had atleast 11 jobs. We're taught to literally live our life as bees. 

We buzz through life with slow yet steady progress - the word 'steady' makes the previous sentence sound good, but its not. A  majority of you would be following the same slow yet steady progress, which translates to the same level of competition and limited growth. Our education systems lay emphasis on the skill-sets that are becoming increasingly irrelevant.


Right after you graduate and you land your first real job, you realize that forward push you got all through life until this point vanishes. As talented as you might be, truth is you are despensible. There are a 1000 other people just as capable as you are (if not better) -you could be replaced in a heart beat. Your employers will not map your success in life, you need to do this on your own. You need to sit down, think out-of-the-box and understand your terrain. With every turn you need to get ahead and figure out your next step.

If you don't settle on what you want to do in life and you don't "give" yourself a sense of purpose - you're not getting anywhere. Its quite easy to succeed when the assignment is provided to you...the ability to create assignments (your own personal agenda) and succeed at them is what seperates you from the slow yet steady lot.

Figuring out what you're best at, what your innate skills and aptitudes are, how can you use your "talent" to add value to today's world - thats where your focus should be. Stay real, live real, keep real - understand the reality around you, tune in to it and you'll never be at dearth when it comes to finding new ways to apply yourself across the ever increasing broad spectrum of jobs and industries.

Your true compass is your mind. Let your mind be your personal roadmap for the world. Think of yourself as a bottle of wine - with time your abilities will mature and the experience you gain in terms of diversity will only add to your flavor - who would want to refuse such a fine glass of wine? You'll be invaluable wherever you go.


I know of too many professionals who invested way too much time in mentoring fresh minds, only to find out they fine tuned their own replacements. Screw ego. It's not goining to get you anywhere. You may have skills, but you're not the only one with it - the same skills can not only be acquired elsewhere, but also cheaper.

Education today teaches us skills...skills that helps us work in a linear fashion...skills that enable us to work in a linear fashion...skill that let us deduce based on known patterns (just like the majority of our generation). Great for memorizing and thinking like the rest of the gang, but completely inept at coming up with new ideas.

To set yourself apart from the competition, you need to work on your own creativity and inspiration. Starbucks, Nokia, Virgin, Twitter, Google, Craigslist, the American NFL, the Indian IPL -  assets that come from the mind of an innovator. These brands and their blueprints can be easily copied, but can never be replicated.


Stop thinking about life and start living it. Tap both hemispheres of your brain and along with experiencing life, you'll come up with new ideas. This creativity is the jet fuel for our generation. Look at the world around you today - it has never been easier to put a new idea in motion.

Yet you have been discouraged from doing so at every step. You have been trained to lessen the pain inflicted by your weaknesses instead of building on your strengths. This creates mediocrity, not excellence. At the end of the day you're a replaceable employee -  not a visionary.

Our generation today is being trained for a world that will soon cease to exist. Understand yourself, break your mentality, work on your roadmap and embrace your own creativity - you'll make your mark.

Sometimes it seems as though our disagreements — over everything from politics to business to love to art to design to the designated hitter rule — are more serious and more divisive than ever before. People are making emotional, knee-jerk decisions, then standing by them, sometimes fighting to the death to defend their position.

I don’t believe it has to be this way. I don’t believe humans evolved to be so bad at making decisions, so poor at changing minds, so violent in arguing our point of view. I am well aware of how split our world has become, but I don’t think the current state of affairs is built into our very nature.

In the old days, we had the time and inclination to consider the implications of a decision. Everyone wasn’t in quite so much of a hurry. At the same time, most conversations (and most arguments) were local ones, conducted between people who knew each other.

Today, it’s very different. We’re should change that.