Page 183 - 1-Entrepreneurship and Local Economic Development by Norman Walzer (z-lib.org)

172 Joseph Kayne

In New Venture Creation: Entrepreneurship for the 21st Century, Jeffry Tim-
mons and Stephen Spinelli (2006) identify the following nine core attrib-
utes of successful entrepreneurs:

1. Commitment and Determination
2. Leadership
3. Opportunity Obsession
4. Tolerance of Risk, Ambiguity, and Uncertainty
5. Creativity
6. Self-Reliance
7. Adaptability
8. Motivation to Excel
9. Courage (8)

At the collegiate level, entrepreneurship educators have created such op-
portunities through experiential classroom learning and a broad range of
practicum activities, including internships and business consulting projects.
Much of this activity is incorporated into the entrepreneurship curriculum
and individual or group independent study opportunities.
At the elementary and secondary school levels, one should not expect stu-
dents to achieve competence in all or even most of these entrepreneurial
skills, although there are often exceptions to this rule. Therefore, the goal of
entrepreneurship education at these levels should be to begin the process of
making these behaviors second nature to aspiring young entrepreneurs. Un-
fortunately, the most appropriate place to start runs counter to much of the
current curriculum and pedagogy employed in many public and private
schools. People often stereotype entrepreneurs as contrarians or rebels, and
to some extent that is true. Successful entrepreneurs view the world through
different filters and question everything. The “chaos” created by this ap-
proach to the world does not conform to the desire for order and discipline
in the classroom. Interestingly, this is the same conflict that occurs within
other organizations (e.g., major corporations) when entrepreneurially
minded employees push up against management.
Singer and songwriter Harry Chapin (1978) best articulates the conse-
quences of this disconnect between creativity and discipline in his song,
“Flowers are Red.” On his first day of school, a young boy is asked to draw
a picture in which he chooses to use all of his crayons, stating, “There are so
many colors in the rainbow and I see every one.” His teacher, however, re-
sponds, “Flowers are red; green grass is green. There is no need to see them
any other way than the way they always have been seen.” The youth is
robbed of all his creative motivation to the point that when he transfers to
a school that encourages lateral thinking, he becomes the one who echoes
3
the mantra of conformity. If we expect students to think and behave like