Page 53 - EW April 2021

Teacher-2-Teacher

Developing entrepreneurial

mindsets

SAROJINI RAO

1ST CENTURY INDIA IS RE-DISCOVERING ITS e national development effort requires
entrepreneurial roots. It is now among the world’s
Top 5 countries for the number of start-up enter- a large and ever growing number of
2prises. However, according to a 2017 IBM Institute entrepreneurs — job creators rather than
for Business Value and Oxford Economics Study, 90 per-
cent of Indian startups fail within five years. Though most seekers — to step forward to promote
promoters ascribe this high failure rate to inadequate fund- greenfield enterprises, trusts and NGOs
ing, the majority of them fail because of deficiency of entre-
preneurial competencies, particularly creativity, risk-taking
and ‘antifragility’. The resilient entrepreneur bounces back
to square one. On the contrary, antifragile entrepreneurs textbook-driven teaching into meaningful experiences for
thrive in chaos and emerge stronger than before. students. As a result, the latter will be stimulated to re-
Although politicians and bureaucrats who have promot- search, collaborate, brainstorm, ideate, reflect and develop
ed over 500 public sector commercial enterprises country- valuable life competencies. DTP is a life skill at the macro
wide seem unaware, every business enterprise is a risk- level and an instructional strategy at the micro level.
bearing venture. Therefore, fear of failure is not unusual. o create an ecosystem that encourages students to be-
But the distinguishing feature of successful entrepreneurs Tcome risk takers and overcome fear of failure, evolved
is that they have risk-bearing capability, and aren’t afraid educationists recommend heterogeneous teams that in-
to fail. They understand that the first rule of business — novate collaboratively. In the ultimate analysis best deci-
or indeed any enterprise — is ‘nothing ventured, nothing sions are made by teams addressing problems in a VUCA
gained’. (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world. How-
Unfortunately, despite the subcontinent’s long and suc- ever, building teams is not only a command and control
cessful history of private enterprise, in contemporary In- function, it requires collaborative and creative learning,
dian society there’s considerable stigma attached to failure problem solving, ideation, prototyping and testing. Creative
arising from risk taking. Therefore, the general preference collaboration by teams ensures that projects are designed
of the middle class is for safe and secure employment, es- so that if a constituent unit of a project malfunctions, it will
pecially in government jobs where long tenure, steady pro- cause minimal damage to other units. In schools, forma-
motion and inflation-proof salaries and perquisites adding tion of teams to ideate practical solutions for local social
to several multiples of per capita income, are guaranteed. problems — food wastage, climate change, curriculums and
Yet the national development effort requires a large and administration reforms — is a good way to start.
ever growing number of entrepreneurs — job creators rath- Intelligent risk-taking capability and reduction of fear of
er than seekers — to step forward to promote greenfield en- failure can also be developed by setting challenging goals
terprises, philanthropic trusts and charities and social wel- and planning to achieve them collaboratively. Since goals
fare organisations. In the 21st century milieu, the country’s tend to be for the long term, it is advisable to monitor a
schools and colleges must foster an entrepreneurial culture project with several checkpoints along the way and ensure
to encourage children to become risk-taking entrepreneurs attainment of mid-point goals. Students can be taught to
unafraid of failure. Case studies need to be collated and set challenging goals and achieve smaller targets to attain
entrepreneurial stories celebrated and disseminated. the ultimate objective.
The first step towards resuscitating our historically In this connection, it’s important to keep the Pareto
strong tradition of private enterprise is to overcome fear Principle in mind. In the 19th century, Vilfredo Pareto, an
of failure which is pervasive in Indian society. School man- Italian economist and philosopher, formulated the 80/20
agements should encourage students to practice design rule. He contended that if we spend 80 percent of our time
thinking and to apply knowledge to real-life situations to focusing on the most critical 20 percent of a given project,
creatively and collaboratively solve problems. Design think- it will be 80 percent successful. The 80/20 principle recom-
ing is a solutions-based pedagogy developed to find innova- mends focus to identify the core of a problem and allocation
tive solutions to problems. It was developed by IDEO (an of 80 percent of available resources to it. This awareness
international design company) based on models ideated in reduces risk and fear of failure. These measures will help
the Stanford Design School. In simple terms, design think- build entrepreneurial mindsets in schools and higher edu-
ing means collaborative effort to identify problems, and cation to produce the go-getting entrepreneurs the nation
generating creative solutions. I believe the design thinking urgently needs.
process (DTP) should be integrated into every subject in all
classes, starting with one subject per grade. By practicing (Sarojini Rao is the principal of Indus International School & advisor, Indus
DTP, teachers can compact several periods of teacher and Startup School, Bengaluru)

APRIL 2021 EDUCATIONWORLD 55