The challenge of creating entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurship activities in India over the past few years have been on the rise owing to various dynamic initiatives and policies by the government. While the environment is conducive for entrepreneurs, education institutions in India also play an important role in developing entrepreneurial skills and encouraging students to develop their own business models. Various successful start-ups were incubated on the university campuses. This helps students prepare for the future world of work and equips them with crucial life skills.

Since education is essential to enhance thinking abilities and as the entrepreneurship ecosystem is developed by the interplay of universities, government, entrepreneurs and universities become a major source of fostering the required entrepreneurial environment. Early exposure to entrepreneurship and innovation is more likely to sow the seeds of entrepreneurial careers for students. Indian universities are embracing a culture of in-depth innovation to promote entrepreneurship and become a global soft power.

Existing initiatives: Several universities have included innovation in the curriculum. Entrepreneurship and innovation are taught across studies in management and engineering courses. Entrepreneurship cells exist in most universities, and business plans are a new attraction during the annual festivals. Some universities go a step further and have added ‘maker spaces’ to allow students to generate prototypes for their products.

Incubation centres: Universities can act as incubation centres to promote potential ideas by facilitating collaborations and incubation capacities not only for students from the area of business and entrepreneurship but also from other areas like engineering, humanities and medicine. They are provided with physical space to give wings to potential ideas and suitable support to raise funds early to transform these ideas into business models. The faculty also plays an important role in the incubators, as they are a vital resource for mentorship and can channel the students’ energy by guiding research activities.

A bridge between academia and industry: Universities involved in research have many patents, articles, and registered intellectual property rights, converging the joint efforts and experience of students and faculty. However, such research has to be commercialised as well, and here comes the role of universities as a facilitator for industry linkages. By establishing connections with industry, universities create entrepreneurial ecosystems and guide students on different aspects like licenses, consulting and spin-offs. Entrepreneurship education inspires students to start their own ventures. These courses have a positive impact on the student’s abilities.

Entrepreneurs often desire to change things with their creative ideas and disruptive technologies. For this, youth need an environment encouraging active risk-taking without fearing failure. In today’s time, many of India’s unicorns have not just created wealth for their investors but have become huge employment generators and have acquired a scale that makes them potential world leaders. Most of our new-age entrepreneurs are developing products for a worldwide audience and are not opposed to audacious scale-ups that push them into a global arena.

(The author is Assistant Professor, Electronics and Communications Engineering, NIIT University)