Gladys Edmunds has written an interesting column that challenges those who teach entrepreneurship to remember what it is that we are really teaching about. Most entrepreneurial activity is not about venture capital deals with locked in exit strategies. It is not about a quick Initial Public Offering of stock to make millions. It is not the “gazelle” organization that so many academics love to fawn over.
One of the myths about entrepreneurship is that its goal is to build a business, any business that can be quickly taken public to make millions of dollars for the founders, who then make a hasty exit to the hills.
Real entrepreneurship for the vast majority of entrepreneurs involves hard work and taking a risk to pursue a very basic dream. These entrepreneurs have a passion to start a particular business that they believe in their hearts can make them a living doing what they love to do, and doing it on their own. The job of those of us who teach entrepreneurship is to help give them the skills and knowledge they will need to succeed in this career path. It is not to convince them that if their dream is not going to make them wealthy in three to five years it is not a deal worth doing. This is utter nonsense! Wealth can be gained through entrepreneurship, but for most it takes many years of hard work to build a business with real value, and not succumbing to the IPO myth that created the DOT.com disaster.