In a newly released study supported by the Office of Advocacy and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurial Studies of New York University examined the impact of entrepreneurship education in higher education.
The study found that students who took an entrepreneurship class were more likely to have engaged in three types of “innovation”:
- offering new products or services
- obtaining patents or copyrights
- using production techniques that differ from those of the industry’s main competitor.
Not surprisingly, graduates who have taken entrepreneurship courses are significantly more likely to select careers in entrepreneurship.
The results suggest that there is a strong correlation between respondents having taken an entrepreneurial course and their self-reported skill in identifying new business-related opportunities.
To me opportunity identification is the single most important skill we can teach. It helps prevent businesses from being launched that are doomed to fail from the very start. It is a skill that also ensures proper positioning of viable opportunities.