Can entrepreneurship be learned? An intriguing question

This week the prestigious Italian university “Luigi Bocconi” presented a new Chair in Entrepreneurship, created thanks a philantrophic gift of Carlo Debenedetti in memory of his father Rodolfo, one of the most brilliant 20^th century entrepreneurs in Italy.

The “lectio inauguralis” of the Chair had an intriguing title: can entrepreneurship be learned? The chair holder, Fabiano Schivardi, as the following speech hold by Josh Lerner of Harvard Business School, focused mainly on the macro-economical factors that can facilitate or be an obstacle to entrepreneurship. So their final reply to the above question is: yes, it is possible to learn to be entrepreneurs, it depends by external factors as, for example, the place you live, the number of companies and entrepreneurs in that place and many others.

Carla and I think that this approach to entrepreneurship is correct, because also the cognitive psychologists that study the entrepreneur mindset arrived (at the moment) at this end: actions are driven by intentions, intensions are influenced by attitudes, and the latters are shaped by external factors. But the main important external factors are the family and the school; the birthplace, the companies concentration in that area, the number of entrepreneurs and so on are secondary factors.

That's why we think that the capital aim of every nation should be to introduce entrepreneurship into the education systems not just as a new subject to teach but changing the way subjects are teached. Teachers should become learning facilitators that go along with their students explaining them that is more important to learn from everything, at every age, that just to memorize data. Showing them how to see opportunities instead of problems. Training them to be motivated, resilient, focused on their aims, to take decisions and assume responsabilities.

It is not a simple change, but it is necessary. Some countries, like the USA, are really advanced by this point of view. But others have a lot of work to do. We need to find and improve new methodologies to teach and train an entrepreneurial mindset in everyone.

Our suggestion? Mixing psychology and economics, we think that the new Bocconi Chair could be much better in “building” the future entrepreneurs.