With the proliferation and tremendous popularity of entrepreneurship courses, it is worth pausing to reflect on what it is that they teach. Unlike accounting, finance or even marketing courses – which offer a set of trade or professional skills with tangible career value – entrepreneurship courses are less susceptible to return-on-investment calculation.
I am not a big fan of rigid, formulaic business plan courses, which can be seen as an attempt to convey more tangible value. To me, the value of entrepreneurship education lies in its embracing of uncertainty, creativity, and logic of emergence. While traditional courses shield the student from uncertainty and enable them to find the best solution on a well defined problem, entrepreneurship courses should expose students to uncertainty and open endedness as core aspects of life and urge them to thread forward without the assuredness of complete knowledge and with the sense that all premises for action are tentative.
It is about awakening and releasing the genie of adventure and possibilities that we lock up as we leave childhood behind.
