Unveiling the Entrepreneurial Mindset: A New Approach to Education

Entrepreneurial competencies

Bridging the gap in entrepreneurial education, our newly developed framework, comprising 15 principal competencies, offers universities a comprehensive tool to intentionally cultivate the entrepreneurial mindset. This innovative tool ensures a targeted, nuanced approach to fostering entrepreneurship, replacing hopeful coverage with intentional teaching.

Note: from this introduction page you can click through to our interactive framework where you may explore all the principal competencies and their sub-competencies. You are also able to download a pdf of the full framework from there.

Certain competencies distinguish the mindset of the successful entrepreneur

The entrepreneurial landscape, ever-changing and thrilling, is a captivating world of possibilities and challenges. At its heart lie certain competencies and capabilities that constitute the quintessential entrepreneurial mindset. It is these traits that often distinguish a successful founder and their venture. Moreover, even for those not intending to delve into entrepreneurship, these characteristics can prove invaluable. They are sought after by corporates and organizations alike, underscoring their broader relevance.

Understanding these competencies allows us to know what and how to teach entrepreneurship

As educators vested in the realm of entrepreneurial pedagogy, the comprehension of these competencies becomes crucial. It serves two fundamental purposes: it enlightens us on what to teach, and perhaps more importantly, how to teach it. The competencies, a blend of cognitive and non-cognitive elements, are not merely subjects to be communicated but traits to be nurtured. A deeper understanding of these elements provides us with a robust metric to gauge the efficacy of our educational programs in cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset.

A framework to help design, develop and measure programs has remained elusive

Indeed, significant work has already been undertaken in this sphere. Noteworthy examples include Saras Sarasvathy’s exploration of “effectuation,” the European Union’s EntreComp framework, and the initiatives by the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NTFE). Yet, despite these substantial efforts, a comprehensive framework catering to the unique requirements of designing, developing, and implementing high experiential programs remains elusive.

“Standing on the shoulders of giants” we have developed a framework for program designers

Addressing this gap, we have synthesized our experiences and insights from existing research to develop a set of 15 principal competencies, each supported by several sub-competencies. The product of rigorous research, partially funded by an EU-based Higher Education Initiative, this framework promises a nuanced and holistic approach to entrepreneurial education.

We invite you to use this framework in your programs

We extend an invitation to universities developing and implementing entrepreneurial programs to utilize our work. Whether these programs form part of the accredited curriculum or are extra-curricular initiatives like accelerators or incubators, the framework can prove beneficial. Of course, the complexity and extensiveness of the framework mean it may not be fully covered by all programs, especially shorter ones. However, the framework enables educators to consciously choose which competencies to focus on, replacing reliance on hopeful coverage with targeted teaching.

Let us reshape entrepreneurial education together

Discover our framework at Mashauri Entrepreneurial Competency Framework  (MecFrame ) and join us on this exciting journey to reshape entrepreneurial education. We hope that, through deliberate design based on our framework, we can collectively nurture future entrepreneurs, equipped with the knowledge, skills, and mindset they need to succeed.

Masters of Scale - an introduction

Reid Hoffman - LinkedIn boss

 

A while ago we produced a series of articles around Y-Combinator's excellent series on how to start a startup. Now I am pleased to say that we are starting a new series based on Reid Hoffman's (co-founder at both PayPal and LinkedIn) new podcast "Masters of Scale.

First acknowledgement to Tim Ferris (4 hour workweek, etc) whose podcast highlighted the series for me - it is well worth listening to Tim's series too.

There are a lot of really rubbishy articles, videos and podcasts that come out of Silicon Valley - many misleading, often overly-hyped and some frankly dangerous to a new founder who might take them to heart. But Reid is clearly different. He has been part of a number of incredibly successful businesses, part of a number of failures and has an eye for angel investing that is almost magical - some of his early investments include Facebook, AirBnB and Flickr. His insights are sharp and he is not afraid to take a contrarian view and so you will generally find his work really interesting. The excellent part of this series is that it takes place through interviews of top entrepreneurs who share their own experiences and wisdom including the likes of Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Eric Schmidt (Google / Alphabet) and Brian Chesky (Air BnB).

The focus of the Masters of Scale series is about scaling i.e. rapidly growing a business where the business model has been tested. However,  there is plenty (maybe 50%) of information around the startup phases as well i.e. where you are searching for and trying to find the business model that works. In Tim Ferris' podcast he briefly goes through all "ten commandments" - listening to this is a useful way of getting an overview. The commandments (and time in Tim's podcast where they appear) are: 

Commandment 1: Expect rejection. [09:14]

Commandment 2: Hire like your life depends on it. It does. [19:26]

Commandment 3: In order to scale, you have to do things that don’t scale. [25:37]

Commandment 4: Raise more money than you think you need — potentially a lot more. [36:18]

Commandment 5: Release your products early enough that they can still embarrass you. Imperfect is perfect. [44:45]

Commandment 6: Decide. Decide. Decide. [1:00:16]

Commandment 7: Be prepared to both make and break plans. [1:03:13]

Commandment 8: Don’t tell your employees how to innovate. [1:07:21]

Commandment 9: To create a winning company culture, make sure every employee owns it. [01:12:32]

Commandment 10: Have grit and stick with your hero’s journey. [1:23:22]

Bonus Commandment 11: Pay it forward. Use the momentum of your own success to move the success of others. [1:26:03]


You can listen to the podcast by subscribing at Apple iTunes or the Android store; but you can also go to the website at Masters of Scale and listen to the podcasts. Finally, for fuller immersion, I recommend the Entrepreneur.com site where they host the series and add some of their own perspectives as well - Entrepreneur Masters of Scale.

I know many of you are time-strapped and would like to get an overview of the episodes before investing your time in listening to them - and so over the next few weeks, we will produce short summaries here to give you episode highlights peppered with our own views. Look out for our next blog:

Masters of Scale Episode 1: “In order to scale you have to do things that don’t scale.”


Note to university professors and faculty heads: Mashauri work hard at ensuring our programmes for students contain the type of material that is encompassed in this series. Not only do we believe that the practical experience we give student entrepreneurs in their courses is essential, we also believe that exposure to true entrepreneurial experts is a critical part of the learning process. For more about our prgrammes for universities, visit: Mashauri for Universities.