Fostering entrepreneurship

Management students are meant to be entrepreneurs, whether they are working as executives in the corporate world or as promoters of ventures. Hence, in which ever setting they are operating in, they would be corporate masters, in terms of initiatives and ideas and an appetite to innovate. Fostering this spirit is what is the need of the hour.

The most critical impact that we can expect to have on MBA students is to get them to start thinking in the entrepreneurial way while they are at B-school. To this end, the business school should act as a facilitator, giving the student exposure to entrepreneurship at various stages and in various forms. One of the most impact-full concepts in this arena is peer learning. Business schools should focus on admitting budding & practicing entrepreneurs in their student body. This will serve to inject the infectious entrepreneurial spirit in the student body. As a responsible MBA student, I would like to underscore this fact to the admission committee of my school and also to those of all other B-schools. I believe that we, as the student body, have a voice using which we can get the admission policy of our schools tailored in this direction.

One very critical area which is very often neglected is “Internal Entrepreneurship”. Students often are unaware that entrepreneurship is critical even when they are working as executives for a corporate. Therefore, there is a need to create awareness about internal entrepreneurship among students, especially early on in the MBA course. We as part of the Entrepreneurship club/student body should get the relevant faculty/industry executives to talk to students on internal entrepreneurship. Other initiatives that I would like to initiate are having awards like the “Star Internal Entrepreneur of the month” and getting these people to campus to talk on their experience with internal entrepreneurship. Since the students interested in internal entrepreneurship are different from those interested in starting their own ventures, we actually should have a different student club to promote ‘Internal entrepreneurship’. As a long term initiative, I would also press for a course in internal entrepreneurship to be included in the syllabus, so that MBA students have a good exposure to this critical subject.

Once the students are initiated into entrepreneurship, the next steps would be to facilitate their ventures. Here, having an ‘idea generation camps’ can play an important role. The effect of these camps is two fold. One to get MBA students thinking in direction of new idea generation and second to connect those students with ideas and those without ideas. We need sessions where in students are taken through idea generation in a structured manner & are taught to recognize gaps, each indicating a pressing need for a particular product or service and areas where customers are underserved. They should also be taken through a structured course in writing, analyzing and critiquing B-plans, as a part of their core terms.

Student entrepreneurs face a lot of practical implementation issues. One of the stumbling blocks for budding MBA entrepreneurs is the student loan EMIs that they need to pay. I feel that we students need to get the alums and the B-school together and form a fund which will ensure that this EMI is taken care of. This could be in exchange for an equity stake for the fund. The proceeds from these stakes could be used to sponsor loans for future student entrepreneurs. This would enable forming a strong knit community of student entrepreneurs built on the concept of “pay it forward”.

I would also like to initiate a recruitment stream at B-schools where startups can come and recruit students offering equity as compensation. Recruitments by start ups should be encouraged by allowing them the luxury of recruiting from B-schools without having to pay the normal recruitment fee. This will allow a lot of MBA students, who are vary of the effort and risk involved at the idea generation phase of the venture, to get involved in entrepreneurship.

Let me conclude by saying that there is a pressing need to foster entrepreneurship, a critical growth driver for the country, among MBA students. We, the student body at ISB, are actually in the process of implementing some of the initiatives that I have mentioned above. And we have found the necessary support from our institution and else where. Hopefully all B-schools can implement such initiatives, which will provide a major thrust to Entrepreneurial development in the country.