A number of myths could be preventing some people from pursuing their dreams of starting a business.
Chief among them, said Professor of Entrepreneurship McDougall-Covin, was the contention that entrepreneurs were gamblers, that it required luck and lots of money to become entrepreneurs, and that entrepreneurs were born and cannot be made.
“It is a lot more than just luck [and] you need more than money . . . . the hardest one is that entrepreneurs have a certain profile,” she said. “I actually had a student come up to me once and he said ‘I have always wanted to be an entrepreneur but I took this test and it says that I don’t have the profile’. He really thought he couldn’t be an entrepreneur and what garbage is that,” she said.
McDougall-Covin, who is from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University in the United States, made her comments during a presentation at the Job Opportunities for Business Start-up (JOBS) faculty symposium at the Cave Hill School of Business last Tuesday.
She said that entrepreneurship was a major source for social, political and economic development.
McDougall-Covin, speaking on the topic The Entrepreneurial Revolution, told participants: “We are in a time that historians will look back and they will call this time period the entrepreneurial revolution. In this entrepreneurial revolution we have recognized the importance of entrepreneurship for so many things.
“Entrepreneurship is the recognized economic engine that drives countries. It is the major source of job creation [and] the major source of innovation. It is now seen as the solution for reducing poverty. It is also seen as an instrument for greater political stability and individual reliance,” she said.
She said many times people thought of entrepreneurship as just a local business but that too was changing, adding that many new entrepreneurs were no longer only seeing their home countries as their only marketplace.
“They are going international very early on. These are the ones that are the real job creators, these are the ones that provide economic stability to countries,” she said.
The professor added that it was “absolutely key” for established businesses to provide student entrepreneurs with job attachments. (MM)
