Nov. 29, 2009
COMMENTARY: New Graduates Should Consider Entrepreneurship
By Joseph J. Honick
When the following article appeared more than 10 years ago in the Arizona Daily Star, Tucson, AZ, the response was immediate and enthusiastic. My e-mails and telephone were deluged with calls from parents and school officials (high school and college) with both appreciation and requests for how to help graduating students get into the entrepreneurship mode. I wrote the piece, as you will see, because I had become frankly fed up with the laziness of both media and schools as the annual time for graduation neared….merely regurgitating old and worn out ideas about how to go and get a job.
Today, the challenge for graduates is greater than ever before, nor have they been even motivated to think about creative ways to market their talents so that potential employers or “clients” could retain them and the graduates could profit as well.
It is time for students and school officials at both high school and college levels to rethink the messages with which they want to send their students off into the world of earning a buck and seeing themselves as potential entrepreneurs.)
Over the past few weeks, about 1.1 million men and women have been spilling out of America's colleges and universities into what is supposed to be the "real world" of real jobs.
After all, that is pretty much how they have been primed to think for about 16 years of education: how to become qualified for a "good job" and how to go through the ballet of resumes, interviews and other dances to get that job.
For weeks the media have been filled with statistics about which fields offer how much opportunity and how much they might pay for new graduates. Scouts called "recruiters" from all sorts of companies, large and small, will have been scouring college campuses to find what they consider the cream of talent that will fit their ideas of good employees.
But wait, why should these fresh graduates be seeking only to become employees? Where is the promotion for them to step into the world of entrepreneurship, owning their own businesses?
For those who say these fresh alumni are too inexperienced and insufficiently trained, I point to the likes of Michael Dell who started his business at 19 while he was a student. Today he is only 34 years old and a major league billionaire. There are, of course, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and a long list of lesser lights who put the lie to that kind of restrictive thinking. Almost every day we read of young men and women who have start-up businesses on the Internet and are either building them into substantial operations or are selling them to larger companies for major profits.
We also learn about the ones who don't succeed, but the country was built on men and women who took major risks, succeeding a lot, failing a lot at first and then going on to bigger things. Moreover, the Silicon Valley kind of business is hardly the only place for young people to spread their wings. The point is to help young people to think more courageously about the potential for success on their own rather than having to prepare themselves for corporate conformity.
Some colleges and universities have begun to move in this direction, Such schools as the University of Southern California have created majors in entrepreneurship. And the University of Arizona offers entrepreneurship programs through the Karl Eller Center. These courses not only teach the means by which students can take the leap into business on their own, but how to measure the risks and calculate their steps.
The courses also help students evaluate their readiness to become business owners of a new army of independent business operators. Even if some do not succeed the first or second time and have to resort to the job market, they will likeiy be very attractive candidates for good companies because of their demonstrated willingness to take careful risks and manage on their own. Unfortunately, these courses are neither required of all students nor available to all of them.
Going into business does not only mean having to finance it all on one's own, A lot of American industry today has become very much aware of how important it is to continue churning out fresh ideas and approaches to keep pace with the unbelievable pace of competition. Progressive companies are immensely sensitive also to the reality that great thought often comes from the youngest among us. To promote some connection with this developing population of bright minds, many offer to "incubate" companies within their own operations but with agreements that help these young entrepreneurs to maintain control of their business concepts and also to become partners with the benefactor corporation.
Great and creative ideas more than ever can now command attention and investment of venture capital firms who look at thousands of ideas daily and weekly, searching for the few who might become real successes. A caution here is that no one should go to such firms without some good, experienced and trusted adviser to ensure that ideas are not scooped up by unethical, glib operators. One way to ensure ideas are registered is to use a new service called firstuse,com that can lock it in instantaneously for a few dollars without the creator having to divulge the actual data to the staff of the service, It's all done by a complex mathematical process and is the result of, you guessed it, a risk-taking entrepreneur.
None of this should in any way discourage you from looking for interesting jobs in fields that excite you. But, if your emotional juices are stimulated by a sense you have a workable business concept, the younger you make the first try, the greater will be your confidence in the long run that you can be the captain of your own ship. If entrepreneurship is within the new graduate's reach, why have the media and even college advisers avoided giving equal time to the idea of entrepreneurship as well as job hunting? The answer is mostly because the job-hunting idea is the way it has been done for so many years. These folks do an excellent job in communicating the possibilities in many fields and assisting with the recruitment process. They're doing their jobs.
Now, however, it is imperative the same people recognize new realities. In the end, they may well create new financially successful benefactors for their colleges and universities while contributing greatly to the leadership pool of the nation.
* * *
Honick is president of Bainbridge Island, Wash.-based GMA International Ltd, the consulting and public relations firm he formed in 1975 to help companies broaden their business abroad especially in China and Japan. He also contributes to a variety of publications on public policy issues.
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COMMENTARY: New Graduates Should Consider Entrepreneurship
By Joseph J. Honick
When the following article appeared more than 10 years ago in the Arizona Daily Star, Tucson, AZ, the response was immediate and enthusiastic. My e-mails and telephone were deluged with calls from parents and school officials (high school and college) with both appreciation and requests for how to help graduating students get into the entrepreneurship mode. I wrote the piece, as you will see, because I had become frankly fed up with the laziness of both media and schools as the annual time for graduation neared….merely regurgitating old and worn out ideas about how to go and get a job.
Today, the challenge for graduates is greater than ever before, nor have they been even motivated to think about creative ways to market their talents so that potential employers or “clients” could retain them and the graduates could profit as well.
It is time for students and school officials at both high school and college levels to rethink the messages with which they want to send their students off into the world of earning a buck and seeing themselves as potential entrepreneurs.)
Over the past few weeks, about 1.1 million men and women have been spilling out of America's colleges and universities into what is supposed to be the "real world" of real jobs.
After all, that is pretty much how they have been primed to think for about 16 years of education: how to become qualified for a "good job" and how to go through the ballet of resumes, interviews and other dances to get that job.
For weeks the media have been filled with statistics about which fields offer how much opportunity and how much they might pay for new graduates. Scouts called "recruiters" from all sorts of companies, large and small, will have been scouring college campuses to find what they consider the cream of talent that will fit their ideas of good employees.
But wait, why should these fresh graduates be seeking only to become employees? Where is the promotion for them to step into the world of entrepreneurship, owning their own businesses?
For those who say these fresh alumni are too inexperienced and insufficiently trained, I point to the likes of Michael Dell who started his business at 19 while he was a student. Today he is only 34 years old and a major league billionaire. There are, of course, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and a long list of lesser lights who put the lie to that kind of restrictive thinking. Almost every day we read of young men and women who have start-up businesses on the Internet and are either building them into substantial operations or are selling them to larger companies for major profits.
We also learn about the ones who don't succeed, but the country was built on men and women who took major risks, succeeding a lot, failing a lot at first and then going on to bigger things. Moreover, the Silicon Valley kind of business is hardly the only place for young people to spread their wings. The point is to help young people to think more courageously about the potential for success on their own rather than having to prepare themselves for corporate conformity.
Some colleges and universities have begun to move in this direction, Such schools as the University of Southern California have created majors in entrepreneurship. And the University of Arizona offers entrepreneurship programs through the Karl Eller Center. These courses not only teach the means by which students can take the leap into business on their own, but how to measure the risks and calculate their steps.
The courses also help students evaluate their readiness to become business owners of a new army of independent business operators. Even if some do not succeed the first or second time and have to resort to the job market, they will likeiy be very attractive candidates for good companies because of their demonstrated willingness to take careful risks and manage on their own. Unfortunately, these courses are neither required of all students nor available to all of them.
Going into business does not only mean having to finance it all on one's own, A lot of American industry today has become very much aware of how important it is to continue churning out fresh ideas and approaches to keep pace with the unbelievable pace of competition. Progressive companies are immensely sensitive also to the reality that great thought often comes from the youngest among us. To promote some connection with this developing population of bright minds, many offer to "incubate" companies within their own operations but with agreements that help these young entrepreneurs to maintain control of their business concepts and also to become partners with the benefactor corporation.
Great and creative ideas more than ever can now command attention and investment of venture capital firms who look at thousands of ideas daily and weekly, searching for the few who might become real successes. A caution here is that no one should go to such firms without some good, experienced and trusted adviser to ensure that ideas are not scooped up by unethical, glib operators. One way to ensure ideas are registered is to use a new service called firstuse,com that can lock it in instantaneously for a few dollars without the creator having to divulge the actual data to the staff of the service, It's all done by a complex mathematical process and is the result of, you guessed it, a risk-taking entrepreneur.
None of this should in any way discourage you from looking for interesting jobs in fields that excite you. But, if your emotional juices are stimulated by a sense you have a workable business concept, the younger you make the first try, the greater will be your confidence in the long run that you can be the captain of your own ship. If entrepreneurship is within the new graduate's reach, why have the media and even college advisers avoided giving equal time to the idea of entrepreneurship as well as job hunting? The answer is mostly because the job-hunting idea is the way it has been done for so many years. These folks do an excellent job in communicating the possibilities in many fields and assisting with the recruitment process. They're doing their jobs.
Now, however, it is imperative the same people recognize new realities. In the end, they may well create new financially successful benefactors for their colleges and universities while contributing greatly to the leadership pool of the nation.
* * *
Honick is president of Bainbridge Island, Wash.-based GMA International Ltd, the consulting and public relations firm he formed in 1975 to help companies broaden their business abroad especially in China and Japan. He also contributes to a variety of publications on public policy issues.
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