5 points to improve Entrepreneurship programmes in Singapore

Having interacted with the various Entrepreneurship programmes in a number of Singapore schools, including Junior Colleges, Universities, Polytechnics and even the ITE over the years, here are some observations that the Entrepreneurship programmes in our schools can be improved to give drastically better results.

1. Stop Making the Business Plan as the Key Measurement of Programme Success

In many of the entrepreneurship programmes that I was exposed to, many of them tend to measure the students’ results or performance by making the students submit a business plan, complete with forecasted Profit & Loss (P&L) statements and Balance Sheets.

The problem with using the Business Plan as a criteria of Entrepreneurship is that many entrepreneurs don’t actually have a detailed Business Plan!

This is not to say that entrepreneurs don’t plan. They do. It’s just that many insanely successful ones did not have a 5-year detailed plan that outlined the financial details. Some don’t even know how to balance their balance sheets to save their lives!

Successful entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson, the late Steve Jobs, and even Ingvar Kamprad (founder of Ikea) would rather focus on how they can create, identify and fulfil customers’ needs, and leave the financial reporting to the professional accountants.

Yes, they are very cost conscious and will do whatever it takes to control costs, BUT they took those actions based on the financial reports that were provided by their financial and accounting EMPLOYEEs.

Having a Business Plan as an “output” for the Entrepreneurship programme is easy for the teachers, lecturers and professors to mark papers.

Unfortunately, it is not a measurement of Entrepreneurial success by any standards.  Entrepreneurship educators have to understand the REAL drivers of business success are:

a)      The viability of the business idea (if you sell something, will there be enough customers),

b)     The distribution (how to reach out to your customers) and

c)      The efficacy of cost control (can you produce more and in better quality at a lower cost).

In addition to over-focusing on Business Plans as a measure of programme success, almost none of the Entrepreneurship programmes I’ve seen in Singapore had conducted any training or practice in selling.

There had been a lot of emphasis on Marketing, but there was not enough emphasis on how the Entreprenuer should chase after targeted prospective customers, and make people buy.

There was no training provided of how one could probe into the needs and concerns of customers, propose a solution, and make the sale.

2. Don’t Just Teach and Think Entrepreneurship.  Just Do IT!

In many schools, Entrepreneurship is taught either as a subject/ module, or that it is made up of various modules to form a course.

Unfortunately, Entrepreneurship is NOT something that you gauge success by completing an exam or a term paper or a Business Plan. Rather, it is gauged by how much profits you make, and if your business is sustainable in the long run.

Instead of spending way too much time espousing the theories on marketing, finance, management etc., a good Entrepreneurship programme has to allow students to start businesses during the course of their study.

Such businesses need not be big, and is best that they could be started with minimal or no funding. If the business fails after 3 months, great! Let the students learn from their mistakes and start another one.

If need be, business simulation software or even boardgames that have been used in corporate training can be used to further hone the skills in running businesses, and understanding how different parts of a business function together.

3. Stop Focusing Exclusively on Being a Retailer

One easy way of going bust in a Singapore business is to go into retail, given our skyrocketing rental prices here.

However, for some reason most budding Entrepreneurs in Singapore tend to jump head on into retail, when in actual fact they could have become manufacturers and wholesalers, and distribute their products and services beyond Singapore. These even include some of the high-profile ones that were featured on TV.

Even if one decided to be a retailer, perhaps one could consider if the store can be created online, or if an online presence to help boost sales in lieu of a prime location.

Instead of renting a premium retail space, a budding Entrepreneur can in fact rent a warhouse or commercial space that is not in a premium location, BUT using the power of online marketing and eBusiness to reach out to customers.

The Entrepreneur could deliver for customers, or she could leverage on her eMarketing to attract customers to her not-so-centralised location.

In this same vein, I have yet to see an Entrepreneurship programme that emphasised on Social Media Marketing as a means to reach out to customers.

4. Stop Focusing Too Much on Getting Funding at the Beginning Stages

The main purpose of funding is to help the Entrepreneur scale up and expand operations.

Yes, in some cases where a huge investment is required in order to kick-start operations, and hence funding is required. These are, however, the minority.

In the dot-com heydays of the late-1990’s and early-2000s, many dot-coms that had a lot of funding (to be listed publicly in an IPO) eventually crashed. That’s why the dot-com bubble went bust.

A budding Entrepreneur is someone whose business skills and acumen have not been tested. And one could only assess or test a person’s business skills by watching her manage her business.

Hence, any large upfront investment for a budding Entrepreneur is very risky for both the Entrepreneur and the Investor.

It might then make sense to have the budding Entrepreneur try her hand in small, micro businesses first, and get funding (if need be) through micro-loans.

If you track the life history of one of the most successful Entrepreneurs of our time, Sir Richard Branson, you could see a similar pattern too.

Richard Branson started selling music records to his friends (something that did not require funding), and then proceeded to sign on musicians under his record label (funded by the profits of his record selling business), and then sold his record label to fund his airline business.

One may be quick to point out that Apple Inc would not have taken off if there was no funding from Angel Investor Mike Markula.

However, Apple had a “proof of concept” implemented when they actually sold 100 pieces of their Motherboards to “The Byte Shop”, a computer retailer, BEFORE they caught the attention of the investor.

AND if one really needs funding, budding Entrepreneurs would have to hustle their way to win investors (and customers), and NOT expect to receive funding by mere submission of a business plan.  That does not work well in the real world.

5. Build a Resource Network for Entrepreneurs

Many Entrepreneurship programmes in Singapore schools are run much like an academic subject, where students study and churn up a business plan.

In real life, Entrepreneurs rely on a network of contacts, be it for suppliers, customers, expertise, and yes, even potential investors.

In an academic programme, any form of seeking information from other students can be consdered as cheating. In the business world though, this is either “market research”, or simply networking for results.

The Entrepreneurship programme in our schools could have students forming online forums, bulletin boards or chat groups where they could exchange contacts and resources to help one another in their respective business ventures.

In closing, perhaps we could be asking too much for our teachers, lecturers and professors to go beyond their comfort zone and increase their work load and make more sacrifices for the success of the Entrepreneurship programmes in their respective schools.

After all, schools are graded by the students’ exam results, and not by the number of Entrepreneurs produced.

However, being an Entreprenuer now and in the forseeable future could be a matter of survival, and not just a matter of choice.

With the growing competitive pressures in the job markets, students could discover that being an Entrepreneur after graduation could be a better alternative than sitting at home jobless.

Even if students do find jobs after they graduate, there’s no gurantee that they will always be gainfully employed in their career lives. Our future generations could have jobless phases in their career lives.

With the rising costs of living, being jobless can really be “no fun” in Singapore.  If one could create her own job by starting her own business, that’s a lot better than being jobless.

Hence, if the ultimate purpose of our schools is to help our next generation to contribute positively to society, then perhaps we should re-evaluate our Entrepreneurship programmes and seek ways to improve them.