• Insights

Whenever I tell people that I teach entrepreneurship, the first reaction is one of bemusement. I can almost see the questions running in their minds. How can you teach entrepreneurship? How can you ‘make’ someone an entrepreneur if he isn’t born with it?

The answer is simple. You can impart knowledge that is necessary. You can vest the skill that is needed. And then, you can hope that with knowledge and skill, the person will develop the attitude to become a good entrepreneur. It is important for everyone in the entrepreneurial ecosystem to internalize this. Because if entrepreneurs don’t believe they can ‘learn’ to become better entrepreneurs by constantly improving their knowledge, by consistently ‘up-skilling’ themselves, they will become the villains in their own script.

Caught in the rigors of building the business, the last thing an entrepreneur dwells on is the possibility of him becoming dated. He is Prometheus who stole fire from the gods, right? He is the text-book ideator, the guy who saw an opportunity where others didn’t, and he went on to execute that idea, didn’t he? He’s in the thick of everything, so how can he become obsolete? He can and he will, if he doesn’t put investing in himself and his team high up on his to-do list.

I sit through at least 60 business plan presentations in a month. And I have been doing this for nearly four years. So, go do the math. I haven’t yet come across a single business plan where the entrepreneur has articulated an action plan as to how he will invest in himself and his team and how much money he has allocated for that purpose. And I haven’t heard any investor in any business plan pitch asking whether he has and why he hasn’t.

I honestly don’t know how such a serious lapse can go unnoticed. I’m also willing to listen if someone can convince me that I’m making a mountain out of a molehill. That it is not highlighted because it is taken for granted, like breathing in and breathing out. You can shush me if you can convert me. What are the things an entrepreneur can learn—and should learn—along the way? Let me put them, for simplicity’s sake, into two buckets. One is domain-related. The other is business-related. Let’s say you are in the restaurant business. Let’s say you do Thai cuisine. Let’s say you’re a foodie, but you’ve never even boiled water in your life. When you started the business, you told yourself that you’ll hire a Thai chef who will hire his team.

So, even if you don’t know how to make Pad Thai, it’s no skin off your nose. You couldn’t be more wrong, because even though you don’t need to know how to cook Pad Thai, you definitely need to know everything there to know about Pad Thai—what goes into its making and how to make it. This is what I mean by domain knowledge.

Equally, if you’re setting up a Thai restaurant in Beijing and serving Pad Thai to the Chinese, you should know that you should avoid all the milk products you normally use. Why? Because the Chinese, as a race, are lactose-intolerant. If you didn’t know it, you’d keep wondering why no one’s walking in. This is business knowledge.

If you have this knowledge, you can cobble your marketing communication to highlight the fact that you’re an innovative restaurant that serves Thai food without dairy products to include the otherwise left out Chinese customers. You understand what I mean? Both can be learned and should be learned.

NANDINI VAIDYANATHAN teaches entrepreneurship in biz schools around the world and has co-founded two companies, Startups  (forstartups.blogspot.com) and CARMa (www.carmagroup.in), both of which mentor entrepreneurs.

©Entrepreneur June 2010

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entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, invest, Nandini Vaidyanathan