Editor,

RE: "Entrepreneurship skills: Learned in school or inborn?” (The New Times, June 8).

Entrepreneurship is a combination of different skills. It requires good marketing skills, planning skills, people management skills, strategic management skills to mention but a few.

Therefore, the fact that you successfully made it in business without school does not take away the need for you to work on these skills and it’s only done through training.

The issue has never been studying business in school; it instead has always been about the kind of training offered to entrepreneurs. Many schools still provide old models and theories yet we need practical training for entrepreneurs that spur their minds into actions.

We need solution-based training, not theory. You don’t need complicated models, you just need to know how to construct a good business plan and present an idea that attracts financing.

You don’t need to know about market principles but rather how to come up with a marketing plan that fits your product/service. We don’t need entrepreneurs in class but in incubators for them to bed their ideas.

We need business mentors and coaches working closely with SMEs. We need peer learning, exchanges that present realities of the life of an entrepreneur, which is the kind of training needed.

I have worked with so many entrepreneurs and they all come back to one issue: lack of capital. Yes capital is an essential element but it’s not the driving force for your success.

Your success lies in understanding your product, the market you’re playing in and then the clients you target.

Financing without potential return on investment does not last long.

Many SMEs close within their first three years of operation. Reason being, short-sightedness, lack of guidance and poor prioritization.

Therefore, entrepreneurs are nurtured by the right environment, they are given the right tools/solutions that are specific to their business. Entrepreneurs are not born, they are shaped by the environment around them.

Richard Niwenshuti