Developing an entrepreneurial mindset

Last week, I was invited to a two day curricula content workshop alongside other entrepreneurship professionals from all over. We looked at the whole spectrum of issues that would either grow or hinder the growth of entrepreneurship. The key question became; how do we develop a curriculum that will create, nurture and grow entrepreneurs? Some of us adopted a more progressive school of thought (radical if you like) that wanted this creation and nurture to begin during the student’s period of study, not after. After all when you are teaching a child to walk, you can only be hopeful of success when they toddle. Conventional thought is that they should be able to start their own businesses after they are done studying. That is also good, only it has not been happening.During the workshop, one module caught my attention and got me thinking; Entrepreneurial mindset. How do we develop a mindset, any mindset? And how do we specifically develop entrepreneurial mindset among would be entrepreneurs? Apart from the typical topics in that mosule; Introduction to entrepreneurship, Personal Entrepreneurial Competencies, Forms of Business Ownership, Resources, among others, there was an attempt to delve into the core matters. There was a sub module on culture, another on attitudes and identifying talents as well as the issue of mindset itself. I felt that these were important issues at the core of developing entrepreneurship. I thought about it again after the workshop.In his famous poem, The Rainbow, William Wordsworth used the expression, “The child is father of man.” He meant that all our positive and negative traits are established when we are young. Indeed, if you watch children at play, you will notice them demonstrate certain characteristics which remain with them forever. That is why it is necessary to groom children to adopt healthy attitudes and positive traits so that they grow up to be balanced individuals. The power of parental grooming in entrepreneurship is so strong. You only have to look at the world’s and Africa’s rich list to appreciate this fact. A good proportion of the world’s top entrepreneurs owe a great deal of their success to parental grooming. This is demonstrated in the fact that they worked in family outfits which they grew into bigger businesses. This is the case with the World’s richest man, Mexican Carlos Slim, and Africa’s richest men, Nigeria’s Aliko Dangote, South Africans Johann Rupert and Nick Oppenheimer, as well as the Sawiris family of Egypt. This pattern has continued throughout history. The Rothschilds, the Kennedys, the Toyota family in Japan and, more recently, Rupert Murdoch and his sons.What is it about such families that make them so? What particularly, what is the role of the patriarchs and the matriarchs that make them able to pass on ‘more than genes’ to their children and make the children emulate and even exponentially replicate their parents’ success to such fabulous heights? Clearly there is a formula here… an ‘x’ factor. We need to crack that code to use it to change the mindsets of our entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs against a culture like ours that, for years, has focused on educating and training employees. Two things we will need here, One; involvement of our local entrepreneurs, especially those who went against the grain, in the entrepreneurship development process. Local examples would work best here as they are easier to identify with. Second; it would be best that experts who want to champion the development of entrepreneurship become entrepreneurs themselves. Else we will be slashing the wind.It is possible to develop mindsets, but nobody is saying that it will be easy. You could play your role by mentoring your children and young people under your care and direction. Merry Christmas.Sam Kebongo is an dntrepreneurship development consultant based in Kigali.