As the way we work and earn changes and develops into something fresh and unfamiliar, savvy educators are coming to realise that the entrepreneurial mindset is fast-becoming an ever more valuable commodity.
Across the UK’s employment landscape, times are changing. In fact, they’ve already changed. The days when an employee joined a firm aged 18 and stayed until they reached retirement age are long gone; a ‘job for life’ is very much a thing of the past. Rather, people are having rainbow careers, moving between employers and even sectors, staying for a few years in a role, before joining employers that are a better fit for their skills or offer better opportunities and / or benefits.
The millennial generation, who entered the jobs market during a time of real turbulence and instability as the 2008 recession sent its economic shockwaves into every industry, will have a very different type of working life to those of their parents and grandparents. For many, self-employment will be the answer, and in fact, in the year to November 2015, 98,000 people became self-employed taking the overall figure up to 4.62 million individuals working for themselves across the UK.
Young people setting out on their employment journey today need a specific set of skills to help them navigate this changeable world of employment; they need to develop an entrepreneurial mindset. The wisest teachers and professors are already making entrepreneurial learning part of the syllabus on all sorts of courses, or introducing it as an auxiliary learning area. Science programmes and arts courses, academic subjects and vocational topics alike; whatever the area of study, entrepreneurial skills are now a key component in the arsenal of an ambitious young professional, regardless of the line of work or employment model they intend to pursue.
Whatever these young people go on to do, whether they become employees of large corporations, start their own enterprises, enter academia or take up a pivotal role in someone else’s small and medium business, those entrepreneurial skills will prove invaluable.
It’s important to recognise that the teaching of an ‘entrepreneurial mindset’ is absolutely distinct from the the teaching of how to start an enterprise. The business plans, funding streams and marketing techniques of start-up training are geared specifically towards helping people establish and grow businesses. By contrast, the skills, attitudes and behaviours that define an entrepreneurial mindset can be utilised by individuals throughout their lives, again and again, in a wide range of settings. As well as often proving invaluable to those on their own enterprise journey, the entrepreneurial mindset will be a brilliant tool to call upon for employees of organisations of all sizes and types, as well as those undertaking all sorts of projects, from charitable fundraising, to political canvasing, product inventing to community building and many, many more besides.
So, what are the traits that define the entrepreneurial mindset? The capacity to spot opportunities and use available resources intelligently in order to pursue them is a core ability. For the lone entrepreneur, this could mean spotting a niche gap in the market and setting out to fill it; conversely, for the employee of a multinational corporation, this could mean spotting an opportunity to streamline a specific process and make significant savings. Someone who has developed their entrepreneurial mindset through formalised training at school, university or elsewhere, will be prepared to take the initiative and self-direct on projects and ideas. They will be confident enough to take risks and flexible enough to respond to changing markets. Of course, they’ll also be creative and have the capacity to combine innovative thinking with established processes. In essence, those with the entrepreneurial mindset are better employers and better employees, they’re people who make things happen and add value to every piece of work or project they’re involved with.
Right now is an exciting time to start developing your own entrepreneurial mindset, as well as those of the people around you. It’s a way to bolster your potential for success and lay claim to a valuable edge against the competition. As universities and schools increasingly bestow their young students with the skills that used in unison form the entrepreneurial mindset, isn’t it time that you too began to rethink your thinking?