I have worked with the youth for ten years on the front line of entrepreneurship education for the sake of establishing TiC100 Start-up Competition and Global TiC Talentrepreneurship Innovation and Collaboration Association International. I am glad to have this opportunity today, to be able to share with you some of my ideas and findings through this speech.

First of all, I would like to make a more specific annotation on the difference between employability and entrepreneurship. According to theory and application practice, I would like to explain the meaning of entrepreneurship in a simple sentence. “Entrepreneurship is the highest representation of employability.” The capacity accumulated by Taiwan in the last 20 years had been the honor that we hold. However, the definition of an entrepreneur with entrepreneurial spirits is still very vague. Thus, when it comes to questions such as: “Who can be a real entrepreneur?” and “How can a person become a successful entrepreneur in the future,” there are still a lot of misunderstanding and false interpretation.

The key difference between a business owner and an entrepreneur is that a business owner only opens a company that aims at making a profit without any innovation, but an entrepreneur’s enterprise is established through the process of constant innovation. What is the meaning of innovation? Innovation represents the ability to overcome all kinds of obstacles, and then to create new products, new services, new procedures, or new business models in the process of running business. In the past, lack of education mechanism for nurturing entrepreneurs had made entrepreneurs in the world unsure of the way to succeed in starting an enterprise. They can only strive to overcome the difficulties through the accumulation of personal experiences and unceasing trial and error. Therefore, many people think that there must be certain unique personal traits for a successful entrepreneur. There are also academic studies that endeavor to probe into the typical personalities of successful entrepreneurs through personality analysis models.

However, according to my observation of the early development of a lot of successful entrepreneurs and my past engagement in entrepreneurship incubation and education for the youth, I would like to break the myth for you. In fact, the personality traits of successful entrepreneurs are all different. The key point factor of their success is the mature entrepreneurial mind and behavior which they develop through the frustration and experiences along the way in the establishment of their own business and enterprise. Mind and behavior is different from personality traits. Most people can develop outstanding entrepreneurial attitude and capacity through appropriate entrepreneurship education and training.

Most people have another myth about the idea of entrepreneurship. Namely, they tend to think that only a person who has established a brand new company can be called entrepreneur. As a matter of fact, a person who establishes a start-up with entrepreneurial spirits can be called an Extra-Entrepreneur. On the other hand, a person who has entrepreneurial spirit and is able to put his entrepreneurial understanding into practice in his work in an existing company or organization can as well be called an Intra-Entrepreneur.

In English, Talent refers to a special natural aptitude or potential by which we can develop outstanding wisdom and capacity through proper methods and unceasing learning and practicing. Entrepreneur refers to an inaugurator who possesses sustained innovative deeds. I think successful entrepreneurs in the future must be equipped with wisdom, capacity, and initiative at the same time in order to stand out in a highly competitive environment. Therefore, I have coined a new word called Talentrepreneur as the combination of talent and entrepreneur.

This is the reason why I emphasize that “Entrepreneurship is the highest representation of employability.” In other words, everyone can become a talentrepreneur, inside or outside an enterprise, with the learning and training of entrepreneurship education.

You may ask: How can I differentiate talentrepreneur from ordinary entrepreneur? The biggest difference is that a talentrepreneur is a person who knows how to create the required resource in the future, while an ordinary entrepreneur can only aim at sharing current existing resource. A talentrepreneur knows how to create a blueprint full of opportunities, and thus he is going to become the leader of the next generation.

I have the opportunity to serve as a panelist in National Youth Human Resource Development Forum and a draftsman of the entrepreneurship index and strategies in the Project for Enhancing Implementation of Youth Employment, 2007, at Taiwanese Government’s invitation. In this challenging mission, after consulting and discussing with many scholars and experts, I have simulated the process of a young student who goes through college entrance and employment, and finally becomes a talentrepreneur with my imagination. And then, I condense it into a concretely visualized large picture map. Today I would like to share with you the core strategic connotation of this picture map.

Starting with the viewpoints of start-up development model, we know that in order to overcome the unavoidable challenges that might be in the way of starting one’s own enterprise, a talentrepreneur should learn and be trained with the following four basic wisdom and abilities. These are also the goals of the four learning and training phases that competition participants in TiC 100 start-up competition, which is founded by me, should accomplish. Next, I will explain the four phases:

1.      How to develop a great deal of unique original ideas, and then seek for possible innovation opportunities.

2.      How to develop your innovation opportunities into a business plan and convince outstanding talents to join you.

3.      How to overcome obstacles with your decision-making and risk management skills, and create valuable competitive advantage with limited resources.

4.      How to find new products and market opportunities continuously for the pursuit of the growth of your business.

In order to acquire the wisdom and ability that I just mentioned, young students should receive education and training which are designed in accordance with the entrepreneurship development model. First of all, when young students step into university, the general knowledge courses in the school can facilitate them to gain knowledge and practical experiences in various fields, and thus they can understand the correlation between different disciplines and cultivate their ability to digest their knowledge and absorb thoroughly, so as to accumulate inspiration for a great deal of unique creativity. The reason why a person is short of creativity and innovation is often due to limitation of the fields in which they think and reflect over a long period of time. It makes them unable to use their creativity and think out of the box. For example, science and engineering majored students who have never taken any courses nor had any experiences in Fine Art are likely to have difficulties in understanding that through appreciating art pieces, they may get inspiration for the aesthetic sense and design of their products. On the other hand, if an art majored student has never taken any courses in science or engineering courses, it is also possible that he finds it hard to understand that technological tools can bring artistic creativity more performance values. If a business and management majored student has never taken any course in biological science, he or she can not understand profoundly why Darwin’s theory of Evolution has become the best foundation for international level entrepreneurial business models. In contrast, even if a biological science majored student is familiar with the genome of human sane, it is likely that he still can not understand that the change of a person’s mind and wisdom has become the key for entrepreneurs to enhance their wisdom and actions.

There are often case studies or research projects for students offered by schools. However, they are mostly restricted to students with a certain major only, and these studies and researches are only probing deeply into their own field. The biggest difference between these opportunities and entrepreneurial start-up competitions is that the participants of start-up competitions are usually from different departments and colleges. Therefore, during the interdisciplinary interaction, the students can pick out more feasible innovative ideas out of a lot of creative brainstorming, and get more practical advices from the discussion with enterprise mentors and their analysis within the competitions. In this way, participants can sift out more entrepreneurial opportunities with genuine market values.

“Entrepreneurial Wisdom 1: Creativity and Innovation are like the sprouting and pruning process of a gardener. If there are enough sprouts (a lot of creativity) in a tree plus smart pruning (strict selection of innovation opportunities), then it is highly possible that this tree will flourish in an ever-changing environment.” (Jim Collins)

   Professors who are interested in industry-Academic cooperation often introduce research projects with industry-academy cooperation. These projects include management by objectives in technology, market, finance, and human resource, so they can provide integrated experience and practical knowledge of getting in touch with various academic fields to students. They can also let students gain three important basic abilities. Namely:

1.      The ability of teamwork: One must develop his interaction and social skills to ensure the harmony and efficiency of the teamwork.

2.      The ability of problem solving: During the execution process of their plan, students need to cope with any possible problems in technology, market, finance, and human resource, and learn how to break through the plight and find an innovative solution.

3.      The ability to persist until the last minute: During the execution process of their plan, students will face pressure from all aspects. For example, pressure from emotional conflicts, pressure from being unable to solve problems, pressure from academic studies, etc. If a student can undertake such frustrations without giving up, his ability to handle pressure would be highly increased.    

In the process of the entrepreneurship start-up competition, the students have to submit their own business plan, with full content of an integrated plan, including opportunities of products and markets, efficient and effective financial and human resource distribution, recruitment and leadership of an excellent team, how to balance opportunities and resources, and communication within the team to have the confidence for a successful start-up. Because there are usually students with different majors within a team, they can have the opportunity to experience the process of communication and co-working with talents from different specialties, which is similar in enterprises. What’s more, the whole process will be close to the real situation of starting a new business, and there will be more severe challenges along the way for students to use their problem-solving skills and try to persist till the end. Thus they will experience teamwork and communication at a higher level.

“Entrepreneurial Wisdom 2: Entrepreneurial Business Plan is just as the political campaign rally of an election. You have to attract your supporters (team members) to devote their time and money by shouting your propaganda unceasingly (communication), and then attract the public (investors) so as to strive for the sound development of the society’s future (the opportunity of future growth).” (Johnny Su)

Enterprises in Taiwan are mainly working on manufacturing and OEM, and the directors are mostly obedient people. Only a small number of high-level superintendents, or even the entrepreneur himself, can have the authority to make decisions. The courses in university education are usually only lectures, and the students usually only follow given directions in the campus activities. For students, there are few opportunities for them to participate in a decision-making process. Plus, most of the students are supported by their parents with tuitions and living expenses. It also makes them lack for the life practice of undertaking risks independently. As a result, it is difficult for young students to develop the core wisdom and capacity of entrepreneurs that is aroused from facing decision-making and risks.

In April, 2006, I was invited to give a speech in MIT100K Global Entrepreneurship Forum held in Argentina. I found a very interesting yet surprising fact there. To my surprise, the conference chair was still a PHD candidate, and the chairs in each panel discussion were all graduate student for master’s degree. All of the other organizing committee affairs, including public relations, logistics, and administration, were undertaken by college students. I was very curious, so I asked the head of MIT Sloan School of Management about this, and found that the entire conference activity, including planning, funding, and speaker invitations, was organized and executed by the entrepreneurship student club. The professors had no authority to interfere into the organizing process. Thus, through this real situation, the students can develop their decision making ability and risk management ability.

I finally came to understand that this is exactly how the top schools in the world develop their students to be equipped with outstanding leadership, wisdom, and action. And because of this, the students not only become the talents that world-class enterprises make every effort to attract but also rapidly become the top leaders in enterprises around the world. What’s more, heaps of these talents also join into the establishment of start-ups in sunrise industries, build up remarkable business domains, and even become the leader in these industries. However, the most outstanding students in Taiwan can only become the engineers and executive offers in world-class enterprises.

This is also why we ask the participants to make actual client visiting to acquire client suggestion report and cooperation intention report, and they need to finish product prototype development and user test report. This assignment contains the trial and the criticism that happen in the real market, and it will make students experience the real situation of decision making and risk undertaking in frustration and reflection, and thus they will develop and acquire the core wisdom and capacity of entrepreneurship.

“Entrepreneurial Wisdom 3: The process of starting a business is like a circus clown who is standing in front of a spring bed without knowing the progress and direction. He has to throw the three balls, which symbolize opportunity, team, and resources, into the air and catch it and then throw it again. He can never let the balls drop. (Jeffry Timmons)

According to our understanding, the student teams who start their business since in school usually have a leader with very similar experience. That is, they usually have an instructor who is dedicated to industry-academy cooperation offering them many opportunities to do research projects. Through the experience of training and practicing, the students gradually come to know all the possible development directions well. Hence, when they are really trying to establish their own start-ups, they tend to find all kinds of potential products and market opportunities by interacting with consumers in different sectors and fields. Only through the process of trial and error, experiments, and injection of market knowledge, can new products or services be in unfailing supply. And with that, the organization will remain in continuous growth.

During a start-up competition, the display of different participants, the participation of mentors from various fields, and open presentation of business plans, all aim at creating an environment with collective sharing, mutual learning, and various opportunities. In this way, all kinds of stimuli can be introduced, and participants can be trained to avoid self-limited thinking within one single filed, so that they can build up a flexible attitude that can be adjusted according to changes in the environment.

    “Entrepreneurial Wisdom 4: The model for management that we have right now is the opera. The conductor of an opera has a very large number of different groups that he has to pull together. The soloists, the chorus, the ballet, the orchestra, all have to come together but they have a common score. What we are increasingly talking about today are diversified groups that have to write the score while they perform. What you need now is a good jazz group. It can improvise and self-renew. It has a common goal, but the way it achieves its goal is always changing.” (Peter Drucker)

For the purpose of broadening and cultivating the entrepreneurship education for the youth, hundreds of mentors, volunteers, and organizations have founded Global TiC Talentrepreneurship Innovation & Collaboration Association together. Our core mission is nurturing future talentrepreneurs in Taiwan. In our opinion, talentrepreneurs should be willing to learn unceasingly from people in different fields, at different ages, and in different markets. The most important of all, is to learn from your competitors. This is also the most critical part of intellectual operation model in entrepreneurship education. Furthermore, we are looking forward to more colleges, universities, and academic institutes to join us in promoting all kinds of entrepreneurship education activities, such as campus start-up competitions, entrepreneurship courses, student clubs, entrepreneurship incubations, projects and internships, etc. In this way, young students in Taiwan can have the opportunity to learn and practice in various situations, so as to equip the future generations with the core wisdom, capacity, and actions of entrepreneurs. In the long run, we expect Taiwan to become an entrepreneurial society. This is the expectation and vision of our long-term devotion to entrepreneurship education, and we hope that we can work with you to achieve this ambition!

Vise Chairman ,GlobalTiC  Johnny Su

Email: Johnny.Su@GlobalTiC.org

Tel：02-27024788