1. Prof John Powell Director USB
Promoting Entrepreneurial thinking – the missing Millennium Development Goal.
Prof John Powell
Director USB

2. Scope:
What do we mean by ’entrepreneurial thinking’?
Where does it come from? Why does it arise?
What sort of knowledge is it?
How do we ‘promote’ it?

3. Entrepreneurial thinking… Dimensions of orientation
Autonomy
Innovativeness
Risk taking
Proactiveness
Competitive aggression
Not limited to large or small companies.
(Volberda et al, 2011)

4. Where does it come from? Why does it arise?
Well not from someone sitting you down and explaining how to make a living in a India nslum.

5. A calm sea does not make a good sailor.

6. Innovativeness: How many uses can you think of for a lemon?
Piaget’s tests
How many uses can you think of for a lemon?
Ask a very young child and they will say ‘Make lemonade” Ask a 15 year old and they will say “Make lemonade” Ask a 5 year old and they wills say ”Freeze it and throw through a jeweller's window and you can get the jewellery and sell it and buy a space rocket and go to China.”

7. Domain and technical knowledge is the key.
What is important in creativity is not the creative, divergent intellectual act but the filtering of the unachievable.
Domain and technical knowledge is the key.
This means that it is in fact technical, domain knowledge which is critical. Any fool can have an workable idea.

8. Tacit and explicit knowledge

9. Present practice

10. Tacit Learning Environment

11. Localized vs System Knowing

12. Enthalpy (available knowledge)

13. Different paths to systemic knowing

14. Summary
Entrepreneurial behaviour can be studied but not easily taught.
Filtering is as important as divergent thinking
Risk assessment is critical
Technical (domain) knowledge is critical
The tacit-to tacit dimension is critical.

15. And so….? Apprenticeship Mentoring ‘laboratory of failure’
Communicative substrate