The education and training of entrepreneurs in Asia

Abstract

Entrepreneurship creates wealth and reduces unemployment. Entrepreneurs contribute to industrialisation as well as to economic growth; they improve living standards and tax revenues from their enterprises contribute to a nation’s treasury. Not surprisingly, then, governments have been spending considerable sums trying to create entrepreneurs. The question remains, however, Can entrepreneurship really be taught? To provide a response of any value, one must address the definition of entrepreneurship. As evident from the literature, there is no universally‐accepted definition of entrepreneurs or of entrepreneurship. If entrepreneurship is equated with the causing of economic disequilibrium – as per the Schumpeterian literature – then one can argue that entrepreneurs tend to be born, rather than made. In contrast, if relying on the definition provided by the Austrian School of Economics, it is possible to train entrepreneurs to identify opportunities and act thereon. Thus, while it can be argued that it is difficult to teach Schumpeterian entrepreneurship, efforts to teach Kirznerian entrepreneurship appear to have achieved some levels of success. However, to be truly successful, training programmes must be relevant to the host environment. It would be a fallacy to assume that a programme that has been functional in one environment will necessarily have the same effect elsewhere. A great danger lies in attempting to trans‐locate training programmes. This article provides a survey of education and training of entrepreneurs in different contexts across Asia.