Who wants to be an entrepreneur?
You don’t have to be a business student to drive a winning business as long as you’re passionate, says Dr Diarmuid O’Brien
ENTREPRENEURSHIP has never been a more visible part of popular culture. Everyone knows of the exploits of Mark Zuckerberg and the creation of Facebook or Steve Jobs and his vision that transformed both Apple and our day-to-day lives.
Entrepreneurs in recent years have inspired books and movies; and become an international reference point for success.
However, entrepreneurship is more than just something we read about in our newspapers; it is actually the engine that drives our economy.
Recent data from the Central Bank of Ireland identified that 67pc of all new job-creation in Ireland comes from businesses in the first five years of existence. Indeed, small business, established by entrepreneurs, make up over 99pc of businesses in the enterprise economy in Ireland and account for almost 70pc of people employed.
In recent years our higher education system has been responding with great energy and imagination to the importance of entrepreneurship in enabling our economic competitiveness; and indeed the passion and ideas of our talented student body.
Many higher education institutions now run student accelerators that support new company formation and work with students to create investment-ready businesses. There are many training programmes established such as the Innovation Academy — jointly created by Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin — to provide innovation and entrepreneurship training for students; and the Blackstone LaunchPad Programme established at Trinity, NUI Galway and University College Cork to provide mentoring and inspiration to fledgling entrepreneurs.
A common strand to these programmes is that they are focussed on all students across the campus; independent of the subject they are studying.
The most successful student entrepreneurs are those who are passionate about what they do and who bring that passion to their venture. You do not have to be a business student to drive a winning business.
Indeed the best companies are those that have the combination of skills that come from bringing together different disciplines and different perspectives but a shared commitment and energy.
Success is based on the quality of the idea; the strength of the team built around that idea and the energy committed to developing the idea from concept to product.
Importantly, our students now also have many role models and success stories to inspire them; and significant supports to enable their success.
A recent graduate of the Trinity accelerator Launchbox is FoodCloud; a social entrepreneurship venture that is connecting food waste from shops and restaurants with charities. FoodCloud has successfully redistributed 12 million meals over the last three years. One of its founders, Iseult Ward, has been recognised on the Forbes list of 30 entrepreneurs under 30.
As students chose their university courses they should also reflect on how they harness their ideas, interests and passions at college, not just to achieve successful grades but also to enable their future careers.
Entrepreneurship is a viable future pathway, independent of academic discipline that will result in the students of today establishing the companies that will be the household names of the future.