7 Ways Formal Education Builds You for Entrepreneurship

When we talk about entrepreneurs, most of us picture a college dropout in casual clothes (perhaps in a turtleneck or a round-neck t-shirt). Since most of us have seen the likes of Jobs, Gates and Zuckerberg, we tend to think that formal education is not essential for success as most of them are dropouts. Then why do people still enrol for universities and colleges, attend classes, ask each other for nursing assignment help, and appear for exams?

Let’s get one thing straight. Formal education is crucial for every person on this planet. While Gates and Zuckerberg are college dropouts and yet the most successful people of our times, we tend to believe that formal education is not necessary for success. But the truth is that they dropped out of Harvard, one of the most prestigious institutes in the world. They were already brilliant at what they did.

If you are still pursuing your academic career and wish to become a successful entrepreneur one day, don’t drop out of college just because these people did. Instead, read this blog where you will learn about 7 ways formal education paves the way towards successful entrepreneurship.

Learning from theory:

Experience plays a crucial part in success. But that does not mean the theory lessons you got through your formal education has no value. The corporate world has changed a lot in the last 10 years. Now, you need to equip yourself with the right set of tools and resources if you wish to survive in this competitive environment. And your theoretical knowledge can play a pivotal role in this.

Study the crucial theories like Porter’s Five Forces, Design thinking, RoI calculation, Break-even Analysis, etc. so you can make the right decisions while running a business. Studying a variety of concepts and theories helps build a dynamic entrepreneurial mindset. There’s a limit to the experience a person can gather. But there’s no such limit to the theories he/she can learn.

Developing alternative skills:

The formal education system gives us a lot of opportunities to build our alternative skills. In school, college and university, students get to take part in a wide variety of activities, including debates, volunteering for a social cause, and coordinating a group project – each of which improves the alternative skills in an individual.

When you think practically about entrepreneurship, you’ll find that only a handful of people become successful entrepreneurs; the rest of the crowd end up doing a job for others. If you can hone your alternative skills, you can shine as a great manager or a leader while working for an employer. Who knows, the company may decide to make you the boss one day?

Stimulating the intellectual self:

Formal education also allows us to be critical thinkers. Not just that; the more you involve yourself in studies, you get to stimulate your intellectual self. It takes a nurturing and conducive environment to hone a person’s intellect. The formal education creates enough opportunities to stimulate one’s intellect which can further help the individual in critical decision-making.

The scholarly environment of a library space, continuous support from your professors and the company of peer-learners can provide you with a significant amount of knowledge and feed your intellect self. As you step into the world of business, this sharpened intellect can help you to be more innovative with your decision-making approach. 

Providing with the foundation:

It is not just the corporate world that has changed in the past decade. The formal education offered by college and universities has also introduced new ways to engage and inculcate learning students. If you look at the curriculum of the leading business schools, you will find that they prepare their students for entrepreneurship and the resulting competition.

Some B-schools are even several steps ahead. They are setting up their own business incubators to help young leaders with seed funding. They may not be at par with the VC funding, but such support does help the learners put their first step into entrepreneurship. As a matter of fact, VC firms are now looking into large universities to capture great venture ideas.

Establishing networks:

The best thing about getting your formal education from a reputed institute is that as you attend the classes, you are already spending time and building our connections with a group of future leaders. Some may head different MNCs, while some may start their own successful ventures. You may never know; some of your peers may become a crucial part of the government as well.

The university life is a great time to make a peer support network, which will allow you to nurture a healthy and productive professional network for the rest of your career. For some of the most successful companies, the co-founders met during their university life. The person doing the group project with you may turn out to be your business partner in the future.

Receiving knowledge of various subjects:

Formal education does boost your theoretical knowledge of business administration, allowing you to know the norms of how to conduct business in an ideal way. But that’s not all. Formal education also offers the knowledge of different fields of study which can make you a jack of all trades. For a successful entrepreneur, it is important to have knowledge of a number of things.

Obviously, you need to sharpen your skillset on a certain specialization to lead your journey towards entrepreneurship. However, you will need some additional knowledge to complement your skillset in given situations. The beauty of formal education is that it offers you the knowledge of a variety of subjects until you choose a specialization in your higher studies. 

Learning from others mistakes:

You must have heard that people learn from their mistakes. But you don’t always need to make the mistakes of your own in order to learn. You can also study the blunders made by others and learn from them. Interestingly, the MBA curriculum includes a lot of such blunders made by big companies over the years which you can study and boost your knowledge.

Informal education, you may be asked to prepare different case studies of top businesses. As you dig deeper into the companies’ work, you will find a significant amount of data which can change your perception of business administration. Dropping out of college may allow you to learn things independently, but following the curriculum leads you to your goal in a much more organized way.

In conclusion,

We often curse our formal education system as we need to prepare a bunch of assignments throughout the semester. But what we don’t understand is that formal education offers us a great number of opportunities to develop our skillset for entrepreneurship. Now that you have read the blog start utilizing your academic years for a better tomorrow. 

Author bio:

Kady Smith is the general manager of a small business based out of Sydney, Australia. He has completed this MBA from the University of Monash. He is also associated with MyAssignmenthelp.co.uk, where he offers assignment writing and proofreading services to students.