Born to be in business

DANNY MEYER ARE ENTREPRENEURS born to venture into business or can somebody be taught the skills required to start and then go on to make a success of business, is a topic that has been debated for ages.

Fuelled by the views of entrepreneurs such as Britain’s Alan Sugar, Richard Branson and Theo Paphitis, as suggested in their respective biographies, the ‘born to be in business’ camp, even here in Namibia, appears to be in the majority.

Business magnate Sugar became famous following his starring role in Britain’s version of the TV series ‘The Apprentice’. Branson founded the Virgin Group that became an international conglomerate with business interests spanning the globe. Cypriot-born Paphitis, a retail-magnate in the United Kingdom, was thrust into the public domain as an investor on BBC’s business show Dragon’s Den.

Knighted by Queen Elizabeth, Lord Sugar is quoted as famously saying entrepreneurial juice cannot be bought at a retail store and that one is born with an entrepreneurial spirit. Is this good reason to denigrate the role of education when it comes to entrepreneurial success?

Opinions are divided and even clouded by the views of entrepreneurs such as Sugar, Branson and Paphitis. Apart from being extremely successful, Britain’s troika of entrepreneurs all left school aged 16 to venture into business. None of them attained the highest grade in high school let alone study at a university before starting business.

Other odds were stacked against them too. Reportedly Sugar, Branson and Paphitis are dyslexics. In layman’s terms, dyslexia is a disorder involving difficulty in learning to read words, letters and other symbols.

Britain’s three business gurus say not going to university is no valid reason to denigrate tertiary education as all over the world there are many successful entrepreneurs with degrees. Formal education might not be the panacea for entrepreneurial success, but knowledge gained in a lecture room can help when it comes to planning, strategising or negotiating a deal. Even to managing a business better.

My view is that there is no single type of entrepreneur or a prescribed recipe, educational or otherwise, that guarantees business success. Entrepreneurs succeed when they had the knack or ability to smartly and correctly identify an opportunity. Then start a business and exploit that opportunity by offering customers a product, process or a service. A lack of skills or knowledge does not pose an obstacle for the smart entrepreneur. It is either acquired by learning or an employee is hired who has the needed knowledge.

Entrepreneurs play a key role in any economy, but like business opportunities they too differ. My view is that entrepreneurial success depends more on the individual’s personality and innate or inborn and natural qualities, than on what was or wasn’t learnt in school or at university.

Compare Aupa Frans Indongo and the late Harold Pupkewitz. Both achieved fame in the business arena. Indongo barely completed primary school yet Pupkewitz graduated top of his class at university.

Working routinely with entrepreneurs I see the diversity and differing personalities among Namibia’s successful entrepreneurs, individuals who are generally more unknown than known or visible. Entrepreneurs with own strengths or weaknesses, some are introvert and others extrovert. Then there are the risk-takers and on the other side of the spectrum the risk-averse.

One thing is for certain, having the good fortune to celebrate successes and sadly at times to even share the pain of business failure with entrepreneurs, experience has taught me that in Namibia there is a role when it comes to moulding and grooming the next generation of entrepreneurs. More often than not training and further education must be made part of that business growth support strategy.

* Social entrepreneur Danny Meyer can be reached at danny@smecompete.com.

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