Who Is Not a Potential Entrepreneur?
If the category we call entrepreneurs includes not only those who seek and find opportunities but also those who make them almost serendipitously from readily available bits and pieces, and moreover, if we include their self-selected stakeholders who help transform the amorphous vision into valuable new ends through commitments contingent on the unexpected, who could we exclude from the category of potential entrepreneurs? The answer simply is: no one. Therefore, in our efforts to educate, legislate, and acculturate an entrepreneurial society, we may want to follow the precedent offered by the scientific method, not treating science only as a profession although it can be; instead treating it as an essential part of basic education. That means starting in middle school or earlier and excluding no one. The appropriate arena for entrepreneurial education will then consist in a distinct set of reasoning and problem solving skills with or without specialized business tools of the kind found in formal business schools.
Entrepreneurship, in this view, becomes even more than a specific set of skills; it becomes a generalized method such as the scientific method--a form of reasoning and logic the exercise of which would be as useful a skill as arithmetic, reading, writing, and basic scientific reasoning (Sarasvathy, 2008). And at least as important as civic engagement, civil discourse and the critical development of moral and ethical judgment. Entrepreneurship, then, is not merely a career option or a fallback position in cases of employer downsizing or economic downturns; it comes to be seen as a widespread driver of social change (Weber, Heinze, & DeSoucey, 2008).
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