Tailoring education for entrepreneurial people

"We seem to have contrived an education system that divorces enthusiasm from the acquisition of knowledge," says ICT Big Ideas Youth Challenge judge, Simon Roberson.

What kinds of experiences lead people to become innovators?

You've got to be dissatisfied with the current state of affairs. You need to have the vision to imagine what things could be like, to say "Wouldn't it be better if it worked like this?"

Lots of people have those thoughts, but to encourage them to actually do something about them, we need to create an environment where this type of thinking is seen as valuable and the 'right' thing to do.

People will be encouraged to pursue their bright ideas if they get a positive reception rather than being patronised and told, "Yes, you're very clever now get back to your GCSEs."

How can we redress this?

I think it's very easy for all of us, whether it's schools or businesses, to be set in our ways of doing things and not really consider that there is a need or demand to do things differently.

It's easy to tell people to get back to their day job or concentrate on passing their exams. Obviously these things are important, but we have to create an environment where coming up with a different way of doing things is not necessarily shrugged off or put on the back burner.

Do you think the UK has that kind of environment?

I don't think it's as bad as it used to be, by any means. I think we're much more open to those kinds of ideas now, but if we're going to keep up with America, never mind India and China, we need a lot more.

The British education system tends to concentrate on acquiring knowledge at the expense of innovation, creativity or developing skills. No one gets to do anything interesting until they've at least done their first degree; whereas it should actually be an interest in doing things that leads you there in the first place.

Do you think that school is a good preparation for the real world?

As an employer we usually find if you've got someone with an A-Level education, they have a certain amount of background knowledge and skills, but they might not be able to spell or they don't expect to turn up for work at 9am.

If you focus only on the things you can measure, like the output in examined qualifications, it's easy to forget the other things that go into producing an educated person. For example, we need people in society and the workforce who have a zest for life and a passion for doing interesting things.

How would you change education to make it better for entrepreneurial people?

I'm not suggesting that we move away from a good grounding in knowledge and basic skills. It's the old story of genius being one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration: you're never going to come up with a brilliant idea in material science if you haven't studied chemistry and physics.

It's important that knowledge is still the core of education, but I think there ought to be a lot more scope for acquiring knowledge in ways that generate excitement or doing things that inspire you alongside the acquisition of knowledge.

Children are the brightest and liveliest if you get them on a subject that they are passionate about - they are impossible to stop. But we seem to have contrived an education system, which divorces that enthusiasm from the acquisition of knowledge. It's a huge problem to solve.

I'm not suggesting we have a system where you are allocated a quota for the number of physics graduates you want. At the opposite extreme, you can't have complete freedom of choice, where everyone wants to be a television personality. There has to be a balance.

I think it's about keeping the focus on a good, solid grounding in knowledge, but trying to make the acquisition of that knowledge interesting. In other words, making people realise why it's relevant rather than just cramming them with knowledge.

How can the UK ensure it has people with the skills and attitude that the future economy will demand?

I think we need a lead from government and well-known figures in society and businesses about the importance of education and enterprise.

Too often in the past we've had people like Richard Branson, who left school with O-Levels and nothing much else, held up as the model of the entrepreneur - almost in spite of education.

I think we've got to recognise that entrepreneurs come in different forms. Martin Sorrell, a Cambridge graduate who runs WPP Group, didn't leave school after doing his O-Levels, but is equally entrepreneurial.

You can get very bright and innovative people from all kinds of disciplines. For example, you don't have to be a scientist to be an entrepreneur in a science or technology field.

There are plenty of science graduates who are management consultants and not using their science degrees, and there are plenty of entrepreneurs running very technically-based companies, who aren't science graduates.

The important thing is to be passionate about a subject while still acquiring knowledge.

Simon Roberson is Regional Manager for BT Regions in the North East.

Published April 2007