Four tips to navigating your student journey and beyond
In this blog post, Sherlyn examines how Higher Education fosters an entrepreneurial mindset, enabling better quality of life for people across the globe.
How do we characterise an entrepreneurial mindset? Having an entrepreneurial attitude may be interpreted in a variety of ways. It can imply explicitly to regulate and develop a new business, or it can suggest implicitly being the leader of your own life. Within the scope of this article, we shall examine education within these two angles.
Let’s explore six ways in which education enables students to improve their mental processing and maintain agility; thus, to take more purposeful, rational and meaningful entrepreneurial acts.
Opportunity recognition
Education allows individuals to engage in entrepreneurial activities such as opportunity identification, assessing organisational feasibility and plan implementation. The act of perceiving difficulties in education as opportunities and coming up with solutions also strengthens students’ courage to pursue an idea. This mindset motivates entrepreneurs to seize possibilities when they arise and to remain tenacious in their ambitions.
Self-reliance and initiative
The pursuit of higher education provides students with the knowledge and skills they need to take charge of a project without supervision or direction and to overcome challenges independently. Institutions of higher learning prioritise this competence. Moreover, it brings out the best in a leader by instilling the values of self-discipline, shaping their intention and behaviour in life. With logical rigour and clarity of argument, individuals can identify both sides of a situation and arrive at the appropriate solutions.
Critical thinking and problem solvers
Education fosters analytical thinking and problem-solving abilities. To be an entrepreneur, one must be able to recognise and solve complicated problems. Students gain the ability to think critically and discover creative answers to issues through challenging courses, research projects and intellectual dialogues. Education creates the ideal environment for critical thinking, as students have easy access to a wider variety of critical viewpoints.
Partnership and communication
Teamwork, idea exchange and the creation of a community of individuals who share similar values are all made possible by interacting with different classmates, professors and tutors. These relationships may subsequently develop into beneficial alliances and networks of assistance for business ventures. The new acquaintances we make are not just companions, they are individuals who share similar objectives and aspirations. Be sure to discuss your personal goals and career goals with your peers; you may discover new things you have in common.
Adaptability
Entrepreneurs frequently need to manage several business-related tasks at once in the early phases of a company, including finance, marketing and sales. It's essential to be flexible with the schedule as well as one's mindset if we want to keep improving under pressure. Through acquiring knowledge, individuals can conduct every situation, be it personal or professional, with an open mind and willingness to adopt different approaches when necessary. Learning to manoeuvre in murky waters early on will provide the future self with useful lessons and dexterity when confronted with challenges.
Innovative mindset
An entrepreneurial mentality correlates with behaviour that fosters the capacity for original and creative thought. Programmes included in university courses help to expand students’ outlooks. Enrolling in a finance or politics course, for instance, can provide students access to more effective problem-solving techniques and valuable insights. Such mental exercises encourage intellectual curiosity that are linked to the development of entrepreneurial expertise.
Knowledge begets knowledge. The true path to success in a variety of disciplines, including entrepreneurship, is through higher learning and adopting a growth mindset. In life, the air around us isn't just a combination of molecules but it also contains thoughts; the past, present, and future are part of these thoughts and education guides them towards the most beneficial directions.
“Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.” - Marie Curie
Sherlyn is studying BSc International Relations in Singapore.
This page was last updated on 3 November 2023