The Road
Entrepreneurial state of mind
This year’s QS Higher Ed Summit: Europe saw close to 500 academics, industry leaders and delegates coming together to discuss the challenges and opportunities related to the theme “Students at the heart of education: Mobility and digital transformation in European higher ed”. We look back at some of the highlights from a panel in the summit.
By Afifah Darke, Deputy Editor
“[Universities] are a safe space to fail and we need to show students that it’s okay to fail.”
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From June 27-30, delegates at the Dublin Royal Convention Centre tuned in to engaging sessions and keynotes throughout the QS Higher Ed Summit: Europe 2023 with topics ranging from women in education, to sustainability practices and to research culture. A city renowned for its creativity and innovation, it was only apt that Dublin was chosen as the location for the summit’s first ever physical event. Ireland, with its favourable tax policies, highly skilled workforce, and access to the EU market, also complemented a panel session on the Entrepreneurial State of Mind.
The panel kicks off with a fairly simple but loaded question from moderator Denis Guibard, Dean of Institut Mines-Telecom Business School: “Why do students need to have an entrepreneurial state of mind”?
Employers want students who have “good, raw material”, says Sophie Stanton, IBM’s Vice President of Digital Sales Center for Bratislava, Cairo and Dublin. While it’s easy for companies to offer good training for students when they enter, the students need to be curious, to be able to adapt, and have resilience and persistence, she adds. “Once we hire the students, we need them to show us that they can do things by themselves, that they can be very creative,” Stanton says. “I tell them: ‘I need you to let loose. You’re here to learn, but we also need to learn from you.’” Agreeing with Stanton’s views, Srikanth Iyengar, CEO of Workforce Development at upGrad Education points out that even if one isn’t an entrepreneur working for themselves, companies do value entrepreneurial skills. “Entrepreneurship is a mindset. It’s not just about people who want to do start-ups, it’s also being innovative within the company that you work for because it’s a competitive marketplace out there.
Culture of failing
According to a 2022 McKinsey report, European start-ups face much greater pressure to perform than counterparts elsewhere in the world. The pressure is also set much earlier, compared to start-ups in the United States, “where having a failure in one’s past is typically seen as a badge of honour”, it adds. The report also points out that Europe lacks a “risk culture” which possibly drives some founders to take more conservative approaches that ultimately sacrifice growth potential.
Given such an environment in Europe, Solenn Daudu, CEO at Vanillea International says that the university should be when students experiment new things, with the presence of mentors and professors who can support them. “[Universities] are a safe space to fail and we need to show students that it’s okay to fail,” she says. “The earlier you fail, the earlier you will learn how to build on it and how to move on and how to deal with frustration.”
While Prof José M. Martínez-Sierra, Director General at UPF Barcelona School of Management, agrees that a culture of failing isn’t common in the continent, he challenges institutions in the region to aim for a “culture change”, which he admits, may only materialised after several years of effort.
Stanton chips in that the desire to learn should also be ingrained in students. “If IBM is 120 years old, it's because we have changed so many times. We have transformed from within the services we are sold, but even the workforce. So, it's really important that people can adapt to change and adapt very fast.”
She adds: “I've been 30 years in the tech industry. I've done 13 roles so far… I've been able to transform myself many times over. I've done sales roles. I was in sales of stores, I've been chief marketing officer in France, and now I'm digital sales leader. I’ve been given a chance and I've been able to reinvent myself.” She stresses further that everyone, no matter at what position in an organisation, needs to be able to adapt. When a person is hired, it’s not because they are the best person for that job, she points out, “but because they are the best person that can adapt to the future of jobs and how the company is going to evolve”.
"It's super important that there is no bias in the technology that we develop."
SDGs in entrepreneurship
Guibard, who is also Vice President for Sustainable Development at Conférence des Grandes Écoles, asks the speakers to explain their views on how sustainability can be intertwined with entrepreneurship. “Creating a company is not necessarily about growth and consuming more,” says Daudu, adding that she has observed more and more students in France demanding for sustainable schools. These students also want to create their own jobs, have their own companies and come up with their own solutions to tackle sustainability challenges, she says.
Gender equality is brought up by IBM’s Stanton, who stresses how important it is for institutions to encourage their students to go into tech, especially women. “It's super important that there is no bias in the technology that we develop, and if we only have men developing the technology, then guess what?”
In 2021, all-women-founded startups raised just 1.8 percent of investment in Europe with a further 9.3 percent backing mixed-gender founding teams, according to a European Women in VC report. All-men founding teams raised 89 percent. With current social structures where men can to education more easily than women, Iyengar adds there is a big opportunity for online learning and micro courses, and consequently allowing people to upskill, even if they are not able to physically access a classroom to learn.
With remote learning or working, it makes gender diversity a much more achievable target across genders, ethnicities and geographies, Iyengar explains. Daudu also chips in, saying that institutions which are able to integrate entrepreneurship and sustainability will have “a competitive edge”. As a female entrepreneur herself, Daudu says she has experienced certain barriers and feels it is important to include women and children who have not been exposed to entrepreneurship. “They think that it's very complicated, they can never achieve that, and it's only for families who have money. This is not true.
“Please include all of your students in your talks about entrepreneurship.”