Beyond school, try industry

Certificate creates nothing! Creativity creates everything! Without creativity, school is a scam. Creativity is what remains when you have forgotten all you were taught in school, not certificate. Even though creativity is not directly taught in school, it is a product of applied knowledge. Creativity is the ability to think beyond course works and outside of the prescribed formulas. Entrepreneurship is the ability to turn creativity or applied knowledge into an opportunity.

The entrepreneurial spirit is beyond the school curriculum, it is the spirit of industry. It is the spirit of creativity and innovation. School offers raw knowledge, but entrepreneurial thinking offers innovation. Knowledge is actually the driver of innovation, so school is expected to drive industry, all things being equal. This is painfully not so because school curricula and course works are not reviewed and tailored to keep pace with industrial revolutions.

Creativity creates everything! Innovation is what creativity looks like. Without innovation, we doubt creativity. A creative solution is what applied knowledge looks like. Without creative solutions, we doubt knowledge. Certification may be a proof of acquired knowledge, but a creative solution is most definitely a proof of applied knowledge.

Innovation is a product of applied creativity, knowledge and technology. Innovation drives productivity, while productivity drives economic growth. Knowledge can be acquired informally. You don’t have to be a scholar for your mind to be muscular. Read Everyday And Discover (READ). What innovation is to creativity is not necessarily what certification is to knowledge. You don’t need a certificate before you can create a solution, neither do you need formal education before you can come up with a useful innovation.

Knowledge creates nothing! Knowledge in itself has no ability to create anything until it is applied.

Between School (S) and the Entrepreneurial Spirit (ES)

School teaches knowledge, while ES applies knowledge – Among other things, knowledge is the principal deliverable school offers. Knowledge acquisition is however not the same thing as its application. Those who go beyond receiving formal education to create innovations or come up with creative solutions are either innovative entrepreneurs or academic entrepreneurs and not mere academics or entrepreneurs. Academic entrepreneurs give us creative solutions through applied knowledge, while innovative entrepreneurs apply creative solutions to problems and to opportunities to enhance and advance life.

School is about course works, while ES is about field experience – Course works are subjects taught from school curriculum and are necessary academic requirements for certification. The entrepreneurial spirit is a mindset which usually emanates from possibility thinking. Entrepreneurship is field experience and not classroom experiments.

School is about certification, while ES is about innovation – The physical evidence of formal education is certificate, while the entrepreneurial spirit reveals innovation through applied creativity. Remember, innovation is what creativity looks like. Without creativity, we doubt the spirit! Without innovation, we doubt school. Without knowledge application, we doubt knowledge acquisition. Without creative solutions, we doubt certification. Also, remember that even though creativity is not a principal deliverable of school, knowledge is. Applied knowledge drives creative solutions, creative solutions drive productivity, while productivity drives economic transformation.

School is guided by a curriculum, ES has no guide – Possibilities have no curriculum, education does. The scope of possibilities is from zero to infinity, while the scope of school is from zero to one. For instance, a student can only subscribe to a course and become a graduate in a field of study such as a lawyer, an engineer, a medical doctor, an accountant, an architect, an economist, a banker, etc. The entrepreneurial spirit is what makes a lawyer becomes a technology enthusiast, an architect a lover of innovation, a medical laboratory scientist a social entrepreneur, a banker a business innovator, and so on.

School produces scholars, while ES produces solutions – Scholarship is field specific, but entrepreneurship is solution specific. Academics function within their specific fields of study, while entrepreneurship is a function of borrowed brilliance from diverse fields in pursuit of creative solutions to problems and opportunities to enhance and to enrich people’s lives.

In 1972, Steve Jobs took a calligraphy class at Reed College based on campus posters he saw after dropping out. The poster fonts themselves were artistic enough to catch his eye, and he audited this class, despite knowing the class would earn him no credit towards a degree. It wasn’t just a calligraphic skill Jobs picked up at Reed. It was a mindset. The calligraphy class Steve Jobs audited in college later became an inspiration for Apple’s beautiful typography.

In his 2005 Stanford commencement speech, he explained how he could have never connected the dots looking forward, but the connection was very clear to him looking back ten years later. The entrepreneurial spirit opens up new avenues for possibilities, innovation and creative solutions.

Every entrepreneur wishes he or she had the creative mind of a Jeff Bezos or an Elon Musk. While there is no denying their innate genius, part of their secrets comes from Training, Exposure, Creativity and Habits (TECH) that facilitate entrepreneurial success.

Entrepreneurial success is not a function of school, it is a product of the spirit!

For school to be relevant in determining the future of industry, commerce and entrepreneurship, it must offer courses that have industrial, commercial and entrepreneurial value and encourage creativity.

Government has a pivotal role to play in making school the bedrock of industrial revolutions by adequately and consistently funding higher education. There is more to school than mere knowledge acquisition and certification, school can become a solution centre of the world if researches are well funded, creativity is practised, knowledge is applied, staffs are trained and salaries are not owed.

School, however, is not an end in itself, rather, it is a means to an end. The ultimate goal of education is knowledge application. Innovation is what knowledge application looks like. Without innovation, we doubt knowledge. Without creative solutions, we doubt the entrepreneurial spirit.

Think beyond course works, create new works through ideation and creative imagination.

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