Quo Vadis Entrepreneurship in Indonesia

Abstraksi

At the beginning of his presidency, President Jokowi has stated the importance of “Mental Revolution” across the board of the Indonesian society but unfortunately, this revolution has been surpassed by the arriving digital revolution that poised every Indonesian to adopt and adapt this notion by becoming more and more tech-literate. That does not only involves the millennial generation but also the “colonial” generation (older generation) who does not want to be labelled “tech-illiterate”. Entrepreneurship learning requires as rightly stated; “Unlearning and Relearning” some of the stuff we had in our past educational journey. We cannot rely on the capability of the current teaching forces both teachers and faculty members to be able to create great student entrepreneurs if they do not even know or aware of how to “unlearn and relearn” their own past learning experiences. Many institutions are aware that entrepreneurship is not only for business schools but it is needed in all schools and faculties. Such awareness has even reached the understanding of the difference between creating a business vs. managing a business. Unfortunately, before we are talking about business creation, there are fundamental issues that we must elaborately discuss to ensure the successfulness of the newly created entrepreneurs. Many entrepreneurship programs focuses on the skill set needed to create businesses but these skill set is rather useless when it does not come with the right perception and mind-set on how to use it. Even when students are regularly given a dose of inspiring sessions provided by successful entrepreneurs who do not only share their success stories but also celebrate their failures, it is not enough to create a paradigm shift among the young people for them to “unlearn and relearn” their past learning experience. Many young people are inspired to embrace the entrepreneurial life style as it offers immense freedom and liberty for them to decide what they want to fill their time with. People live a life in this world with certain purposes. Those purposes are basically to get accepted and connected with other people (Marissa Peer, a world renowned therapist). She stated that most of us fear loneliness and/or being rejected by others. In our career path, we are hoping at some point to have a good life running for us with a great family, a great home, a good paying job, regular vacation etc. However, many people have difficulties keeping them once they have it or they “sabotage” them purposely by being workaholic, drug-abuse, etc. Often times, we are so pre-occupied with the notion of “great life” that our mind is “fixed” on it. Should we fail to achieve want we want to achieve, we will become frustrated and devastated. This kind of “mind-set” is certainly not suitable for those who want to become successful entrepreneurs. People with fixed mind-set are those who are risk-averse and they tend to avoid problems rather than see it as a challenge or opportunity in contrast to those with a growth mind-set (Carol Dweck, Professor of Psychology, Stanford University). Successful entrepreneurs must develop a growth mind-set rather that fixed mind-set for themselves and that requires major change in our belief system. When we want to look closer at the entrepreneurial journey of some successful entrepreneurs like Bill Gates or Steve Job, we will find that they have a growth mind-set rather than fixed mind-set depicted in their actions and perceptions. That has certainly almost nothing to do solely with the pure intelligence, let alone obsolete school system that does not promote the students to develop the right growth mind-set. This is the reason why it sometimes very difficult for people in their adult age to unlearn and relearn their past experience to develop the right mind-set and belief system. The main reason for it is that one has to have the courage to depart from their comfort zone or even safety zone in life. True entrepreneurial people with growth mind-set would not hesitate to leave their good-paying job simply to pursue alternative career that is more challenging and full of uncertainty. Instead of avoiding the uncertainty, they will embrace it and eventually co-create something new. Now imagine, when the teachers or college faculty members have not managed to develop the right growth mind-set themselves, how can they inspire their students to develop theirs? Now, since we know how to become successful in life as entrepreneurs or something else, we have to ask ourselves how long we think we need to acquire the right mind-set and change our belief system. It is obviously clear that any instantaneous entrepreneurship training or workshop can achieve the mind-set change before one actually start learning all the skills needed to create values, hence new business creation. It is certainly true that we need to start acquiring the right knowledge as early as we can be. It is not wrong to state that entrepreneurship education is needed starting at the primary level. It is not about teaching the students how to create businesses but it is about developing the right growth mind-set and belief system. Only then, when all students have acquired this new paradigm, the presentation of entrepreneurial skill-set make sense and that is on how to create values for the society.