In an exclusive interview with Higher Education Review, Varun Nagaraj, Dean of SPJMR, shares his view on how entrepreneurship prepares students for a changing global economy, how universities cultivate a culture of innovation, the challenges faced by universities in promoting entrepreneurship and more. He held various product leadership roles, including CEO positions at venture-funded start-ups and public companies, during his 30-year career in product innovation in Boston and Silicon Valley before assuming his role at SPJIMR. 

How does fostering entrepreneurship and innovation benefit students and institutions in higher education? What role does entrepreneurship play in preparing students for a rapidly changing global economy?

There is more to management education than meets the eye. It can be broken down into a few fundamental components. The first one is the entrepreneurial mindset; it is a way in which someone approaches any situation without fear of the unknown, is comfortable taking risks, takes unconventional actions and works quickly. Besides, there's a good body of research on what makes up or what constitutes an entrepreneurial mindset. The entrepreneurial mindset is paramount as it is good whether you become an entrepreneur or enter the corporate world. Hence, regardless of any student's choice, building an entrepreneurial mindset is essential as it can help them in their career. When it comes to educational institutions, they should look at their course outlines, the sort of experience they are providing to their students and whether those experiences are providing the student body an opportunity to develop this fundamental mindset called the entrepreneurial mindset.

Secondly, after having an entrepreneurial mindset, where you can deploy it. Usually, students at the end of their education will have a few choices; joining an established company is the most obvious choice for many students. There are a couple of ways in which the students can build their careers by joining a reputed firm, either by being a minor member of a larger organization or by bringing an entrepreneurial mindset into that place. Besides, they can also perform well in the firm as they bring fundamental trade for success in an established company. The entrepreneurial traits of urgency and level of risk-taking are even essential in the organization. The entrepreneur mindset helps even more, as the firms in which students join value these characteristics more than a traditional company, as they have this particular mindset. Moreover, students enter with a value system that aligns with the established firm's dominant value system.

The other is about recent graduates who choose to become entrepreneurs; they establish a company and perform all the required activities to build a firm where the entrepreneurial mindset is hugely valid. Hence, it is essential to have a foundation around the entrepreneurial mindset that is applicable to every student and even they need to be aware that the entrepreneurial mindset is applicable in many situations, not just for entrepreneurship.

In what ways can universities cultivate a culture of innovation that encourages students to think creatively and pursue entrepreneurial ventures?

To teach the entrepreneur mindset, the faculty members need to bring the right people outside the university system who have demonstrated the entrepreneurial values that make up this mindset. Also, the students need to be exposed to many things. They need to be exposed to entrepreneurs, corporate leaders and talking about the entrepreneur mindset. Hence, it requires more resources other than the faculty, and a lot of exposure, networking, and people talking to each other are needed. For instance, if 5% of the students want to go and create their ventures, then the university has to make a separate support structure for these 5% of the students who aspire to become entrepreneurs.

Moreover, the university can utilize the separate support structure to identify resources unique to this 5%, such as the network of possible funders, mentors, etc. However, these 5% are treated differently, and companies or universities will call it their entrepreneurship sell. In reality, 100% of the students need an entrepreneurial mindset, and only 5% will become entrepreneurs after the course completion.

Considering the cultural and institutional barriers posing as common challenges faced by universities in promoting entrepreneurship and innovation, how have these challenges been addressed?

The university has to expose its students to numerous unstructured situations so that they learn to formulate the problems themselves. While learning to formulate a problem, even if the student is not entrepreneurially minded, the institute has to get the students out of their comfort zone to figure out what problem they face and if there is any opportunity. This approach can then be integrated into all sorts of classes. However, the focus should be on unstructured problem-solving and risk-taking; that is how a good foundation can be created. At the same time, the students need to be exposed to many startup founders and innovators so that they can learn from examples of whether to become entrepreneurs or not, and this kind of thinking will always be helpful in their journey.

How can higher education institutions adapt to the rapid changes in technology and industry demands to stay relevant in entrepreneurship education?

Entrepreneurship education is an experiential kind of thing, and there are technologies such as Zoom and artificial intelligence (AI) that can significantly impact educational institutions. Entrepreneurship is a people business that requires networks and figuring out how technology enables that fundamental attribute of being an entrepreneur. If the entrepreneurial mindset is more robust, the student would have more exposure to different ways of thinking, risk-taking, and creativity. Also, the technologies that have made the world a smaller place through teleconferencing which is more helpful.

For instance, Indian students interact with their French counterparts, who have entrepreneurial mindsets, share pitches, and understand how people from entirely different countries and cultures think. This is only possible post-COVID, which has become the norm now. Hence, this is how technology is being used to improve the process of entrepreneurial learning.

From an educational institution's point of view, incorporating AI and Generative AI into entrepreneurship classes by essentially having students use them and leverage them a lot can be a challenge as to how they can add value on top of Gen AI. What if their role is to rely on Gen AI responses? What unique value do they add as a human being? Hence, it is essential to push the aspiring entrepreneur or mindset-oriented person to figure out ways of adding edge value around what Gen AI is producing; this would be a way to incorporate Gen AI into the pedagogy of how entrepreneurship can be taught.