Recently a very interesting dialogue has been going on in a LinkedIn group of which I am a member concerning the question of whether the art of entrepreneurship can be taught. Fifteen years ago when I was chairman of the Management Association of my country at the time I took the iniatiative and helped establish the Entrepreneurship Club and later I served as its President for eight years.
So,I thought I might submit in my blog some of my experiences and thoughts on this subject and will try to answer two questions: “ Can entrepreneurship be taught?” and “Has the government any role to play in facilitating entrepreneurship?”
This is the entrepreneurial age. Entrepreneurs are driving a revolution that is transforming and renewing economies worldwide. Entrepreneurship is the essence of free enterprise because the birth of new businesses gives a market economy its vitality.
New enterprises generate most of the new jobs. According to some estimates, a thousand new businesses are born every hour of every working day in the United States. Within five years, small, growing firms with 100 or fewer workers generated 7-8 million new jobs in the U.S. economy, whereas firms with more than 100 workers destroyed 3.6 million. By the way, since we are experiencing one of the worse recessions of the century we and the goverments around the world should exercize great care not damage this job creating machine. If anything goverments should go out of their way and encourage in every way new entrepreneurs
Anyway, coming back to our subject: an entrepreneur is someone who perceives an opportunity and creates an organization to pursue it.
The entrepreneurial process involves all the functions, activities, and actions associated with perceiving opportunities and creating organizations to pursue them.
But can the art and science of entrepreneurship actually be taught? Or is the birth of a new enterprise just happenstance and its subsequent success or failure a process based on chance?
Although ten years ago many business school gurus maintained that entrepreneurship could not be taught, entrepreneurship is today the fastest– growing subject in the business school curriculum.
Today the process of creating a new business is well understood and most of us believe that entrepreneurship can be taught. One cannot guarantee that by itself the teaching of entrepreneurship in our business schools will produce the tycoons of tomorrow, but students with an urge to start a business will receive education that will make them better entrepreneurs.
Addressing the role governments can play in facilitating entrepreneurship, I can only mention what we have repeatedly recommended to our government officials.
The first recommendation has to do with how the government can influence the imagination and inspire its citizens to consider starting a new business thus creating a higher number of nascent entrepreneurs. This we believe can be achieved through the educational process starting with lessons from the early years and continuing through high school and technical and university years. We have to recognize the fact that in many countries, including mine, our youth was exposed for decades through the educational system to views that were, to say the least, not positive towards the role of the business and the entrepreneurs. To the contrary there was a kind of propaganda against it.
The second recommendation was to grasp the opportunity that the European Union and other central goverments are offering for funding and gear most of these programs towards funding new entrepreneurs.
The third recommendation is an obvious one: goverments should remove all the barriers and bureaucratic obstacles that a new entrepreneur faces when it comes to establishing a new business and believe me in many countries this is a real nightmare.

To illustrate what we mean by the above statement, imagine your marketing staff has just completed the plan to build your brand equity over the next three years. They have agreed to next year’s advertising and promotion activities and budgets and are ready to celebrate a job well done. They are absolutely certain that next year the plan will win the customers and increase sales and market share.
The only problem is that they have only done half the job required in building a strong brand and achieve their goals because a brand is much more than visual image, advertising and promotion. Actually your brand is your business strategy. It has to prove your uniqueness and real competitive advantage
A critical element of the business strategy is that it must be differentiated, and authentically delivered by the behaviours of your employees when they are in contact with your customers. Your brand is your ‘trust mark’. It is your reputation.
Whatever the promise, it’s the experience of the customer that counts. And a key part of the experience is what your people deliver – either personally through direct customer contact and service, or indirectly by creating and maintaining a fulfillment process.
Interactions between customers and representatives of the brand – the employees – can either reinforce or sabotage the brand.

“ At the end of the day, as Federick W. Smith founder of FedEx said, FedEx is not the logo or its advertising or its sales force. To the customer, FedEx is the person who comes to your door and doesn’t let you down.”
This post draws on the philosophy and experience of TMI and its partners around the world. http://tmiworld.com

Workplace culture and values are undergoing a major transformation.
The global recession has forced organizations to reconsider their business models and their workplace
At the same time it is changing people’s attitudes towards work vs private life and for many people, it is affecting how and how much they work.
Emerging trends including the rise of telecommuting and freelancing, the growing influence of the Millennial way of thinking (introduced by those who were born during 1980’s to mid 90’s), and the adoption of mobile devices and Enterprise 2.0 tools will create an entirely different work and office culture.
A recent study by JWT poses the following questions and findings

Key Questions
• How will the recession and new ideas about worker productivity affect the traditional eight-hour day and five-day workweek?
• How will the shifts we’re seeing in office culture affect workplace design and the physical office space?
• What factors are contributing to the growing rise of freelancing and contract work?
• How will companies need to change to accommodate Millennials? How are Millennials redefining professional success?
• How will Enterprise 2.0 tools help to drive changes in workplace culture?

Key Findings
The following summary of the findings illusrates the changes that are already happening.
“Today’s always-connected workers, the recession and new ideas about worker productivity are changing the traditional 9-5 workday. The recession has prompted some workers to reassess the why behind work and seek
greater work-life balance. Meanwhile, companies are reassessing scheduling—instituting shorter workweeks or ultraflexible hours—and focusing more on what people get done rather than how long they spend doing it.
Work-life balance is one factor fueling the rise of freelancing. While freelancers once mostly took on small odd jobs, now they fill contract positions for a growing range of specialties.
With more workers freelancing, telecommuting and working non-standardized hours, businesses are increasingly open to flexible workspaces and virtual offices; design focuses on easing flexibility and collaboration. Cost-cutting has also forced many companies to rethink their operations from the brick and mortar up. By allocating space more smartly, businesses will be able to shrink physically and make better use of their real estate.
Millennials, the newest entrants to the workforce, are motivated more by their passions than by paychecks or promotions. Given the sheer size of the generation, they are certain to force changes in the workplace; many
businesses are already adjusting in order to retain the strongest young workers.
Millennials are helping to drive adoption of Web 2.0 tools in the workplace; what’s known as Enterprise 2.0 will be key to the flatter, faster and more flexible business of the future. Smart organizations will put as much focus
on evolving a 2.0 culture as adopting the tools that go with it.”

Interest for participation in the nominating process of Greek companies with the best working environment has already begun. Please click www.greatplacetowork.gr
What makes a company an optimal working environment;? Our approach is based on findings of 20 years study and research.
Trust between management and workers, is the determining factor. Thus an optimal working environment means that employees  “trust the people for whom they work, are proud of what they do and enjoy the companionship and cooperation of colleagues and associates’.
The Great Place to Work ® Institute believes that  Trust is composed of three dimensions: Credibility, Respect and Justice.
In an optimal working environment the way  people are treated significantly increases the relative merits of the organization. I will mention some of them:

• They receive more and better candidates for vacancies.
• Have a lower  personnel turnover
• They enjoy higher levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Develop greater innovation and creativity.
• And finally, benefit from higher productivity and greater profitability

When an organization invests in people it invest in its success. But beyond that I want to highlight another dimension.
As  all  investigations on Corporate Responsibility indicate, the Greeks put  Work Environment very high in importance  for a socially responsible company.Also of high importance is whether  the company has a specific plan to achieve this goal.
And that to me is another reason why companies are starting to realize the importance of a good working environment and operate accordingly.
Currently we are experiencing the implications of the international economic crisis. The best way to treat it is to base our business strategy on our people. Talk to your people honestly and tell them what to expect now and in an immediate future. Speak clearly to them and not take for granted  that every one understands how the crisis  affects your business. Open dialogue with your people, ask their opinion on how they believe that we must face the difficulties. Don’t make promises that you can not keep. And finally, always remember that words are less important than emotions