Creating and Developing an Entrepreneurial Ecosysytem in NI

Posted: 10th June 2016

The first ever conference on this theme in NI is being organised by Ulster University Business School in W5 on June 17th Fingerprint Learning is delighted to be participating through a presentation by Dr Brian Cummins (Stranmillis University College) and myself on The EntreBRAINeur Research Study.

Education is viewed as an important sub-set of an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in any country. However, most of the attention becomes focussed on third level education and little thought has been given to the importance of educating for entrepreneurship at Primary and Post-primary levels. We believe that this is a critical imbalance that must be addressed if sustainable ecosystem is to be developed and entrepreneurial potential in any society is to be realised.

Our presentation on The EntreBRAINeur Study (Phase 1) will demonstrate that, while not everyone can be an entrepreneur - they are born and not made! - potential for entrepreneurship is innate at a young age and formal education can and should be adapted to nurture this. The traditional left brain biased approaches in education actually work against right brain dominant entrepreneurial ability in children and young people.

Our research indicated that the key descriptor of a budding entrepreneur is Non-conformity. An education system that values and rewards Conformity and penalises or undervalues Non-conformity, is mismatched to government rhetoric about the need for more entrepreneurs to rebalance the economy by developing private enterprise.

Representatives from various sub-sets of the NI ecosystem will be present, including Business, Education and Government departments.

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