Lessons In Entrepreneurship: Think Globally, Use Your Own Cash, And Learn By Doing

Entrepreneurs have got it wrong about education. Traditional models of sitting in classrooms listening to lectures have passed their sell-by date. The future lies in experiential learning by doing.

“It’s like learning to ride a bike, you push the pedals, you fall, you get back up, you adjust and try again,” says Juris Ulmanis, Latvian-based co-founder of global entrepreneurship educational platform Experiential Simulations, where students hone their entrepreneurial skills by behaving like entrepreneurs.

A former senior manager at Motorola, founder of two companies, for the past decade, Ulmanis has been a university professor teaching entrepreneurship in Latvia, Germany, Poland, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark.

Flag of Latvia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

And he has turned entrepreneurship education on its head.

He says: “Typically, what happens is teachers have their students write business plans. I used to do this all the time, but it was a waste of time. Teaching by writing business plans is not realistic; it is just a guess, not based on facts.”

After years of observation, consumed with frustration in attempting to teach entrepreneurship to students, he teamed up with business partner, Canadian entrepreneur and educator James Bowen, and using their combined knowledge and experience of the North American and European markets, in 2012, they launched Experiential Simulations an educational simulation in entrepreneurship.

The programme, which comprises 18 rounds, takes student through a simulation that challenges them with multiple business variables, and demonstrates practically how every decision has a cost in time or money.

“The purpose is to give the sense of reality, and a birds-eye view of the marketplace in a way that a classroom can’t do. You can talk about it in a classroom, but you can’t experience it. The simulation is not real life, but is as close to real life as we can make it,” says Ulmanis.

The idea emerged after he had been asked by Riga Business School to launch Start Up Lab, a weekly class on entrepreneurship. By the end of the semester, students who attended would have designed companies that would be launched.

He said: “I realised pretty quickly that I could teach them about entrepreneurship, yet they couldn’t come up with ideas for businesses. Idea generation was tough for them. Students had the misconception that all they needed to do come up with an idea, write a business plan, and some venture capitalist would just give them money and they would get rich.”

What they didn’t want to do, he says, was the market research, to find out if people would like their idea, or to ask potential customers how to modify their idea and make it better.

“Because they were unwilling to test the idea in the market, they could never find out if they could implement it, if they could find suppliers, if they would have customers. Their ideas were doomed for failure because students were afraid to take risks and be willing to pivot,” he says.

With Experiential Simulations, the entrepreneur is always testing assumptions, with shifting variables that help them to hone this particular skill. However, successful entrepreneurship depends on many other factors including business support, but on the issue of entrepreneurial self-sufficiency, Ulmanis is resolute.

He says: “In Latvia there are a few business accelerators and incubators, but they only scratch the surface of what is possible. I see governments set up these types of programs, and not just in Latvia, but rather than encouraging new businesses, it can be a kind of welfare system that actually serves as a deterrent.

“In my experience, real entrepreneurs are better served by passion, hard work, and going for it; not waiting for support or subsidies. As a taxpayer, I have to ask myself, why I should pay for a start-up idea that isn’t viable on it’s own merit? I don’t think the focus for start-ups should be to receive money from the EU. You have a different mindset if it is your own money on the line.”

He is a keen advocate of global thinking from day one, adding: “I would invest in taking young people to two or three entrepreneurial centers around the world to meet with customers, politicians, local leaders and business people to see what is really happening globally; what it means to be a global entrepreneur.”

Ulmanis and Bowen have practised what they preach. The business was bootstrapped, and they both worked from home offices. However, their biggest challenge was securing early sales, because it was such a new model.

“Most professors are comfortable with what and how they teach, and are reluctant to try something new. It was a big barrier to overcome because we had to convince professors to play it and understand how to use it in their classrooms,” said Ulmanis.

“Education is one of most important sectors of global economy. If you teach entrepreneurship, it should be measurable; how many of your students were able to go out into the world and create successful businesses for themselves?”


