Schools of the Present, Entrepreneurs of the Future

Schools
of the Present
Entrepreneurs
of the FutureInstituto Pedro Nunes, IPN, 03/11/2017
iStart – A Lean-Training, Innovative, Multidisciplinary Digital
Entrepreneurship Platform

An extra terrestrial
visits planet Earth
to understand
how we educate
the young
generations
Here are some of
his thoughts:

“I notice that your best innovations are
produced by heterogeneous teams”

“Why is it, then, that the young people on Earth
are educated to be uniform and equal?”

h"p://leading-learning.blogspot.com/
But … the
world is
out there!
Get off the window! You
must listen if you want to
understand what the
world is all about
“And the schools on Earth lool like machines!”
SCHOOL

“Why do the education systems on Earth
insist on training the students to be:
•  listeners rather than doers?
•  followers rather than leaders?
•  conservative rather than innovative?
•  imitators rather than creators?
•  analysts rather than designers?
•  dependent rather than autonomous”?

3. WHAT IS AN ENTEPRENEUR?
5. CONCLUSIONS
2. THE COMPETENCES FOR THE FUTURE
1. THE SCHOOLS OF THE PRESENT
4. EIGHT TIPS FOR THE ENTREPRENEUR OF THE FUTURE

EDUCATION IN THE LAST 250 YEARS
They have been organized as imitations
of the industrial assembly lines:
rows of desks, separation between
disciplines, education of listening and
answering, rigidity of the curricula
The schools of the present originated in the 18th
century to fulfil the needs of massive education
created by the Industrial Revolution

The new forms of socialization
resulting from the development of
networks (Internet, mobile phones)
have generated a multitude of new
opportunities for education
EDUCATION IN THE LAST 250 YEARS

industrial, mechanistic and
standardizing vision of learning
learning and education as
knowledge transmission
predominance of authority,
hierarchy, and dependence
organic, social, and
differentiating vision of learning
learning and education as building,
transforming, and empowering
predominance of collaboration,
autonomy, and interdependence
industrial era
social era
praise of uniformity
and obedience
praise of difference
and creativity
disciplinary learning multidisciplinary learning
primacy of quantity primacy of quality

Many organizations have been
studying the most critical
competences for the 21st century
All of them confirm the misalignment
between what the schools offer
and what the markets need
COMPETENCES FOR THE 21ST CENTRURY
The study on the left was produced
by the World Economic Forum
Many other international
studies exist

World Economic Forum, 2016
WHAT SCHOOLS AND
UNIVERSITIES TEACH

OCDE, Global Competency for an Inclusive World, 2016
WHAT THE NEW GENERATIONS SHOULD LEARN
WHAT SCHOOLS AND
UNIVERSITIES TEACH
& WHAT THE SCHOOLS TEACH

Examples:
3. WHAT IS AN ENTREPRENEUR
Steve Jobs (Apple)
Richard Branson (Virgin)
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
Paulo Marques, Nuno Sebastião,
Pedro Bizarro (Feedzai)
Jeff Bezos (Amazon)
Elon Musk (Tesla)

An ENTREPRENEUR is someone who
faces a problem, opportunity or threat
as a challenge, transforms it into a
vision of success and makes it happen
Being an entrepreneur is not the
same as being a businessperson
Some entrepreneurs are in
business but others are not
entrepreneur (n.)
From old French entre-
(“between”) + prendre
(“to take”). Disposed
for adventure, ready
to take challenges
Many businesspeople are
not entrepreneurs

A student or a teacher can be
entrepreneurs in the sense that they
can have an entrepreneurial attitude
The schools of the present are not
organized to create entrepreneurs
They are organized to create employees
Entrepreneurship can happen in
schools, often in spite of the schools
but thanks to entrepreneurial teachers

CHARACTERISTICS OF EMPLOYEES
Execute with discipline and rigor
what they they have been told to do
Are dependent, with no
initiative and autonomy
Need to be led and
told what to do
Are only interested in ”their” part of what
is to be done, disregarding the whole

CHARACTERISTICS OF EMPLOYEES
Do not want to understand the
needs of the user nor turn
these needs into opportunities
Do not try to be creative or innovate
Do not worry about building
their networks of relationships
Are afraid of making mistakes and do
not take error as a source of learning

Initiative, autonomy, self-confidence,
optimism, need for achievement
Perseverance and tenacity
to overcome obstacles
Set goals and achieve them
Believe in what they do
Avoid routine behaviours,
differentiate from the others
CHARACTERISTICS OF ENTREPRENEURS

Are not afraid of failure and see
failure as a source of learning
Are oriented towards results,
the future, and the long term
Have a permanent desire to learn
Seek to know their environment
and feel comfortable acting there

Cultivate imagination, but
translate their visions into actions
Build and cherish
networks of relationships

Before we build something, we must
experiment, but experimenting can
begin in our own minds (and is free)
THE PRINCIPLE OF IMAGINATION
We should support our imagination with
tools: notepads, sketches, mind maps
The school of today has reduced the
space to exercise imagination
Those who don’t build castles in the
air do not build castles anywhere

We must learn to build excellence in uncertainty
We must get out of our comfort zone
THE PRINCIPLE OF UNCERTAINTY
Nothing can be discovered in
territories that we already know
We should distrust what seems certain and lasting
We should expose ourselves to
chance and to the unknown
But we should not take exaggerate risks: great
innovators pursue opportunities, not risks

There are two types of uniformity: the good and the bad
THE PRINCIPLE OF DIFFERENTIATION
The bad one subjects us to routines and principles
that contradict our rights and our values
The uniformity of our schools has made us all almost equal
The good one lets us work in harmony with those around us
We must have the courage to build our own value
into a difference that makes us unique and confident
We should do it in ways that let
us add value to the others
diversity + collaboration = collective intelligence

Do not refuse difficult tasks
Easy tasks do not contain challenges – without
challenges we become passive and accommodated
THE PRINCIPLE OF DIFFICULTY
Difficulty is linked to frustration – successful entrepreneurs
have an almost endless resistance to frustration
Do not ignore frustration: stop to understand it
and with persistence overcome its reason
Great victories are almost always on the
other side of a wall of frustrations

We live in a world of teams and collaboration
For a partnership to be sustainable
every part must be interested, not
only in its own benefit but also in
the benefits of the other parts
THE PRINCIPLE OF SUSTAINABLE COLLABORATION
Otherwise, the other parts lose interest,
collaboration collapses, and all parts lose
If you wish to ensure a lasting
collaboration you must constantly take
care of the interests of the other parts

Empathy is our ability to get
into the mind of the others and
feel their vulnerabilities
It is not the same as
solidarity or compassion
THE PRINCIPLE OF EMPATHY
Our social and leadership
skills are rooted in empathy
You cannot lead unless you
can put yourself in the mind
of those who are led

Do not explain: show!
THE PRINCIPLE OF THE EXAMPLE
Give examples, use metaphors and
analogies, explore images, outline
diagrams, make comparisons, invite
others to act and experiment
The great leaders do not tell
their followers what to do:
they do what has to be done,
and the others follow
Actions speak louder than words

Love what you do and
do what you love
THE PRINCIPLE OF PASSION

To be an entrepreneur of the
future, try to move radically
forward from what you learned
in school and university
5. CONCLUSIONS
That’s something you
can only do by yourself!

Schools
of the Present
Entrepreneurs
of the FutureInstituto Pedro Nunes, IPN, 03/11/2017
iStart – A Lean-Training, Innovative, Multidisciplinary Digital
Entrepreneurship Platform
Slides in:
www.slideshare.net/adfigueiredo
THEEND

Schools of the Present, Entrepreneurs of the Future

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