Business: The Entrepreneur as Empath

Can entrepreneurship be taught?

And if so, how?

Danny Warshay, who as Executive Director of the Johnathan M. Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship at Rhode Island's Brown University believes he has a definite "yes" to the first question

Warshay has, in fact taught the "entrepreneurship process" in several cities across the U.S. and globally, brought that concept of the process to a seminar organized by clean energy company New Fortress at the Pegasus hotel (another had been held earlier that day at the UWI Mona campus).

The answer to the second involves a surprisingly cogent and multi-faceted argument which the Brown University professor laid out in an engaging presentation. Key to accomplishing the feat is an approach to entrepreneurship as "a structured process" - similar to building a bridge or any other  piece of infrastructure.

"You don't go out and just build a bridge from scratch suing 'bridge-building spirit" Warshay pointed out in answering the age-old trope about entrepreneurs being "born, not made" and that passion and the "big eureka moment" are the only essentials. "you don't just put it up and hope or believe that it can hold up to the cars and traffic that's meant to cross it."

Instead, Warshay, points out, entrepreneurship is  structured process built primarily on the three pillars of: Identifying an unmet need; Establishing an unmet need; Building sustainability.

That three-prong process begins, he says, with what he terms" bottom-up research" the kind, similar to what anthropologists regularly conduct - this involves empathetic observation, of experiencing situations from another's viewpoint with out judgement or bias.

Observing, as proven by the "gorilla in the basketball game" concentration video that Warshay showed to the full room, takes more effort and focus than most people - including active and aspiring entrepreneurs - assume. This in part, because our biases are generally "baked in" and getting out of our conditioned  responses and expectations can be very difficult, but yield startling results

The Tide story, from  the P&G branding archives, and a story from his own -notably male -alumni at Brown, who developed a line of drinkable, non-aggravating and  easily portable pre-natal vitamin supplements for women. The P&G marketers, were able to develop Liquid Tide after observing the "travails" of householders struggling with the powder formula in the conventional "rectangular cardboard box. The Brown alumni - including a former hockey player who turned to rowing after overcoming a tragic injury - observed expectant mothers in the vitamin section at their local Whole Foods. That process led to the brand, product line and company that now operates worldwide via the Internet.

Following those stories, it was the turn of the audience to weigh in, not with questions, but with their own discussion-driven models for doing bottom-up research into issues such as weight loss and management, developing a  24-hr tech service provider and improving interactions with the daf community.

Companies of the [near] future? maybe, but the exercise - and the entire event - provided invaluable insights into what entrepreneurship means now.....and what it can mean.