What did they teach you?

I've finally been asked the question I'd been expecting to turn up, and that is: "what did they teach you?"

And that's a tough one to answer – we didn't have accounting, or strategic marketing, or management theory or whatever else for that matter. And "entrepreneurship" is no exact science (I surely know that now that I've read all the different "theories of entrepreneurship" – and there were 6 of those mentioned to us, and I bet there are at least a dozen more), and despite what our tutors had been telling us, I don't think you can "teach entrepreneurship". But rather – you can "teach a person how to become an entrepreneur" – because each and every person has to become an entrepreneur himself/herself.

So in fact, as I had pointed out in the previous post, we were tough to ask ourselves the right questions. And there is no right or wrong answers to those – each one decides for himself/herself.

To actually give an answer to the question I'd probably try to formulate the main questions from the session for myself:

1. High-growth or lifestyle business?
   
2. How do entrepreneurs learn?
   
3. Why be an entrepreneur?
   
4. What is an opportunity to an entrepreneur (what comes first?)
   
5. When do entrepreneurial organizations stop being entrepreneurial?
   
6. What is the best way for me to deal with risk and ambiguity?
   
7. How do I keep myself on track after failures?
   
8. Where do I find a charismatic CEO? J
   
9. How do I keep my work/life balance?
   
10. How do you transform your vision to values?
    
11. Who are my role-models?
    
12. How do I create projects for solving real needs instead of offering minor quality of life improvements?
    

Most of the questions don't have a universal correct answer (except #8 maybe, I wish someone could point me at the school of charismatic CEO's so I could go and recruit one).

I'm sure each of us would have different questions that we would ask after those 3 days, and that is the wonderful thing about the course. I'm sure we are going to get more traditional training as we move on (i.e. opportunity recognition, business plan, presentation etc.), but this first session was an important one for setting the scene for further action.

And it's no wonder that most of the questions are self-directed – it really is all about figuring out what you are there for, what and how you should focus on during your studies.

I'm not sure this post really answers the question, and if it were an essay I'd probably get a C for content.

P.S: The last question would probably be "how do I move to Cambridge?" but that's really a more practical one J