Catering for entrepreneurs

By ADAM GIFFORD

Unitec is setting out to service people who want to own businesses rather than to manage someone else's by launching a Master of Business Innovation and Entrepreneurship degree (MBIE).

Business faculty dean Gail McDonald says it is designed to meet the needs of innovators and entrepreneurs who want to use their expertise and experience to start new ventures or enhance existing operations.

But it will also suit development managers trying to cope with the needs of growth-focused businesses and people providing mentoring and advisory services to entrepreneurs.

Professor McDonald says that while a typical master of business administration course follows a sequential approach - taking students through finance, human resources and other management disciplines - the new MBIE degree course starts by considering how business opportunities are generated and evaluated, then goes on to building a business and taking it international.

"In the past, New Zealand has trained people for jobs and careers, rather than to be wealth generators.

"Unlike Asia, we don't have a culture of developing our own business. We'd rather work for other people. There's a fear of failure.

"This faculty does train people for the professions, but we're putting a stake in the ground and saying wealth is generated, that it's not a finite pie, that it can be expanded by new business processes and skills."

She says the world is full of business masters programmes. "But do we need more managers, or do we need business owners?"

The MBIE will take about three years to complete part-time. If students cannot finish the full degree, there are certificated stages along the way.

She expects it to attract older students. "Even in our undergraduate courses the average age is 28, and we expect candidates for this will be older than that."

The general admission requirement is a bachelor's degree and at least two years' relevant work experience. However, because entrepreneurs often follow a different drumbeat, provisional admission will be given to people with "competencies equivalent to a bachelors-level graduate" and five years' relevant work experience.

A second step towards catering for the entrepreneur is Unitec's Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship taking a companies into a "venture accelerator."

The idea of accelerators, or incubators, is to nurture young firms to help them to survive and grow during the start-up period when they are most vulnerable.

"A lot of what we do is mentoring and hand-holding, setting goals for people to achieve and giving them access to networks. We won't manage their company, but we will show them how to go about it," says the centre's manager, Yola Macken.

The venture accelerator can handle up to six firms. The first company is a software start-up company.

She says a second entrepreneur is being vetted by a selection committee of people with business, entrepreneurial and venture capital experience.