Globalization is defined as the development of an increasingly integrated global economy marked especially by free trade, free flow of capital, and the tapping of cheaper foreign labor markets. The rapid pace of globalization over the last several decades has dramatically changed the world. As Thomas Friedman postulates in his book The World is Flat, global markets are becoming level playing fields and worldwide competition for opportunities is becoming more rigorous. Workers with necessary skills are being utilized from areas that had historically faced geographical barriers to economic growth.
Those geographical barriers have been circumvented by technological advances. High speed information exchanges like e-mail and virtual conferencing make fast-paced worldwide collaboration feasible. An example Friedman describes is how software programmers in India link to product manufactures from China. The Indian programmers correspond about product design with workers in the United States. The new products are manufactured in China and sold worldwide. Friedman also describes how programmers in India created a secure system that allows accountants in India to electronically complete United States citizen’s tax returns. These two examples of collaborative, barrier less globalization show that organizations are changing. Fresh new skills are demanded so that organizations and the people who work in those organizations can keep pace with the dynamic, integrated global economy.
What those fresh skills look like is further defined by educational essayists Adler and Holt. While they wrote two separate essays, they found agreement that a more general, humanistic education would aid the needs of future workers; future workers who must maintain a malleable skill base and avoid what Alder calls the “barbarism of specialization”. Business leaders repeatedly express their desire for workers who are enveloped with the ability and willingness to learn, grow, and change. Educational author Francine Fowler’s statistics on increased numbers of career changes an individual experiences during their working life supports the need for workers who can learn and adapt. A change to a more resilient education may help future workers and may be provided by combining Adler’s liberal arts focus and Holt’s emphasis on liberated, autonomous learners. As Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s, once put it, “When you’re green, you grow. When you’re ripe, you rot”. Skills associated with liberal, autonomous, lifelong learning keeps the individual and the overall economy green and growing.
Researchers have claimed entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial skills are some of the most necessary skills for organizations, workers, and the economy to grow and remain green. They based the importance of these skills on the prediction that future economic growth will occur primarily among small business enterprises. Gendron more specifically identified needed future skills based on interviews with six prominent business entrepreneurs: Steve Case, Matt Goldman, Tom Golisano, Geraldine Laybourne, Jeff Taylor, and Alan Webber. The skills identified included: teambuilding, experiential learning, emotional understanding, self motivation, listening, selling/marketing, creative design, managing complexity, risk tolerance, and global understanding.
These future skills align with definitions of entrepreneurial skills developed by other researchers. Peck and Morrison both emphasize entrepreneurial leaders who are skilled in sharing powerful visions of what the future may hold. Peck specifically calls for entrepreneurial skills among leaders in education, so the educational system can move beyond maintaining the existing and move toward dramatic changes and future needs. As he notes, in most schools “everyone has a brake pedal, but nobody has a gas pedal”. However tempting rapid change is - a leader with a lead foot may be problematic. A pragmatic and measured approach to change is a skill that may not often be attributed to entrepreneurial leadership. Tucker’s analysis of over 1,200 workers in both government and business sectors found a counter-intuitive finding about entrepreneurial leadership skills. He found that entrepreneurial workers and leaders are not exceptional risk takers. They are atypically motivated but are pragmatic and tend to avoid risky circumstances.
Entrepreneurial and humanistic holistic skills are important enough to future economic success that researchers Nunn and Ehlen argued that university business schools in the United States should adapt to deliver curriculum and instructional methods that cultivate entrepreneurial leaders. Nunn and Ehlen further speculated that university trained entrepreneurial leaders would then propagate a culture of entrepreneurship among their employees and create the type of dynamic, creative, nimble organizations that are able to compete globally.
If the need exists for universities in the United States to prepare students for entrepreneurial organizations, then perhaps it would be beneficial for schools at the secondary or even elementary level to develop entrepreneurial skills among students. A European Commission Report outlines a potential connection between elementary and secondary school entrepreneurial curriculum. The report recommends that primary schools develop entrepreneurial attitudes such as creativity, spirit of initiative, and independence so that future schooling can focus more precisely on enterprise building.
While European commissions look for a route to innovate change among its schools, the United States still maintains a level of hesitancy towards systemic educational change. An implied theme throughout Fowler’s book, whether she is describing economics, political culture, or values, is that the United States educational system changes slowly. Fullan notes that implementation of top down dictates and improvement sustainability are challenges for our current educational system. Our educational system is like a huge vessel on an ocean. The ocean, with its wind and currents, is our societal climate and culture. An organization like Amazon or Google can hoist the most modern and efficient sails to catch the climatic changes of our collective culture because they are organizations that strive for innovation and creativity.
A question is whether the United States’ educational system can adjust its sails and harness the power of entrepreneurial characteristics to meet the needs of the changing world markets. Fowler describes demographic changes that will yield a population with a smaller percentage of members in schools. She also provided employment data that indicates the elasticity of skills needed for the modern American worker to stay employed. Friedman writes of increased competition and the need for workers with a resilient skill base. If resilient, dynamic skills are needed by future workers then all levels of schooling may have to hoist their sails and enhance the pace of systemic change.
The United States’ school systems can look to the example of the European Union and discern new change directions. To better capture the winds of change and influence overall economic growth, a European Commission report calls for member states to “…integrate entrepreneurial education into all schools’ curricula”. The European Commission suggest that to more efficiently harness the winds of change, schools will need to focus on the fundamental characteristics of entrepreneurial organizations to mirror and teach skills needed for future success. If a future direction for education depends on developing broad based humanistic and entrepreneurial characteristics then determining current levels of these characteristics and their resulting influence in schools becomes essential information for determining educational system’s current coordinates and setting the future course for systemic educational change.
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