African University of Science and Technology, Abuja

ENTREPRENEURSHIP & TECHNOPRENEURSHIPAS ENGINE OF RAPID ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

An “AUST Distinguished Fellow-In-Residence” Creativity & Innovation Seminar

By:

Dr Emmanuel O. Egbogah, OON

Emerald Energy Resources Limited

Abuja, April 29, 2013

Origins and Historyof

Entrepreneurship• While technological change dates back thousands of years to prehistoric

times, what concerns us is how that happens, and what it means for us aswe contemplate our present and future.

• The interaction of creativity, innovation and entrepreneurial activity inEurope raised productivity measured by GDP per capita from $430 in 1400to $14,413 in 1989 in contrast with China where the imperial system limitedGDP per capita growth during the same timeframe from $500 to $2,361.

• While the activity goes back much further in time, the word entrepreneurderives from the Old French entreprendre – to undertake, including tocreate and to innovate (to use the stuff we already have in better ways).

• The earliest references to entrepreneurs date back to the Middle Ages inlate 12th Century France, and referred to a person in charge of a large scalemilitary or civil project, like building a cathedral.

•

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Reims CathedralAlbrecht Durer, Siege of a Fortress

16th to 18th Centuries

• By the 16th Century, the word entrepreneur was used to describe aperson engaged in business activity.

• In 1723, Jacques Savary des Bruslons defined an entrepreneur as onewho undertakes a work, e.g. of manufacturing or building.

• In 1735, Richard Cantillon observed that entrepreneurs weredistinguished from fixed wage earners by their willingness toundertake risk for uncertain profits

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R. Cantillon, Essai sur la Nature duCommerce en Général

Cloth Merchant Measuring Cloth,Castello di Issogne

19th Century

• In 1803, Jean-Baptiste Say described an entrepreneur as creatingvalue by estimating the importance and demand for specific products,combining the means of production to produce them profitably, andovercoming obstacles to doing so. The entrepreneur shifts economicresources out of an area of lower and into an area of higherproductivity and greater yield.

• In 1848, John Stuart Mill described an entrepreneur as someone whotook on the risk and the management of a business venture.

• In 1890, Alfred Marshall, the founder of neoclassical economics,observed that entrepreneurship tied together land, labor, capital withmanagement

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John Stuart MillJean Baptiste Say

20th Century

• Joseph Schumpeter: market power driven by technologicalinnovation and entrepreneurial spirit is the critical element ineconomic growth.

• Harvard Business School’s approach to entrepreneurship wasrevitalized by Dean Howard Stevenson, who argued thatentrepreneurship should be understood, researched and taughtas a management approach applicable in larger, more maturecompanies as well as start-ups - a set of educable skills andattitudes: a tendency to seek out opportunities, a willingness toact quickly, an ability to negotiate a multi-staged commitmentof resources, a skillful use of resources, and an interest inbuilding a network rather than a hierarchy.

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Joseph Schumpeter Howard Stevenson

So What is Entrepreneurship?• Entrepreneur perceives or

creates a market need to be metprofitably by managing theventure’s risk and requiredresources.

• Entrepreneurship is the activityof entrepreneurs, whether instart- ups or large corporations.

• The activity frequently involvestechnological innovation.

• Successful entrepreneurshipincreases overall economicwealth and human well-being,and is rewarded with profitsand social recognition andapproval.

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21st Century DefinitionsSome current dictionary definitions of entrepreneur:• A person who organizes and operates a business or businesses,

taking on greater than normal financial risks in order to do so(Oxford).

• One who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business orenterprise (Merriam-Webster/Encyclopedia Britannica).

• US English - a person who attempts to make a profit by starting acompany or by operating alone in the business world, especially whenit involves taking risks. British English: someone who starts their ownbusiness, especially when this involves seeing a new opportunity.British Business English: someone who makes money by startingtheir own business, especially when this involves seeing a newopportunity and taking risks (Cambridge).

What conclusions can we draw from this brief history and thesedefinitions?

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Key Requirements for Success• Definitions and characterization of entrepreneurs and

entrepreneurial activity attempt with varying degrees ofsuccess to describe the complex and dynamic reality.

• Attempts to describe uniquely entrepreneurial personality traitsusing sociological and psychological analytics are of dubiousvalidity.

• Whether or not taught, key requirements for entrepreneurialsuccess include a degree of optimism , resilience and focuseddetermination in conditions of uncertainty; a willingness to takeon and manage risk; a desire to create or seek outopportunities; a willingness to make decisions quickly in adynamically changing and competitive technological andenvironment; and the desire and capacity to create anorganization to execute the business strategy and grow thebusiness.

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OpportunityOpportunity comes in many forms, andbasically in two ways:

• The opportunity to introduce a new product orservice in an unserved or underserved market -Creativity.

• The opportunity to introduce an improved oralternative product or service in existing markets –Innovation.

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First Movers and Late Starters:Advantages and Disadvantages

First Movers• Limited or no information on real

potential market size and futuregrowth potential.

• Greater risk of overestimating orunderestimating demand, leading tooversupply or capacity shortages.

• Can use lead time to prepare forincreased competition by marketpositioning of company and product orservice, by building customer loyaltythrough customer service, by securingdesirable supplier and distributionnetworks, and by continuous product,price and service improvement

Late Starters• More information is available

• More information available toaccurately estimate demand,

• Offer superior alternativetechnology value to customeror imitate with minordifferences, supported bymarketing

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Increasing the Probability of StartupSuccess: User Entrepreneurs

• A Kauffman Foundation report identifies three types of userentrepreneurs:

• End-user entrepreneurs – develop products or services for personal use,

then commercialize.

• Professional-user entrepreneurs – develop products or services for

business use.

• Hybrid professional/end-user entrepreneur.

• More than 50% of user entrepreneurs fail.

• But they are seven times more likely to succeed than other entrepreneurs.

• In the U.S.A., user entrepreneurs have founded more than 46% of innovative

startups that have lasted five years or more even though they constitute only

10.7% of all U.S. startups11

User Entrepreneur Contributions• User entrepreneurs have ignited technological change in industries

including but not limited to computer hardware and software, webservices, medical devices, sports equipment, juvenile products.

• They frequently have the best information, and their incentive is tobuild something better for their own use, resulting in something trulynovel and innovative.

• We all benefit when they commercialize these innovations.

• User entrepreneurs make significant innovative and economiccontributions to society.

• User entrepreneurs in larger corporations can and do make significantinnovative and economic contributions to society too.

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Innovative Change, Disruption andOverall Growth in Economic Wealth

• Innovation comes from the Latin innovatus, to change or renew, and inprinted usage by the 15th Century.

• As innovation is generally perceived as desirable, many companiesmarket their products and services as innovative, even if the changesto them are quite minor.

• Clayton Christensen classifies innovation into two types: sustaininginnovations, which turn good products into better ones, such as webbrowsers or household cleaning products (of which a subset areefficiency innovations, which produce the same product more cheaply,such as automating credit checks); and disruptive innovations, which,for example, transform expensive, complex products into affordable,simple ones, such as the shift from mainframe to personal computers.

Cont/…

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Innovative Change, Disruption andOverall Growth in Economic Wealth

• Disruptive changes frequently benefit new market entrants at theexpense of existing companies, and causing direct and indirect joblosses, as with digital photography’s devastating impact on Kodak andPolaroid, Wikipedia forcing Encyclopedia Brittanica onto the web tosurvive and consigning its famed print edition to oblivion, and Skype’sdramatic reduction on the cost of international phone calls.

• Established market leaders may be able to benefit from disruptivechange by making it part of their business process, and even leadingit.

• Disruptive change tends to increase choice, free up personal financialand other resources (even for the losers who are consumers too, andcan with effort find new employment) and create new opportunities,resulting in increased economic wealth and well being.

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Continued…

Impact of Culture and the State onEntrepreneurship: Europe

• Most new business ventures everywhere fail.

• The key question is how failure is treated, especially as manyentrepreneurs learn from their mistakes and succeed thesecond time.

• Continental Europe creates relatively few new growthbusinesses .

• European insolvency regimes often treat honest insolvententrepreneurs similarly to fraudsters – a fresh start takes about6 years in Germany and 9 in France, compared with one in theU.K. and less in the U.S.

Cont/…15

Impact of Culture and the State onEntrepreneurship: Europe

• Labor law cost and complexity make it hard and costly to fire people,which reduces or eliminates entrepreneurs’ ability to survive near-terminal mistakes and fluctuating demand.

• The legal complexity of offering new hires free shares and stockoptions is prohibitive.

• This environment is similarly unattractive for venture capital firms,which have lost money in the last decade, resulting in a shortage of therounds of seed capital needed to finance the transition from angelinvestors to public markets.

• The consequence is to discourage many potential entrepreneurs ordrive them out to realize their dreams and efforts in more hospitableenvironments.

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Continued…

From Startup to PowerhouseTwo Great Technology

Entrepreneurs:Google and 3M

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Better, faster search• Google began in 1996 as a Ph.D. research project named BackRub for

the Stanford Digital Library Project, to develop the enablingtechnologies for a single, integrated and universal digital library.

• Encouraged by his supervisor, Larry Page chose as his dissertationtopic the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web,understanding its link structure as a huge graph.

• Page focused on the problem of finding out which web pages link to agiven page, considering the number and nature of such backlinks tobe valuable information about that page with respect to academiccitation.

• He was joined by his friend and fellow Ph.D. student Sergey Brin, andtogether they developed the PageRank algorithm for converting thebacklink data Page’s web crawler gathered to a measure of importancefor any web page.

•

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Better, faster search

• They theorized that a search engine based on PageRank, wouldproduce results superior to that of other search engines.

• Following the successful testing of their hypothesis of Google (apopular variant on googol, 10100, a 1 followed 100 zeros) at Stanford,Page and Brin registered the domain name google.com in 1997 andincorporated Google as a business in 1997.

• PageRank and the search engine continue to evolve and remain atGoogle’s core

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Continued…

Financing Growth, Keeping Control• Google’s first funding of $100,000 came in 1998 from Andy

Bechtolsheim, which helped start the company.

• In 1999, Google received $25 million in equity funding , most of it fromKleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers and Sequoia Capital.

• Google has been profitable since 2001 and all of its fulltime employeesowned shares in the company at the time of its initial public offering(IPO).

• Google went public in 2004, in an Initial public offering led by MorganStanley and Credit Suisse First Boston, in a Dutch auction raising$1.67 billion for !9.6 million shares sold at $85/share, including 5.4million from shareholders, giving the company a market capitalizationof $23 billion.

• On August 3, 2012 Google’s stock price was $631.33/share and itsmarket capitalization was $731 billion. 20

Financing Growth, Keeping Control

• In the first 6 months of 2012, Google revenues grew 21% to$22.9 billion, with after tax net income of $5.7 billion.

• Like a number of other tech company founders concerned toprotect long term investment and their corporate cultureagainst short-termism and hostile takeovers, Page and Brinkept voting control of Google with two classes of shares, ClassA with one vote per share, and Class B with 10 votes per share.In 2012, they further solidified control by issuing Class C non-voting shares convertible into Class A shares as a currency toreward employees and pay for future acquisitions

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Continued…

Innovate, compete, learn , repeat• Google has always encountered fierce competition in all of its

businesses, as these three examples illustrate.

• At start-up it faced search engines like Excite! and now likeMicrosoft’s Bing, Yahoo and Ask.

• Its Chrome web browser competes with Microsoft Internet Explorer ,Apple’s Safari and many others.

• Its Android operating system for mobile computing competes withApple, Microsoft and Symbian.

• Google encourages risk-taking and learns from its flops (GoogleAnswers, Accelerator, Wave).

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Innovate, compete, learn , repeat

• It acquires companies where it does not have a compelling product, asin 2003 with Pyra Labs’ Blogger software to host blog sites, and the2006 acquisition of YouTube after Google Video failed to gain traction.

• Explaining Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility and its portfolioof patents in 2012, Google CEO Larry Page noted the growingimportance of mobile computing and observed that people tend tooverestimate the impact technology will have in the short term, butunderestimate its significance in the longer term.

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Continued…

Innovate, compete, learn , repeat• Google makes missteps, as with the handling of internet censorship in

China and personal confidential information, and then remedies those,sometimes in response to regulators, but usually in response toretaining customer loyalty and trust.

• Google works hard to attract and retain top talent, and is e the firstmajor Internet services company to have all of its U.S. owned andoperated data centers receive ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001certification, which reflect high standards for environmentalmanagement and workforce safety.

• From startup in garage of their friend Susan Wojcicki, now Google’sSVP Advertising, Page and Brin have grown Google to over 34,331employees in 70 offices in 40 countries, excluding loss-makingMotorola Mobility whose employee numbers will fall from 20,293 toabout 16,000 as Motorola focuses on new Android smartphones

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Continued…

Everyday Invention• 3M changed its name in 2002 from Minnesota Mining and Minerals, which

started in 1902 as a small mining venture and in 1906 sold its firstsandpaper product.

• Since it opened its first laboratory in 1916, 3M’s myriad inventions startedwith waterproof sandpaper in 1921, and has gone on to include a vastarray of products and processes, such as masking tape in 1925,cellophane in 1930, reflective sheeting for traffic signs in 1939, soundrecording tape for the entertainment industry in 1945, Scotchgard fabricprotector in 1956, Scotch transparent tape in 1961, Thinsulate in 1979, andPost-It Notes (invented by Spencer Silver as a reusable low pressure in1968, championed from 1974 by Art Fry who thought it would make a goodbookmark for his hymn book, and made its full commercial debut in 1980),and currently includes more than 500,000 products in areas as diverse asadvanced composites, wound care, electronics, and specialty additives.

• 3M is constantly innovating – it offers over 55,000 products, and has aNew Product Vitality Index of 32% (products introduced in the past 5years divided by total sales).

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Everyday Invention• As the retiring CEO, George Buckley put it earlier this year; “We can

neither save nor spend our way into prosperity, but we can and mustimagine, innovate and invest our way there. It is the only thing whichguarantees success… innovation and new products are the lifebloodof 3M”.

• In the first 6 months of 2012, 3M had sales of $15 billion, and after taxnet income of $1.16 billion.

• Last year 3M spent $1.57 billion on R & D.

• 3M employs over 84,000 people in over 60 countries and is workingto contemporize its information system across the company aroundthe world.

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Continued…

Operating Segments• 3M is organized into six operating business segments: Industrial and

Transportation (33%); Health Care (17%); Consumer and Office (14%);Safety, Security and Protection Services (13%); Display and Graphics(12%); and Electro and Communications (11%).

• While 3M has supplied products to the energy industry for 50 years, thisyear it established an Oil & Gas Industry Solutions business within itsIndustrial and Transport segment, to expand its relevance by providingfocused service to the energy industry in exploration & production;refining & petrochemicals; and transporting & storage with some 10,000products for such requirements as safety, electrical construction andmaintenance, corrosion protection, density reduction, and filtration.

• 3M’s operating business segments have each had operating profits of over 20%since 2004, which the company attributes to its focus on operational excellenceincluding factory efficiency and cost discipline, consolidating businesses likeoffice supplies with stationery products to gain scale and improve relevance tocustomers while accelerating investment in key growth areas like emergingmarkets and health care

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Culture of Invention• The consulting firm Booz and Co. ranks 3M as the third most

innovative company in the world after Google and Apple.

• 3M works to understand and respect all its competitors and then to bebetter at supplying market needs, even small ones in emergingmarkets, knowing that small ones today may grow rapidly to becomemultinational competitors.

• 3M believes that the collective power of its imagination and creativitywill generate future opportunity and increased wealth.

• Researchers are allowed 15% free time to work on whatever projectsthey wish.

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Culture of Invention• Because of its breadth and depth of technologies and markets, R & D

rarely fails, and is instead repurposed and reused.

• R & D is often applied across platforms, with 3M making uncommonconnections, such as when the auto body repair business borrowed adental material mixer to improve accuracy and reduce waste in autobody repair.

• While highly motivated researchers and continuously improvingfactory efficiencies are core to 3M’s success, senior management isensuring that every part of the company is taking on big projects,such as the phased implementation of the global information system.

• Because they don’t know in advance how that will happen, 3Mmanagement relies on a combination of optimism, solid knowledgeand good instincts about where opportunities might lie, and the faithto stimulate and encourage curiosity, innovation andentrepreneurship 29

Continued…

MTN: An African International Success

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• MTN Group was founded in 1994 in South Africa, to provide local mobileservice It has 176 million subscribers.

• Today, MTN provides mobile communication services in 21 markets andinternet service in 13 countries, mainly in Africa, Middle East andsouthwest Asia.

• MTN Group’s main markets are South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Iran andSyria.

• In the first 6 months of 2012, rose 17.5% to $8.25 billion (63.2% of it forairtime and mobile subscriptions, 14.1% from interconnect; 10% fromdata; 6.4% from SMS; 4.3% from mobile handsets and accessories; 2%from other).

• MTN Group invests in the development of its 24, 252 employees, mainlythrough MTN Academies in South Africa, Ghana and Dubai.

MTN Nigeria• MTN Nigeria is the jewel in MTN Group’s crown, with 43.2 million

subscribers, 2.6 million of whom have smartphones, driving MTNNigeria’s growth in data (and a decline in SMS revenues as usersmove to IM).

• In the first 6 months of 2012, in the face of aggressive competition, aslowing economy and declining consumer spending, MTN Nigeria stillmanaged to generate the largest contribution to MTN Group EBITDA,with $1.46 billion or 39.1%, and also led in profitability with an EBITDAmargin of 60.5%.

• In the first 6 months of 2012, MTN Nigeria invested $554 million inenhancing network quality and capacity, and expanded 3G coverage,or 44% of MTN Group’s allocation to capex investment.

• In the first 6 months of 2012, MTN Nigeria added 554 2G sites and 562co-located 3G sites, bringing the total number of 2G sites to 7,611 and3G co-located sites to 2,636. 3G population coverage improved to 35%from 28% 31

MTN Nigeria• MTN Nigeria undertook to the Nigerian government to provide

telecommunications access to 850 villages across Nigeria and reducediesel dependency by 50% by 2020.

• The challenge: 50% of the population lives in rural areas, and 30% aresupplied by the grid.

• The solution: fully-meshed satellite network site architecture, whichreduces costs and improves voice quality, powered by solar andhybrid solutions.

• The results to date of this initiative: 280 base transceiver sites providetelecommunications access to 350 villages

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Continued…

Indigenous OpportunitiesEach one of these areas of economic activity comprises immense existing andfuture possibilities:

• Oil and gas – E&P, oilfield services, refining, power.

• Construction – residential, industrial

• Agriculture – research, production, export

• Healthcare – services, devices, processes

• Telecommunications – broadband, ancillary services

• Software – ecommerce, engineering, high end outsourcing

• Your path may lead you to productive engagement in one or more of these

areas, or in a different direction.

• It is your life and only you can make the best life choices for you and those

around you33

• Technopreneurship is a combination of “technology” and“entrepreneur”. It is a “technology innovator and business man rolledinto one”; or better still “an entrepreneur whose business involvestechnology related activities”.

• They are naturally gifted, smart, creative, but not necessarily formallyeducated; aggressive young men & women passionate for success;mostly assemblers and at times innovators, and they can be found inmost commercial cities in Nigeria (Otigba in Ikeja, Aba, Ibadan, Nnewi)etc.

• They include:- Software Developers- PC Manufactures among others.

• The Asian experience of Technopreneurship success includes Indiawhere the Indian Ministry of Science & Technology in conjunction withrelated agencies launched a novel programme known as“Technopreneur Promotion Programme (TePP)”.

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The Use of Technopreneurship to Grow SMEs:

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• Under the programme, any Indian having an original idea/inventioncan apply.

• Selected proposals/ideas are converted into working prototype andfrom there a profitable business is generated, with the inventorenjoying patent rights.

• The objective of the TePP include to tap the vast innovative potentialof the Indian citizens and to promote individual innovators intotechnology based entrepreneurs by helping them source for financeand other needs.

• The TePP initiative has helped establish thousands of IndianTechnopreneurs whose dream and vision would have died but forsupport.

• We in Nigeria must empower our own Technopreneurs “to thrive, fortheir own good, for our good and for the good of the entire economy”.

The Use of Technopreneurship to Grow SMEs:Continued…

Change Never Stops• Even the best concept or new products and services will change,

sometimes repeatedly and radically in response to factors likecustomer feedback and market competition.

• When blessed with success, consider using a portion of your futureprofits and hands-on experience to establish indigenous venturecapital and private equity companies to help finance and grow otherpromising indigenous entrepreneurs.

• Conventional wisdom about what constitutes best practice foranything is subject to change, sometimes slowly, sometimes quiteabruptly, in response to research and understanding, innovation,shifts in market preferences, and other factors.

• Remain curious, open-minded, alert and willing to learn.

• Have the faith in yourself to listen to your inner voice and follow yourinstincts, as more often than not that will guide you to your bestpersonal and professional decisions

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21st Century Human CapitalDevelopment

• Education at all levels – schools,technical institutes, universitiesand companies - needsmeaningfully to enable ongoingachievement of excellence, andto encourage curiosity,flexibility and creativity.

• Together with investment intechnological change,continuous development ofcompany personnel will drivegrowth, productivity, wealthcreation and social stability atboth the national andinternational levels

Cycle of Development

Train

Reward Empower

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The number of entrepreneurs globally is now about 400 million, theGlobal Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2011 Global Reportrevealed.

According to the report, there is an upsurge in entrepreneurshiparound the world, that entrepreneurs are now numbering near 400million in 54 countries, with millions of new hires and job creationexpectations in the coming years.

Kelley, Associate Professor of entrepreneurship at Babsop said over140 million of these entrepreneurs expect to add at least five newjobs over the next five years. “These figures and growth projectionsaffirm that entrepreneurial activity is flourishing across the globeand that entrepreneurship as an economic engine, is the best hopefor reviving weakened world economies”, she said.

The report has the following as key findings:

Entrepreneurs Now Number about400m in 54 Countries

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Entrepreneurial phases:From early stage for discontinuance,

• Total early-stage activity (TEA) increased significantly from 2010-2011 inmany economies and across all levels of economic development,emerging, developing and mature. In fact, TEA rose 25 per cent among 16developing economies with China, Argentina and Chile boasting above-average rates in 2010 and even higher rates in 2011.

• 20 mature economies experienced, on average, a nearly 22 per cent TEAincrease over both years. United States and Australia showed substantialincreases from already high TEA rates in 2010.

• Intent to start businesses is highest in emerging economies (those inearly-stage development). People in these economies are most likely tosee opportunities and believe in their ability to start a business. They alsohold entrepreneurship in high regard. Expectations to start a business arealso high in middle-stage developing economies like China, Chile andBrazil. These measures tend to fall, however, as countries rise ineconomic development. Russia and the United Arab Emirates have thelowest entrepreneurial intention rates across the sample.

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• More than 50 percent of entrepreneurs in emerging economies whodiscontinued their businesses did so because of negative influences,usually lack of profitability or funding. Entrepreneurs in matureeconomies were more likely than those in the other stages to end theirventures on a positive note – retirement, sale, or the pursuit of newopportunities.

Continued…

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Profile of Entrepreneurs andTheir BusinessesGlobal Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) interviewed more than 140,000adults in 54 economies across diverse geographies and a range ofeconomic levels. GEM estimates that, of the entrepreneurs engaged instarting and running new businesses in 2011:

• 163 million early-stage entrepreneurs are women

• 165 million early-stage entrepreneurs are young entrepreneurs (age

18 to 25)

• 69 million early-stage entrepreneurs are offering innovative

products and services

• 18 million early-stage entrepreneurs are selling 25 percent of their

products and services internationally.

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• Only eight out of 54 economies: Panama, Venezuela, Jamaica,Guatemala, Brazil, Thailand, Switzerland, and Singapore have equalparticipation by men and women in entrepreneurship. The remainingeconomies show lower female participation, some as low as 1:10 ratio(Pakistan).

• Early-stage entrepreneurs are most often young to middle-age (25-44years), though in many developing economies, there is a tendencytoward younger entrepreneurs. In Switzerland and Japan, on the otherhand, older entrepreneurs (44-54 years) are the most frequentparticipants in entrepreneurship.

• Consumer-oriented businesses and manufacturing dominateentrepreneurship in the emerging and developing stages. Comparedwith entrepreneurs in emerging economies, four times as manyentrepreneurs from the mature economies are involved in knowledge-intensive, business services sector.

Continued…

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• An evaluation of the job creation impact of entrepreneurs in theeconomies shows that although there are fewer entrepreneurs inmature economies, they are more likely to have high growthprojections.

• Among the developing economies, Chile, Peru, South Africa andPoland have high percentages of entrepreneurs with innovativeproducts and services. In the mature stages, it is Denmark that,despite a low TEA rate, has high innovative rates. On average, theproportion of entrepreneurs with innovative products and servicesincreases with economic development level.

• Internationalization also increases with economic development;fewer entrepreneurs from emerging economies offer their productsand services in the international marketplace. Countries such asBrazil, China, Argentina and Russia with huge populations andlarge geographic areas have lower rates of internationalization.

Continued…

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Policy Implications on Entrepreneurship:GEM researches offer several guidelines for policy-makers, entrepreneurs,and academic to help them build entrepreneurial eco-systems that enableentrepreneurship thrive in every world economy.

“Policy recommendations that improve the flexibility of labour,communications and market openness, while eliminating bureaucracy andred-tape will contribute to a more entrepreneurially-focused businessenvironment”.

“Cultures that reward hard work and creativity, rather than politicalconnections, will also encourage entrepreneurial development.Governments ensuring that political interests do not supersede economicconcerns are also more likely to create conditions in which entrepreneurscan grow and prosper. This is particularly important and relevant in manydeveloping economies, including our country, Nigeria.

“To create energy for making positive changes, societies must consider thatentrepreneurship is not the heroic act of a few individuals, but theaccomplishments of many people who pursue their ambitions in asupportive cultural and institutional environment”.

Closing Remarks• The professional skills you graduate with will provide you with a solid

technical foundation from which you will be able to continue to learnand acquire the future skills you will need to compete successfully ina world marked by increasing rates of social, economic andtechnological change.

• Our educational curriculum needs to be redesigned to be able tosensitize our students and turn them away from the current certificatefrenzy, towards becoming opportunity entrepreneurs andtechnopreneurs who would apply the knowledge and skills acquired toaddress their needs and those of their immediate environment.

• Your professional platform for achieving that may be either an existingcompany or a new business you start, and your personal path mayprove to be direct or indirect.

• Be open to the unexpected opportunities and challenges that willundoubtedly come your way.

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Closing Remarks• If you successfully work to meet an unmet need, or meet a served

need in a superior way, with a new or technologically improvedproduct or service, you are creating economic wealth and wellbeingfor the benefit of yourselves, your customers and the widercommunities of which you are a member.

• I wish each and every one of you Almighty God’s blessings to achievelasting, satisfying personal and professional success.

• Be creative, be innovative.

• Be an Entrepreneur, a Technopreneur.

• AND BE A COHESIVE PART OF THE ENGINE OF OUR NATIONALECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT.

• Thank you for listening 46

Continued…