SUNBURY – What is an entrepreneur exactly? PhD Emma Fleck, Professor of Management at the Sigmund Weis Business School at Susquehanna University, spent some time on WKOK’s Sunrise recently to discuss entrepreneurship.
Most people believe, in order to be an entrepreneur you have to have a lot of money or be a business oriented person trying to start a business. Dr. Fleck told us that entrepreneurial activity is no longer confined to starting a business, “entrepreneurial activity is very much about being innovative and it’s about problem solving and it’s also about creativity.”
Dr. Fleck says creativity is very important to the entrepreneurial spirit, and it’s often lost in young adults, “Unfortunately, you’re really creative when you’re about 5, but by the time you’ve reached 22, you’ve lost that ability to believe that you can do or be anything.”
Some of her techniques may seem unusual for college aged kids like an exercise she does in her class called ‘becoming your 5 year old self,’ “We actually spend some time in the classroom, dressing up, making super hero masks, thinking about the creative people we use to be when we were about 5. And so we get into that creative mindset before we try to do this problem solving.”
Dr. Fleck feels that because of technology, what her students need to learn is different than in the past, “It’s not anymore about information retention. It’s about analytical thought. It’s about skills development. Employers and entrepreneurs don’t need information, that’s at our fingertips.”
Want to find out more about today’s entrepreneurs? You can hear the entire interview with Dr. Emma Fleck from WKOK’s Sunrise at WKOK.com.
