Entrepreneurship development at Curtin Sarawak

An entrepreneur as defined Schumpeter in his book The Theory of Economic Development is an individual who performs new combination for product and service development, new resources, new production methods, new markets as well as new organizations. Entrepreneurship deals with the process of developing innovative ideas, harnessing of resources to pursue the chosen idea and setting up of a business venture to realize the goal. Entrepreneurs play increasingly important roles in business and economic growth of a nation. Successful entrepreneurship requires more than merely luck and money. It is a cohesive process of planning, idea development, creativity and risk taking.

Entrepreneurship as a subject is taught for final year students in the Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Business Administration program at the School of Business, Curtin Sarawak. Entrepreneurship is an action oriented subject and not merely theories from the textbooks. The entrepreneurship subject taught at Curtin Sarawak involves a lot of practical assignments and students presentations. Learning entrepreneurship helps the students to understand, prepare and develop skills, which an entrepreneur needs in business development. To be a successful entrepreneur and to survive in the business world, students must not only become well grounded in conventional business principles, but they also need to develop entrepreneurial attitudes and skills and the determination to face difficult or unusual business realities.

The entrepreneurship development is also critical for economic growth and development of any country. The government in Sarawak and also in Malaysia also wants to develop Entrepreneurship among the graduates. The Malaysian government is encouraging graduates to create and start-up small businesses with an aim to reducing graduates unemployment rate. This will make the graduates to create employment opportunity rather than seeking employment opportunity.

At the School of Business, Curtin Sarawak, guest speakers and practitioners are invited from time to time to present and share their entrepreneurial experience and knowledge with the students. Besides the usual in class teaching and learning session for the students, several other activities of learning and educational trips are also organized for the students to broaden their knowledge. One of the recent experiences and knowledge sharing session was held recently for the entrepreneurship students. The session was conducted by Mr Joe Tan Lee Seng, a prominent businessman in Miri. Mr Tan delivered a talk on Entrepreneurship for the final year students at Curtin Sarawak. He has more than 35 years of entrepreneurial experience and has vast knowledge and experience in the field. He had also delivered guest lectures for final year's students in the year 2005 and also in 2006. The talk provided an opportunity to the students of Entrepreneurship to hear about Entrepreneurship from a practitioner's perspective. Among the key topics, covered by Mr Tan during his talk were enterprise start-up, planning, entrepreneurial barriers, undertaking risks, sourcing for finance and marketing, in the context of Miri and Sarawak.

Mr. Tan enthusiastically providing some insights of entrepreneurship to the students

Mr. Tan with Mr. Bala (Business School) and the Entrepreneurship students

An entrepreneurship student, Chew Vui Yee from Lahad Datu, Sabah said, "I gained a much better understanding of the various techniques and skills required in being an entrepreneur. I find it very beneficial. The talk provided me with the knowledge about entrepreneurship planning and organizing. I wish more talks could be conducted as every speaker will share with us their personal experiences in order to be successful in business ventures".

The session in general had provided the students gained in-depth knowledge and understanding on the techniques and strategic skills required in being an entrepreneur in the context of Miri and also Sarawak. This is just one example of collaborations made by the Business school to link the school with the local business community. The link between the universities and industries is essential and as this strategic partnership eventually will create win-win outcome for both universities and also the industries.