Chief Executive Officer and Director of the Cave Hill School of Business (CHSB), Dr. Jeannine Comma, recently observed that a number of people become entrepreneurs, whilst not adequately prepared.
She explained that they may have a bright idea and decide to start a business, however, this is without going through a systemic way of developing a business plan and market research.
“We [the University] have been doing a number of things to help to narrow that wide-open space of just deciding, ‘I want to dive in,’ but let us look at it in a more systemic way.” she said at the launch of Caribbean Innovation Competition (CIC) 2017, at the
Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).
While reaping positive results with programmes such as the Student Entrepreneurial Empowerment Development (SEED) which is a part of the undergraduate curriculum at the Cave Hill Campus, Dr. Comma, however, disclosed that CHSB had to suspend its Master’s in Innovation and Entrepreneurship programme, due to poor registration.
“We can only run programmes when we have enough students, so we haven’t run it because we haven’t had enough people registering for it. We found this interesting because we thought, granted yes, it is an academic programme but the curriculum is – what I would say – fairly innovative and dynamic, that you would think more young persons would want to become a part it.”
The CEO also observed that several young people having completed their Management Degrees were not trending towards the Master’s programme. In light of this, CHSB has therefore revamped the Master’s in Innovation and Entrepreneurship as well as the Diploma in Entrepreneurship programmes.
“We want to ensure that they have a lot more experiential orientation and innovative aspects, but I suppose it is a sign of the times. It does cost money to participate in those programmes,” she said. (TL)
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