Risk

Risk deliniates the period for learning. Fortunately, business is behavior activated and sustained by risk. I say fortunately with one main condition - we hae to embrace risk in our teaching, so that our students learn to live with it.

Entreprenuerial teaching > Entreprenuerial learning > Entrepreneurial practice. This is the flow of OBTC 2008. All that we have written, all that we say to each other, show each other, all that we take away from Babson College focuses on one final touch point - practice. Our job is to teach so that student learn in order that they are better able to practice business.

I say "practice business" to suggest that business is a way of being in life that, when chosen, calls upon each practitioner to perform according to what it takes to sustain a state of "businessing".

Businessing means to risk knowing what customers need and want with such certainty as to produce the product or service and see if they buy.

Were we preparing people to practice business in times and settings where there is little risk in knowing what to do, we can scrap the 'entrepreneurial' modifier completely.

Of course, no one of us who teach for business can ignore fresh realities and sleep easy. Risk in knowing what businessing takes is ours, now, as well. We are exposed. Our theories are challenged. Our ways of teaching are tested like never before. We must teach, so that they learn to practice business with risk opening learning terrain like never before.

We must send them out ready to learn in practice or fall out of being in business. What is out there, beyond being in business? Other domains, but not the one that risk so cs sharply, compellingly delineates for superb entrepreneurial learners.