Promoting Entrepreneurship – what can we learn from Malaysia

A few weeks ago, I was in Malaysia to conduct a training programme in Entrepreneurship in the biotech industry. While there, I witnessed a contrasting view of entrepreneurship promotion in Malaysia. For local media coverage on the training programme click here and here.

In places like Silicon Valley and Cambridge, UK, there is a huge ecosystem of research institutes, start-ups, established companies, VCs, experienced entrepreneurs and not to mention world class universities. With such a thriving ecosystem, new companies and entrepreneurs get the necessary support such as funding, advice and even potential employees. If such an ecosystem exists only partially or doesn’t exist at all, how to promote start-ups that are key to creating jobs and competitiveness?

In Malaysia, the government plays the role of incubator, investor and facilitator for many young companies. Particular focus has been given to IT with an emphasis on multimedia and biotech focusing on plant/agri biotech. Two companies have been formed to support these initiatives. The Multimedia Development Corporation focuses on promoting ICT and Malaysia Biotech Corporation focuses on biotech.

For other countries in South-East Asia that want to plug into the knowledge economy, the Malaysian initiatives serve as trend setters. Whether they follow Malaysia’s lead or not is a different thing though!

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Entrepreneurship – the Richard Branson way

Living in the UK, one always reads about Richard Branson on a regular basis for his maverick business moves. His most recent one was a takeover bid for the troubled Northern Rock, a mortgage lender. Though we tend to associate him with his most successful ventures, such as Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Mobile, there have been a few duds as well, like Virgin Cola. According to this interesting article here Branson has founded more than 300 companies throughout his Virgin empire!

In a recent speech, one of his senior aides termed the Virgin empire as a massive private equity house that invests according to Branson’s ideas. However, this doesn’t fully capture the spirit that permeates all of his activities. Otherwise, why would Branson be willing to invest $25 million in the Virgin Earth Challenge, to identify the best carbon capture technology?

For a closer look at the man and his thinking about his business ventures,  check out this article.

Join the Flock!

You may be wondering why some of my posts have “Blogged with Flock”. This tagline indicates that I have used Flock, the social web browser to publish these blog posts. Apart from interfacing directly with the most popular blogging tools, Flock also makes it easier to access Facebook, Photobucket, Flickr and YouTube.

There are a few notable absences too, such as MySpace, but these should become accessible soon. If you would like to access social websites such as Facebook seamlessly from your browser and upload photos directly to Flickr, Flock is definitely worth a try. Download Flock from here .

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Blogging is good for you!

Just days into my blogging adventure, got a timely boost from this interesting story that says blogging is good for you. By studying the responses of a group of MySpace users, researchers have found an interesting link between blogging and feeling connected with wider community and have better interactions with friends, both online and offline.

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A Definition of Entrepreneurship

Etymology (From Greek etymon + logia), the study of word origins and their evolution is a subject I’m quite interested in. Growing up in urban India, one has to deal with multiple languages as a fact of everyday life.

Take the word entrepreneurship. The word is from French and does not have an equivalent in English. The closest approximation is “to undertake”. Does it follow from this that the entrepreneur is merely someone who undertakes a venture? Is it that simple?

For a more elegant explanation, please have a look at a recent post that I subscribe to.

Risks Entrepreneurs Take

Coming from a typical middle class background that focused on education and a white collar job, I used to think being an entrepreneur is a risky prospect. Now that I’m an entrepreneur, I have thought about the risks that are involved in becoming an entrepreneur. From my perspective, the following are the types of risks that one needs to take to leave full-time a job and pledge one’s future to an idea.

Financial risk: Most obvious. One goes from a regular income to no-income or uncertain prospects of an income. This can be mitigated to some extent by building up savings, relying on your partner to bring in the money and by maxing out your credit card. Other options include taking up part-time jobs to support while working on their venture. This has mixed results since working part-time takes the entrepreneur away from their venture. However, nothing would help the entrepreneur more than finding a part-time job that helps understand the industry and build useful contacts.

Career risk: Quite often, entrepreneurs strike out to start their venture within the industry. So they can bring their experience and contacts to help them develop their business. Even if the venture fails, the knowledge can be utilised in some way or other in getting back into the industry. In other situations, when they change their industry sector because they feel very passionate about something, getting back is always a risk and probably a bigger one.

Social risk: Depending on the cultural background of the entrepreneur, leaving a well paid job and leave to start one’s own venture could be hailed as a brave move or a foolish one. This also translates into the level of support that the entrepreneur gets from family and friends. The fear of failure and how it will be perceived by the society can be a major limiting factor for entrepreneurs to strike out on their own.

Brave are the ones who break their cultural stereotypes, overcome these risks and venture out to be the masters of their own destiny!