Colleagues from HSE and RBC Petersburg invited me to a roundtable discussion on entrepreneurship education. It took place in the renovated Rope Workshop, which has become the new academic building that now houses the HSE St. Petersburg Business School. The discussion was very important; we raised a topic that hasn’t received the attention and widespread discussion it deserves.
I believe it’s crucial to distinguish between an entrepreneur and a manager. They are different roles, different ways of thinking, and different skill sets. A manager works with an existing system, while an entrepreneur is a creator, working with opportunities that don’t yet exist. They don’t simply manage processes; they create new forms of economic life, new products, new meanings, environments, languages, and aesthetics.
This is precisely why, in my opinion, entrepreneurship education today lacks a discussion of things typically left outside of business schools: aesthetics, emotional well-being, the entrepreneur’s inner state, and the ability to see and create. Entrepreneurship shouldn’t be reduced to pure commerce, and leading companies have long since ceased to be so. They build their operations on humanistic principles, responsibility to the planet, and believe in beauty as a driving force for the economy.
It was especially valuable that this approach sparked interest among representatives of the entrepreneurial community. This suggests that there is genuine demand for a more in-depth conversation about entrepreneurship.
A group of like-minded individuals and I are currently developing a course, “Entrepreneur in a Post Innovative Economy.” It will focus on these topics: entrepreneurship as a creative profession, product and company aesthetics, new forms of value, entrepreneurial resilience, and how to create not just a business in a post-innovation economy, but one’s own meaningful, beautiful, and kind endeavor.