On Russian Entrepreneurship Day, Irina Solovieva, Head of the Department of Economics and Finance at SUSU, spoke about how the entrepreneurial environment has changed in recent years, what competencies are really important for startups, and how the university helps students take their first steps in business – from testing entrepreneurial skills to gaining the first million for project development.
— How do you think the role of entrepreneurship in Russia has changed over the past 5−10 years?
— It is believed that entrepreneurship and, as a result, the creation of new small and medium-sized businesses is one of the key drivers of the economy. In developed countries, they provide up to 80% of new workers. In Russia today, there is a catastrophic shortage of entrepreneurs, including technology entrepreneurs. Much attention is paid to this issue, including by the government.
Today, there is a large number of state programs and federal projects that support the development of entrepreneurship. For example, within the framework of the "University Technical Entrepreneurship Platform" project, which has transformed into the "Technologies" federal project, students of our country's universities are involved in entrepreneurship, given the opportunity to develop their own projects, try to analyze the prospects in the market and even receive the first investments for the development of their projects.
Another key form of support is the "Student Startup" grant. Now the next wave is underway, and you can apply until June 4th. A student with his idea can receive the first million in order to "start" the business. This is a safe way to feel like an entrepreneur, because the guys are not afraid of losing their first money. You can try to become successful in the future.
Therefore, it seems to me that in the long term, the number of entrepreneurs will certainly grow, because there are now many more conditions for their development than there were, for example, 5 years ago.
— What key competencies are necessary for a successful entrepreneur today?
— Entrepreneurs are unique individuals who have a good combination of hard and soft skills. It is quite difficult to learn how to be an entrepreneur. They say that most often these qualities are innate. The most important thing is, of course, motivation and the desire to do something new. The ability to work in a team and leadership qualities are very important. The so-called risk tolerance and locus of control are extremely important — this is when an entrepreneur understands that, despite the fact that he lives and exists in a very high level of risk and uncertainty, he is responsible for the decisions he makes and is able to make them in such a way as to move forward without fearing the conditions that the external environment puts forward.
— How does the university support students who want to start their own business?
— South Ural State University has formed an entire ecosystem to support entrepreneurship, including technological entrepreneurship. It all starts with students being able to take tests and find out how developed their entrepreneurial competencies are, what deficiencies they have, what skills they can improve in additional courses. We also have an Entrepreneurial Initiatives Development Centre.
Second-year students can take specialized entrepreneurship miners, where over the course of three semesters, students deeply study entrepreneurship, skills in startup development, their design, market analysis, and finding a source of financing.
In addition, we offer entrepreneurial competence trainings every year. These are mini-business games for the whole working day, when students form teams and try on the role of entrepreneurs, learn to work in a team, take responsibility, distribute tasks, work with the market, and respond to the challenges and uncertainty that are present in business.
Of course, the accelerator plays an important role among entrepreneurial activities. Our acceleration program usually takes place in autumn, it is a three-month business intensive, when students, graduates and employees of SUSU can unite into teams, develop an existing project or generate a new one, pump it up in three months, get advice from the business community and experienced trackers, and at the end present their project to investors and receive the first investments for its development.
Another important activity is the "Startup as a Diploma Project" contest. The opportunity to defend a diploma project in the form of a startup has been available at our university for 4 years now, and more and more students are choosing this format. During the year, in addition to working on the main part of their diploma project, they develop the business part, present it first to the business community and only then go on to defend a standard diploma project. After that, the students get the opportunity to submit their applications to the All-Russian "Startup as a Diploma Project" competition and the "Student Startup" grant in order to earn their first million.
There are now many activities for developing students' entrepreneurial competencies. We also have a startup club, which is usually held once every 2-3 weeks at the premises of "School 21" or "Boiling Point", where individual topics of entrepreneurship are considered, meetings with successful entrepreneurs and financial and credit institutions are organized in order to help students solve the difficulties they encounter when developing their projects.
— Does your department collaborate with the business community? How do entrepreneurs participate in student education?
— The role of business communities is key to developing the entrepreneurial competence, because for students, success stories are important examples that they should not be afraid of, but move forward towards their dreams and goals. We have quite a lot of partners from business, there are probably more than 40 of them today. It is especially pleasant that among them there are already those entrepreneurs who grew up at SUSU.
I would divide support from the business community and the region into three types. Firstly, this is expert support. When specialists from different companies come and give feedback to the guys, how good their idea is, whether they have chosen the right target segment, who they can choose as their first consumers, with whom it is possible to make the first partnership agreements, and where they can look for the first investments. Such feedback, assistance, contacts are very important for the start of a young project.
The second is infrastructural support. For example, we have many events in the My Business Centre, in the IT park of the Skolkovo regional representative, and companies also provide their laboratories for research.
And the third type is material support, when companies give the first investments to the guys to implement their projects. Among our partners are representatives of regional development institutes, IT companies, and large industrial enterprises.
— What are the main challenges young entrepreneurs face in Russia and how to overcome them?
— It is believed that the average age of an entrepreneur who has implemented his business is closer to 40 years, and before that, as a rule, he has more than one business behind him that failed. Therefore, it is very important when you start doing business, not to be afraid of making mistakes, you need to improve and move forward.
Entrepreneurs are people who are passionate about their idea, they want to quickly create and implement it in life, and two things usually slow them down: the first are problems with the team − it is very difficult to form a company of like-minded people who will allow you to quickly and effectively implement the project. And the second problem are various operational tasks. For example, you need to report on using the grants funds on time, submit reports to the tax office. But entrepreneurs, for whom the most important thing is to quickly develop their products, do not always have time for these small operational tasks. And they need to look for assistants and gather together a team of specialists who will close these tasks.