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| Creative Thinking |
In an article en titled "How to raise an entrepreneur", written by Marina Adshade, professor in the University of British Columbia’s Vancouver School of Economics, and published in the magazine Canadian Business on April 16, 2013, the author discusses the risk aversion in children and its possible causes.
She identifies mainly one possible cause for this phenomenon she observes with her students: more and more children grow up in smaller families, which means the share of first-born is greater and first-born happen to be more risk-averse.
She refers to a study led by Lisa Cameron from the Department of Econometrics at Monash University in Victoria, Australia, in which Chinese adults were tested on a variety of personality traits shortly before and a little after the implementation of China’s one-child policy. "The study finds that relative to those born before, children born after the one-child policy was implemented were significantly less trustworthy, less competitive and more risk averse: all traits that suggest they are, generally, less entrepreneurial than those in bigger families."
Since we are seeing a similar evolution in Canada (smaller families), the author suggests fostering entrepreneurialism will be more important, as well as nurturing creative thinking, also recommending the teachers would challenge more than they coddle the next generation of students.
To read the full article, please click on the following link.
I find the use of the expression "creative thinking" interesting. As neurosciences are developing, it is interesting to notice how new subjects are being created, such as "creative, historical, critical... thinking" and how the word thinking is more and more present.
I would interpret the phenomenon discussed by Marina Adshade differently and maybe mention further causes for it. I find the research by Martin Seligman very interesting on depression. Basically, he says that optimism can be taught to children, just like learned helplessness. I also believe children can be taught resilience. But before going into these skills, we need to define "entrepreneurialism"? To me, it is the ability to come up with an idea - creative thinking is part of it but not all of it, then strategies to make this idea become reality. One of the requirements seems to be a positive outlook on life and on one's chances to succeed: focusing exclusively on the reasons why the project couldn't work is certainly not going to make the project successful. Also, another asset of good entrepreneurs is their ability to stay close to reality: understanding what is going on in the world, what people might be interested in, what could make the project not work, anticipate and rectify the problem. When a mistake comes up, fixing it and moving on instead of blaming each other or oneself ; basically, seeing mistakes as occasions to learn from. It seems to me that to a large extend entrepreneurship has to do with attitude and I certainly believe that such attitudes can be taught, beyond only creative thinking.