Minister of Tourism, Industry and Commerce, Oneidge Walrond has called on the teachers of business to pay keen emphasis to the concept of failure.
The Minister was at the time addressing close to 400 youths in business at the ECONOME 2.0 Conference, held at the Marriott Hotel in Kingston, Georgetown yesterday.
In her address, Walrond urged that while they teach the methods of doing business; they must also teach the concept of failure.
“Apart from addressing issues such as financial management, strategic marketing, [and] operational management. There is something more fundamental which needs to be confronted. I believe that if we are to truly create the culture of entrepreneurship, it will be critical for us in our society to reorient our attitude towards failure.” she noted.
Walrond posited that this must be taught in a way to show those venturing into the business that failure is a possibility but not the end of the road.
“We need to cease stigmatising failure in and amongst ourselves. We must stop seeing failure as the end of the road. Rather we should celebrate the courage of risk taking and see the so-called failure as an accumulation of experience which can we leverage in pursuit of the next venture.”
She also said that youths must also be taught that some big corporations before they became successful, would have failed over and over again.
According to stats presented by the Minister, in the USA some 20 per cent of small businesses fail within the first two years of operation and by 10 years, it rises to 65 per cent. In the United Kingdom the number that fail rises to 30 per cent within three years and Guyana also has a similar percentage.
With those figures in mind, Walrond urged that all realities of doing business must be told.
“As we try to encourage youths to pursue entrepreneurship we must be aware of the global reality that failure rates for startup firms are high”, she said.
As such, she noted that there is need to find the root causes and work on them, while youths are being taught about failure.
ECONOME 2.0 is an annual one-day event, in which mostly youths in business were given the opportunity to listen to experts. It was hosted by young businessman, Mathew Gaul.
During the sessions, apart from the important aspect of networking, those who participated were taught various investment avenues, proper financing and co-ventures.
