Research: Entrepreneurs And Training Hubs
This morning, let’s talk about entrepreneurs and training hubs.
It’s well known that the solution to traffic jams isn’t to build bigger highways but rather to increase the number of options available to motorists to reach a destination. I think the same is true of tackling the challenge of educating entrepreneurs.
The more viable options entrepreneurs have to access learning opportunities, the more agency they have over their own personal development.
At Heavy Chef, we like to champion self-directed, bite-sized and peer-to-peer learning. A pedagogy validated through the recipes and research we have at hand. It is a very impactive model, yet, as we often remind ourselves, this is hardly a silver bullet. It is a bullet.
The mission to educate entrepreneurs, to get them to start things and create an environment for their businesses to grow, requires a Heavy Chef offering but it also needs business networks, formal education institutions, social media, mainstream media, accelerator programmes, incubators and more - all directed towards the same goal.
One of the types of support that entrepreneurs especially mention to us that they would value access to are specialist hubs like incubators, accelerators and skills trainers:
53% of entrepreneurs say they do not have access to any kind of skills training in their community.
Only 5% say there are enough specialist training hubs that they can access.
58% say there are no specialist hubs around them but that they are desperately needed.
Yet, when asked what their perceptions are of the effectiveness of independent specialist entrepreneur programmes, 55% say they are poor to average.
The take-out for me is that the demand for specialist hubs of training and support is very much there but there are challenges of access to them and a below-average perception of their effectiveness - which can be due to them not having engaged with hubs before.
With this context in mind, when I heard that the talented folks at Viridian and the UK-South Africa Tech Hub, co-founders of Launch League, were launching the results of the 2022 Hubs Survey, my attention was immediately had.
This kind of data is invaluable to further improving the quality and effectiveness of specialist hubs in South Africa. Here are five insights from the study that stood out to me:
Insight 1. Hubs have multiple ways they measure their impact, especially by assessing the number of people they trained, the increase in personal or business income of participants and the number of jobs created during the programme.
Insight 2. Mentorship and coaching is the activity most offered by hubs in South Africa.
Insight 3. Most hubs mentioned that mentorship and coaching are what make their programmes most valuable.
Insight 4. Limited knowledge of how to access their markets is marked as the most prominent reason why businesses weren’t able to earn an income after a programme.
Insights 5. Post programme mentorship is the most sought after type of support that programme alumni are requesting, more so than funding.
The report is full of fascinating insights, including shining a light on hubs’ approach to The Gig Economy - but it is the ability of hubs to offer focused mentoring and coaching to their members that seems to really stand out. Especially when it comes to advice and guidance on mapping a market and positioning one's business in that market.
So, what actions can we take from these findings?
For entrepreneurs, one of the benefits of hubs is that they provide structured learning environments that hold you accountable to others within that environment. Even if you do not have access to a hub close to you, are there lessons you can learn from them to create small but structured learning spaces for other entrepreneurs within or around your business?
For educators, the demand from entrepreneurs for training support far outways the number of entrepreneurs you can serve within your institution. What are ways that your programme (or parts thereof) can be taken to them, instead of them coming to you?
For service providers, your staff are highly skilled in their area of expertise. Are there structured ways for them to slot into existing training hubs - especially those in disconnected communities - to offer specialised mentorship to entrepreneurs?
This article was originally shared with our community as Louis Janse van Rensburg’s Friday Research Mailer. Subscribe now to get it in your inbox fresh!
