Posted on August 15, 2011
Sustainable growth in job creation to reach Government’s aim of halving South Africa’s unemployment by 2014 will depend on new and bigger business investment, Human Science Research Council (HSRC) senior researcher Miriam Altman says in the latest HSRC Review.
The problem is Government will have to create 2m new jobs in the public sector, which will cost it around R25bn. The private sector will have to take responsibility for 3m jobs if around 5m new jobs are to be created by 2020, which puts new emphasis on entrepreneurship; not one of SA’s strong points.
However, successful entrepreneurs are so important that universities will have to increasingly make more entrepreneurial choices available in their selection of courses. For example, at the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science students can now register for an MBA specialising in entrepreneurship.
Franchise guru Eric Parker says in his Road Map to Business Success, which focuses exclusively on entrepreneurs, that SA definitely needs many more entrepreneurs to counter unemployment and improve economic growth. “Forget about one job for your whole life: job erosion has come to stay,” Parker says. “Decide for yourself about your future and become an entrepreneur. The country is full of opportunities.”
In one of its latest issues, e-magazine iGIBS provides nine hints to help prospective entrepreneurs make the correct decisions, including first obtaining a perspective of potential clients, watching them anonymously and thoroughly researching your idea. For example, has anyone else tackled something similar before, was it a success or not and, if not, what are the reasons for its failure?
3 more tips
1: Go and talk to someone with a proven innovative streak. Try to talk to experts about their successes: they’ll often be happy to share their knowledge about the do’s and don’ts that got them where they now are.
2: Draw up a provisional budget to determine whether your product or service will be successful and can support a business.
3: Spend some time identifying the things you did in the past that worked and didn’t work. Determine the reasons and then decide whether your current idea is viable.
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