Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship of GSOM SPbU and Senior Lecturer of Strategic and International Management of the Graduate School of Management of St. Petersburg University (GSOM SPbU) Karina Bogatyreva has delivered a lecture at the Social and Humanitarian Educational Forum of Saint Petersburg University. In her speech, she tried to shatter several myths about entrepreneurship. In particular, to dispel the opinion that some people have a predisposition to business from birth, and that all businessmen are young, risk-taking seekers of fame, and motivated by money alone.

The lecture is based on, among other things, the results of a study of student entrepreneurial activity prepared as part of the Global University Entrepreneurial Spirit Student's Survey (GUESSS). It was held in 2018 at universities in 54 countries. The total number of participants was more than 200 thousand respondents, in Russia — 2 850 students from 14 higher educational institutions were interviewed. The research revealed that at that time Russia was ranked 33rd out of 54 possible places in terms of the number of students who had already had businesses. In terms of the number of “newly entrepreneurs'' — that is, those in the process of starting their own business — Russian students were in the 22nd position of the ranking. In both indicators, China and Indonesia are leading.

It is known that every sixth Russian thought about the idea of ​​developing their own business, but either did not go further than dreams, or closed the business in the first year. In her lecture, Karina Bogatyreva listed the key problems that potential businessmen in our country and in the world face — as a rule, even before the start of an undertaking, which leads to a gap between intentions and actions. This is often due to the lack of proper motivation, or to the belief that it is impossible to open a successful business without significant financial and non-material resources.

The lecture "Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurial Thinking" describes in detail the concept of a startup, its differences from a small company, common illusions about what should lie at its foundation, as well as a brief applied instruction-algorithm for a competent start of a company.

Special attention is paid to entrepreneurial creativity — that is, the ability to come up with new unusual ideas that are valuable for the client and useful for the business. It helps to develop truly innovative products, recognize ineffective solutions, find new niches in the market, and better compete with other market players.

The lecture provides an accessible and substantive understanding of the concept of MVP (minimum viable product), and also reveals an improvisational approach to making entrepreneurial decisions, the use of which can help speed up the initial stage of creating a business and test the first hypotheses about your startup without attracting significant financial resources.

Summing up, Karina Bogatyreva said: “At the first stages of developing a business idea and launching a new company, you need to overcome the fear of failure and believe in your own strengths and capabilities. This is especially important for young entrepreneurs. Learning the basic principles of creating and developing start-up companies helps to bridge the gap between intention and action in entrepreneurship and facilitates the path of students seeking to embark on an entrepreneurial career."