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Expanding circle of influence: Importance of
mentoring in the business world
Sunday August 12, 2012 11:37:15 PM,
Uday Salunkhe,
IANS
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Ambition and talent, along with
access to capital and mentoring, can take the young pretty far.
The entrepreneurial fecundity of an ecosystem has direct impact on
its economic prospects. Entrepreneurial quotient in turn is
fuelled by ideas and innovations. These seem to be the life blood
of any thriving economy. The turbulent times we are living in
demand daring ideas along with creativity and innovation which can
be keys to a world of infinite opportunities.
As a nation, we have many untapped domains that are real
opportunities to drive business. What we need next is a good
number of innovators/entrepreneurs to explore and work upon these
with experts/mentors from the relevant domains taking them under
their wings. The Holy Grail for lifting bottom lines will be the
new fast growing ventures; these in turn need entrepreneurs with
ideas and creativity. We have to build up an environment where
ideas get a favorable ambience. Here, technology emerges as the
new messiah, making the ecosystem more equalitarian, democratic
and secular.
Brilliant ideas need to converge with expert mentors and
investors. Those who have already arrived need to give a hand to
the talent that is yet to prove its mettle. Innovation is a
perpetual phenomenon though the starting point is the idea and
ability to sync one's talent with the needs of people and turning
that into a saleable and sustainable business proposition. Here
comes in the role of mentors. Mentoring has been on the rise among
new ventures and not without a reason.
There are two ways of learning...either by going through it or
learning from the experience of those who have been through it.
Mentoring goes with the latter. A mentor passes down the wisdom
and experience accumulated over the years probably the hard way to
his mentee within a much shorter time frame. He guides him through
the labyrinths of the business world till the time mentee learns
the rope.
Somebody has rightly said: "Children are like water: bottle them
up and they stagnate; let them run wild and they make a mess;
guide them and they bring life to all they touch." This holds very
true for talent too.
We at Welingkar are trying to guide this talent and strengthen the
entrepreneurial matrix with special thrust on innovation.
Welingkar innovation labs - Innowe and Prototype in Mumbai and
Bengaluru respectively - have been launch pads for many a
successful business venture by its students. These ventures have
been well acknowledged and respected in their respective domains
at national and international platforms.
Also recently the Welingkar Institute of Management Development
and Research (We School) played host to the second Phase of ET:
Power of Ideas initiative, which included one-on-one meets of the
shortlisted contestants with mentors on its Mumbai campus. The
initiative brought to the fore a brilliant concoction of
Private-Public-Academia.
The event, an ET initiative in partnership with the Department of
Science & Technology (DST), has to go through many more stages.
DST brings to the programme its immense expertise and
relationships in the entrepreneurial space as well as a corpus of
Rs.6.2 crore of guaranteed funds open to all deserving
irrespective of their execution-stage. Institute of Management's
Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) will
help screen the ideas in the initial stages; in the final stages
it will mentor the deserving ideas in a 10-day residential
programme at the IIM-A.
The initiative dovetails with the Welingkar philosophy of
mentoring talent, creativity and in turn entrepreneurship. The
initiative, a step in the same direction, not only spots talent
but takes it ahead in the desired direction to create desired
effects.
Along with the concerted efforts of diverse sectors of the economy
we need many more such agents of change who can catalyze the
proliferation of bold ideas into profitable and sustainable
ventures. Fortunately there is a growing network of experts,
venture capitalists and angel investors out there to help
brilliant ideas take off. With their (mentors') ever expanding
circle of influence we see a growing genre of modern entrepreneurs
- well rooted in reality yet ready to reach for the sky.
Uday Salunkhe is group director of the Welingkar
Institute of Management Development and Research, Mumbai. He can
be contacted at direcctor@welingkar.org
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