Giving a lecture at the Michael and Cicelia Ibru University, Agbarah Otor.
1. A University degree should not become a life sentence.
I trained as a medical doctor, but I decided very early not to be defined by being a medical doctor.
Medical training only enhanced my intellectual ability.
I read beyond medical books in the university, that’s why today, I have engagements to lecture entrepreneurship in Universities.
2. You must acquire relevant skills outside your area of certification that people are willing to pay for.
3. The next wave of entrepreneurs are highly educated people rebranding and repackaging services hitherto rendered poorly by illiterates.
This will require humility and creativity.
There are great opportunities at each level of the Maslow’s pyramid of needs and at the C. K. Prahalad’s Base of the Pyramid. Food, clothing, shelter, security, transport, etc. will be highly appreciated and paid for even by the poor with rebranding and repacking.
4. There are the following areas of innovation any educated mind must focus on now.
S1: Saving time, cost and energy for people.
S2: Simplification and stress reduction to get things done.
S3: Size reduction without reducing functionality. You can easily set up a mini studio in your room with good lighting at an affordable cost.
S4: Synergy: Linking up and harnessing each other’s comparative advantages to solve mutual and global problems and creating wealth in the process.
S5: Sustainability. From renewable energy to asset management for families in transition because many businesses have aging owners whose children are not interested in taking over or don’t have the requisite business skills.
5. A lot of what people learn in universities become irrelevant even before they graduate. Therefore, you must acquire relevant information and knowledge on a regular basis.
6. As I’ve said previously, life is now lived in 3 realities:.
a. The spiritual reality.
Africans have focused so much on this because of fear and superstition to such an extent that we have negated the other two realms.
b. The physical reality.
There are key principles, which you don’t learn in universities, that determine the dynamics of wealth. If you don’t know them, you can pray from morning to night for wealth, make the best grades in the University; you will either find yourself working for a semi-illiterate or living as a tenant in his house.
Ironically, many youths and their parents are still fixated in the past and are not willing to face the new reality.
c. Virtual reality and the Internet.
If you don’t know how to harness the power of the Internet, you might just be struggling with life for a long time.
God Bless You.
