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Be entrepreneurs, business tycoon tells high-schoolers
Business tycoon Ciputra said that the country lacks the entrepreneurs it needs to make it more economically developed, saying that a new paradigm in teaching was needed in order to keep up with other countries
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usiness tycoon Ciputra said that the country lacks the entrepreneurs it needs to make it more economically developed, saying that a new paradigm in teaching was needed in order to keep up with other countries.
In an entrepreneurship seminar at the Canisius College High School in Central Jakarta, Ciputra, who built a number of housing complexes including Bintaro Jaya and Citra Raya, said that education in Indonesia aimed to create job-seeking human resources, not job-creating human resources.
"If we want our country to progress, this has to change," he said.
Economic analyst Aviliani said a country needs at least 2 percent of its workforce to be entrepreneurs in order to continue developing. For Indonesia, that means it needs around 4.4 million people becoming entrepreneurs. Ciputra said that currently only 400,000 Indonesians were entrepreneurs or a mere 0.18 percent from the total population.
Some 11.5 percent of the US population was entrepreneurs in 2007. In Singapore 7.2 percent of its total population were entrepreneurs, a 2005 data showed.
Ciputra said developed countries such as the US had held annual entrepreneurship conferences more than three decades ago.
Successful search engine Google and Internet social networking sites Facebook and Twitter were all invented by Americans.
"They *the Americans* have reaped the benefits now," Ciputra said.
Ciputra said the income of an average Indonesian were a fifteenth of a Singaporean.
"Why is this? Because most of our younger generation has never been taught to be entrepreneurs."
Ciputra said he was working to increase the number of entrepreneurs in Indonesia into 4.4 million people in 25 years.
PT Ciputra Development Director Antonius Tanan said to make that happen entrepreneurship should be integrated into school curriculum from kindergarten to university. He said that universities should have entrepreneurship centers and there should be an entrepreneurial culture in the society.
Ciputra has set up a lab school for entrepreneurs in Surabaya, which teaches children from kindergarten to university about entrepreneurship. Antonius said Ciputra has written a book, Quantum Leap, which he hoped would inspire people to be entrepreneurs.
"Pak Ci *Ciputra* will hold road shows in campuses, we would prepare a television show on entrepreneurship, we would make a novel about it, a children story book, and if the novel is a success we might make a movie out of it.
"Pak Ci wanted to leave this as a legacy for Indonesia."
The seminar was part of Canisius College's annual education fair. Canisius College director Father Baskoro Poedjinoegroho said that this year's education fair took the Betawi culture as its theme.
Sixty-six education institutions will take part in the fair. Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo is scheduled to open the fair on Sept. 5, in which students will have a parade of 500 Betawi ondel-ondel (giant dolls) and pencak silat (traditional martial arts) performances.
