The Importance of Entrepreneurship

      Rebecca Richards is a sophomore Marketing and Entrepreneurship major and while some may criticize her major as being generic or “easy,” she would vehemently disagree.

      For Richards, the biggest appeal to the the major is that the skills used to succeed in classwork and the field, like innovation and creativity, are skills that everyone already possesses. The major itself just enhances them.

      “Marketing is about promoting a specific idea,” Richards said. Richards makes the distinction that marketing, while under the Business Department, does not always have to have to strictly deal with business. Putting the Marketing major in a box because of its larger department means that less people are aware of what the major could do for them.

      Entrepreneurship, on the other hand, emphasizes its focus on innovation and being able to create something from the ground up. While this sounds like Marketing, Entrepreneurship does this in a different way. Entrepreneurship’s focus is on creating an idea and planning to make this idea a reality, while Marketing is taking a specific idea and promoting that idea in a new and creative way. Both concentrations focus on creativity.

      These skills make finding a job after college easier, but these jobs do not always mean working a desk job in a company, or even working in a typical business at all. For Richards, these skills mean working in fashion and retail, something she is very passionate about. It also could mean working for a research lab or science-focused company in order to promote and market their projects to investors. It could mean doing social media in any sort of company to promote and better the business. It could mean building your own business, like an ice cream shop or a dog walking service. Entrepreneurship prepares you to properly plan and follow through on a business plan that you create, but it also teaches you about fulfilling goals that you set out for yourself.

      While these classes may seem easy enough, Richards’ class load is not as it seems. As a major under the Business Department, she has to take a lot of finance classes and classes that require a lot of critical thinking skills. The classes also require you to think outside the box of typical planning and answers. But she reassures any interested Marketing or Entrepreneurship majors that the ability to wear a good blazer far outweighs any more difficult classes.