On Internet Business

‘Alan Sugar Test’ helps find future entrepreneurs

Posted by Michael under Leadership

Researcher Rosemary Athayde, working out of Kingston University’s Small Business Research Centre has devised a test that is designed to help identify entrepreneurial attitudes. It’s called the Attitudes to Enterprise test and it explores whether young people show a flair for enterprise.

The idea is to discover the next generation of business leaders while they are still aged 15-18, but it’s not just aimed at talent spotting: the other part of the process is to examine whether schemes for young entrepreneurs have positive, negative or no impact on pupils’ ambitions.

It has already been used in the UK, Australia and South Africa and requires young people to answer thirty questions that measure intuition, creativity, leadership skills and the desire to achieve – there’s also a section about the amount of control students feel they have over their futures. There’s also a new section, designed for use with undergraduates, which contains questions about risk-taking.

Why Test for Entrepreneurship?

Athayde developed the Attitudes to Enterprise questionnaire as a result of four studies that included almost 1,000 pupils aged 15-18 and revealed some interesting statistics. One of the studies compared a group of pupils taking part in a Young Enterprise programme with a control group that weren’t and discovered that being involved in the programme did improve pupils’ attitudes to self employment. Taken together, the studies also showed that males, students in private education and black teenagers were more positive about self-employment than other groups.

She hopes the test will assist enterprise programme providers and the government in deciding what enterprise course exist, where they are located and how they are delivered.

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