One of the principles of entrepreneurship is the ability to create new ideas which are useful for solving problems and meeting challenges faced by people every day. Entrepreneurs can achieve success by creating value in the market when they combine resources in new and different ways to gain a competitive advantage against its competitors.
Entrepreneurs can create value in different ways. They can create new products and services, develop new technologies, find new knowledge, improve products or services that have existed, and find many ways to provide more goods and services with fewer resources, and many other things.
Those were some thoughts arising in One Day Workshop Technopreunership at the University Club, UGM, Thursday (25/2). The workshop that was held by UGM in cooperation with Mentoring Program of Bogor Agricultural Institute (RAMP-IPB) was followed by teaching staff and students.
Project Officer Student of Technopreunership Program of RAMP-IPB, Ono Suparno, believes that entrepreneurship/technopreunership is a model of entrepreneurship development to solve unemployment problem, because the number of unemployed people in Indonesia is still dominated by the educated ones as showed by statistical data in February 2007, which was 409,900 people. This number increased by 52% in February 2008 (626,000 people). Meanwhile, the number of unemployed reached to 303,300 diploma graduates and has climbed by 57% to 519,900.
Ono said that the entrepreneurship/ technopreunership are needed to overcome the problem. Currently, the number of new entrepreneurs in Indonesia is still 400,000 or 0.18% of the total population. Meanwhile, in order to encourage economic growth, the number of Indonesian businessmen should ideally be 4,400,000 or 2% of the total population. "The low number of these entrepreneurs showed that Indonesia’s natural wealth has not been managed optimally to improve people’s welfare," Ono Suparno said.
Seeing such conditions, RAMP Indonesia is trying to facilitate inventors/innovators at the grassroots level, students, and technological entrepreneurs in developing and disseminating innovative technology that can help alleviate poverty and support sustainable development.
Operationally, RAMP Indonesia is encouraging the growth of commercial, competitive, eco-friendly, but affordable and applicable technologies. "This is an international program initiated by the Lemelson Foundation, founded by Jerome Lemelson and his family," Ono ended.