TECHNOPRENEURSHIP By Manuel Cereijo High-tech and entrepreneurial skills are driving our economy back to prosperity.

Technopreneursip-merging technology prowess and entrepreneurial skills- is the real source of power in toda's knowledge-based economy. A technopreneur distinguishes logic from tradition, tradition from prejudice, prejudice from common sense and common sense from nonsense while integrating a variety of ideas from diverse groups and disciplines. Technopreneurship is not a product but a process of synthesis in engineering the future of a person, an organization, a nation and the world. Strategic directions or decision-making processes are becoming more demanding and complex. This requires universities, and in site professional development programs and training to produce strategic thinkers who will have skills to succeed in a rapidly changing global environment. Traditional university programs, however, lack the teaching methods to turn today's students into creative, innovative, visionary global leaders who understand the importance of technopreneurship. Recent technological advances and global competitiveness have changed and broadened the nature of liberal arts to embrace humans and machines. The answer is not creating new liberal arts or soft-skills courses, but integrating them into the general technical curriculum. These changes take time. Also, what about present and past universities' graduates? The solution is to increase in site training and development at all levels of a corporation. These programs should focus on what workers and professionals should be able to do. These include functioning on multidisciplinary teams, communicating effectively, acquiring updated knowledge of technological developments, and understanding the basic technical concepts and there new applications and improvements. Creativity is breaking the conventional mental blocks and playing with imagination and possibilities, leading to new and meaningful connections and outcomes while interacting with ideas, people and the environment. Technopreneurship is the only source of long-run sustainable competitive advantage. In an era of man-made brainpower industries, individual, corporate, and national economic success will all require both new and more extensive skills sets than have been required in the past . By themselves skills don't guarantee success. They have to be put together in successful organizations. But without skills and technopreurship there are no successful organizations. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I was introduced to this term Technopreneur or Technopreneurship during my CS 356 elective course in college. Our batch was the pioneer for the course in the department. Ms. Mau Bello, who handled the course, was definitely excited about it. She was so eager to reach us out and extract innovative IT ideas. I knew from then on that I am into a technopreneurial venture. I started to call myself a technopreneur since I do home-based I.T. business way back in year 2006, accepting projects from offshore clients. Putting up an I.T. firm has been my dream since. Now, I am waiting for the big break. Just recently, Ms. Janette Toral shared her presentation about Introduction to Technopreneurship during the Teen Negosyo event. So, I decided write something about what I learned during the course. Whats the difference between Entrepreneur and Technopreneur? Just a thin line actually. An entrepreneur is someone who engages in a business venture and willing to take the risk in order to gain profit; any business for that matter. Technopreneur, on the other hand, is specialized into high-tech and innovative business e.g. web technologies, gadgets, medicine and automation solutions. Technopreneurship is the act on engaging into technoprenuer. A technopreneur is a person who is into innovative technology venture by enhancing or by developing new tech products and/or services. It starts from a good idea, develop this idea into an opportunity, and then commercialize it with a good business model. Getting into technology venture is not easy as it may seem. You need to consider where you will get your financial resources. Do you have ready capital to dive into this business? Or, will you approach your friends to help you out, loan from financial institutions, or seek for venture capitalist? Yes, you have the idea but you need financing to start your idea moving. You may also need some help from the academe or technical people for your human resource needs. Consider also the venue or environment where you want your idea evolve into a real product or service. Will you start it from your garage or room, go into an IT park or enroll to an incubation facility? So how to get that great idea and turn it into a business opportunity? To have this, you need to do a serendipity walk or so called a discovery trip. This will allow you to discover new opportunities in your surrounding, your community (online or offline) by observing areas which you think needs improvement or needs a solution for a certain problem. Its like doing a survey to find out the areas that need help.