Businesspeople all around the world are quietly running things in the background. You might not hear about the CEO of a multi-million-pound company all that much, but when you’re buying their everyday product, there’s no denying that they made an impact.

However, there’s often one factor that ties all these people together – education. Whether it was Mark Zuckerberg’s highly chronicled days at Harvard or any other CEO who went to one of the top universities in the world, there’s no doubt that education can aid in creating the ideal environment to thrive. We’re going to be taking a look at the importance of education to business, and seeing how it makes the difference when trying to form a company and rise to the very top.

 

Great Minds – Born or Made?

One of the oldest questions among providers of education is whether a great mind is born that way, or whether they become so throughout their lives.

Of course, innate talent isn’t hard to spot, when you hear children who are proving themselves more proficient than adults in respective fields. However, this percentage of young minds that are naturally brighter is quite slim. Most of us had to achieve greatness in the old fashioned way – a lot of work and more than a few mistakes.

There’s no doubt that education can make or break people. It’s one of the most precious resources in the world, and people lobby tirelessly to make it widely available to many. So many of us are reliant upon the skills we learned in school to get by – how would you cope if you couldn’t do basic mathematics? If suddenly you couldn’t figure out how much food cost?

In the words of Mr Tom Whale, marketing manager at Oxford Summer School, ‘education is so crucial for making sure that young people have the chance to succeed. There are so many people out there who rose to the top of their respective fields because they had a good education. Business skills, communication skills, mathematics for financial decisions – the list of benefits and required skills that can be traced back to education is vast’.

 

Providing What People Need

Of course, as we all know, education is out of our hands to a certain extent. It falls to the government to decide what is essential for kids to learn. While free summer schools and schemes like it have more freedom to teach specialist subjects, everyone has to receive a core education and a basic grounding in a selection of topics.

Naturally, this isn’t ideal for everyone. While our education system has an average student in mind, there will be some subjects which are less appealing and more appealing to others. Some will find that they have a flair for languages and pursue it at the highest levels, whereas others will notice that they gravitate to the world of mathematics and the many mysteries it possesses.

Therefore, it’s so important that when we want to create the next leaders and doctors and entrepreneurs that we look for these opportunities to make them. Summer schools and optional programs can be so crucial for people who feel that they want to succeed. When we’re creating the environment for business studies and the ability to develop that savvy, we need to do everything in our power to make it happen.

 

Education and Business – The Connection

So we’ve established the importance of education. But how does it connect to business? How does the way you learned as a child impact the way you run a company?

Well, you can’t doubt that the skills people learn through school can impact massively on their success as a businessperson. Communication and problem-solving skills are taught and emphasised from a young age, and it means that people have the tools and qualities to move forward.

However, it’s more than that. A keen grasp of the English language allows for concise and precise communication with clients and business partners. Mathematical decisions and an understanding of finances mean that you can make the correct decisions involving money. There’s also a general sense of savvy that comes from being in schools but not necessarily taught. There’s no doubt that during the teenage years, all of the dramas and relationships that form and break give you an intuitive sense of honesty and dishonesty. You know in your gut when something is a bad decision, and this works for many in a corporate environment. You’ll know whether closing that that business deal is a good idea, or whether making a purchase could be wrong.

A school is as much a place of learning as it is social development. You develop the ability to make connections and work with people, which can be vital for businesspeople who are working for a common goal. We’ve seen successful companies fall apart because people can’t work together, and it’s a shame because these organisations had the potential to be significant.

 

To summarise, there’s an undeniable connection between education and business. There’s no doubt that when you’ve gone through the levels of learning, and made your way to the highest echelons of proficiency that you have the best chance of success. The first 20 or so years that people spend in education is critical for making sure that well-rounded individuals are ready to contribute to society. These formative years can make all the difference, and so the need for an education system that works for creating business leaders is high. It’s so important that we try and create opportunities for people who want them so that they can succeed, and learn the tools needed for business. We know how critical it can be for summer schools and extra courses to provide these changes, and we know that so many businesspeople owe their success to the education they got. However, we’re keen to see the progression of learning, and we hope that in time more and more people will embrace the chance to learn a handful of new skills.