As a business school professor, one of the questions I hear most often from industry and government leaders in their effort to bolster economic growth, is: “Can we teach entrepreneurship and innovation?”

It is a question that pops up with regularity, in part because there is a perception that great entrepreneurs and innovators are born rather than made.

This debate of nature versus nurture has significant implications for British Columbia and Canada. As a province we have some of the top-ranked research universities in the country; thus we stand to gain greatly from fostering this talent and transferring ideas born in classrooms and labs into companies, products and services. According to StartUp Canada, this sort of innovation leads to high-growth enterprises that are responsible for 45 per cent of new job creation.

But before answering the original question, it is worth looking to other areas for perspective.

Before we started teaching music to individuals, we assumed that musicians were just born with a gift for music. And before we taught people to write, we assumed that writing ability was innate. We now know of course that music and writing can both be taught at a high level. Need proof? Check out the alumni list from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

It’s the same thing with entrepreneurship and innovation. It’s not just an inherent, magical ability. Like writing, music or cooking, you can teach a whole generation of people to do it.

So the good news is, we can absolutely teach entrepreneurship and innovation.

Yes, the world has natural born innovators and entrepreneurs, but it is also increasingly the domain of those entrepreneurs who have devoted hard work and deep learning.

Universities — and business schools in particular — have a huge role to play in advancing this entrepreneurial and innovative output, whether their students remain part of a local start-up ecosystem or choose to take their new ventures abroad. And we are in the enviable position in this province to have some world-class institutions who are focused on exactly this.

Examples abound. At Simon Fraser University, our Management of Technology MBA program has historically attracted many scientists and technologists focused on launching new companies, or leading established ones.

One of our recent graduates, Andre Wirthmann, had already completed his PhD in Physics at the University of Hamburg before he came to SFU for his MBA. He had developed a new bone-tissue engineering procedure and completed his MBA in part to help him commercialize the technology that would benefit patients with bone defects.

As business schools, we undertake research studies to try to understand what makes a great entrepreneur, and what makes a great innovator. Understanding and instilling these lessons to our students and the larger business community is paramount.

Research on this topic by Leeds Business School in the U.K. shows that the importance of new business start-ups and the role of post-secondary cannot be overemphasized. The article, published in the journal Education + Training, shows that entrepreneurship education plays a major role in raising awareness of the nature and importance of entrepreneurship, changing attitudes and delivering skills.