Entrepreneurship Growth in Oman: Position, Prospects and Growth of Entrepreneural Education

The term ‘Entrepreneurship’ has certain connotations to diverse groups of people. An entrepreneur is identified as one who undertakes to organize, manage, and assume the risks of business.  Shane and Venkataraman (2000) define entrepreneurship as involving the study of sources of opportunities; the processes of discovery, evaluation, and exploitation of opportunities; and the set of individuals who discover, evaluate, and exploit them. This paper considers the current position and potential of innovative and entrepreneurial thinking for effective problem solving and change management in Oman. The paper explores the initiatives that the government of Oman has sought in building the level of awareness and engagement with the innovation and entrepreneurship agenda within education system, especially tertiary level programs. It reviews the educational aims as well as the uptake of entrepreneurial education and training in Oman. This paper seeks to identify how incorporating entrepreneurship into educational curriculum will contribute to the future growth of entrepreneurship in the country while enhancing the entrepreneurship agenda to include non- educational constituencies, actors and community at large. In recognizing the central role of creativity and innovation in entrepreneurship and in the generation of new ideas, where appropriate the core challenges of protecting those new ideas which have commercial and social value. The paper debunks one of the myths that entrepreneur are academic and social misfits while considering adopting  social, economic and academic leadership trendsetter and change agent  that the society and country needs at large. The contemporary Omani entrepreneur is to be viewed as a professional, with entrepreneurship education highlighting the issues related to the formation, development, and operations of small-scale and micro enterprises.