Thinking Like an Entrepreneur: How Environmental Entrepreneurship Solves Resource Conflicts
What does thinking like an entrepreneur entail? This question was at the heart of the Environmental Entrepreneurship workshop hosted by the Center for Environmental and Resource Economic Policy where Reed Watson, J.D, delivered a discussion on the role Environmental Entrepreneurship has in navigating resource conflicts.
Watson delivered the seminar where students from the Agricultural Business Management program and the Agricultural Entrepreneurship minor and faculty across the university learned how to think like an entrepreneur when it comes to issues related to conservation and environmental impacts. Watson, who serves as the director of the Hayek Center for the Business of Prosperity and a professor of practice in the John E. Walker Department of Economics at Clemson University, equipped audiences through active discussion and key examples of how entrepreneurship can have an impactful role in bringing disputing partners together and negotiating towards a proper outcome.
Where entrepreneurs can leave a lasting impact on these issues is in determining this proper resource allocation. For the environmental entrepreneur as Watson defined, these matters benefit from the negotiation between parties disagreeing on the proper allocation of a disputed resource that is brought forth by the entrepreneur’s actions. The environmental entrepreneur has the ability to step into this scenario and offer a solution rather than leaving the dispute solely to government regulations. It is within these potential political stalemates between parties that the entrepreneur finds the opportunity to achieve a greater socially optimal level of this resource or good.
For students enrolled in the Agricultural Entrepreneurship Minor, this workshop proved valuable in identifying the role entrepreneurship has in benefiting not just the proper allocation of resources or goods but also learning the power entrepreneurial skills have in the fields of conservation.
For the environmental entrepreneur, their entrepreneurial focus on matters related to conservation and the environment as resource conflicts allows the opportunity to find an economically viable solution that breaks stalemates between disagreeing parties with conflicting moral judgments. These skills are needed for solving current issues and providing an effective optimum.
The Center for Environmental and Resource Economic Policy consists of faculty in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and around campus working on collaborative research with engineers, natural scientists and social scientists in the Research Triangle and surrounding regions of North Carolina.
Students interested in adding the Agricultural Entrepreneurship minor or more involved with the Agribusiness Clinic for Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Economic Analysis should reach out to the Student Clinic Manager, Seeby Jarvis-Ecenter forarle, at fsjarvis@ncsu.edu.
