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Authored by Dr. Asmaa ElRifai
10 minutes
Aug 24, 2026
Authored by Dr. Asmaa ElRifai
Lebanese MIS students know how to build things. They learn coding, databases, and system design. But when it comes to launching their own digital ventures, most don't. They keep waiting for a moment of readiness that never arrives.
Based on twelve years of teaching entrepreneurship to MIS students in a Lebanese university, and supported by data from UNDP, UNICEF, and the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, this article explores why technical skills don't automatically translate into action.
The argument is simple: perfectionism, fear of failure, social judgment, and Lebanon's economic instability combine to make waiting feel safer than starting.
The solution is also simple: psychological empowerment courses in early university years, and structured post-launch support for student founders during their first year of operation.
I have been teaching entrepreneurship to MIS students for twelve years. They come to class knowing how to code, build databases, and design systems. Many want to launch their own digital ventures — an app, a platform, an e-commerce site. The technical skills are there.
But wanting to launch and actually launching are two different things.
Over the years, two cases have stayed with me. They keep repeating in different forms.
The first student had a complete vision for a digital platform — wireframes, database structure, even a prototype. He had the technical ability to build it. But he decided he would only launch after leaving the country. Years later, he had neither emigrated nor written a single line of production code. The idea remained in his notebook.
The second student actually launched. He built an e-commerce platform for fresh produce — functional, tested, and ready. The technology worked. But within a year, the pressure of solo execution, customer acquisition costs, cash flow problems, and the simple loneliness of running a one-person venture led him to shut it down and take a corporate job.
Both students were MIS majors. They had the technical skills to build. What they lacked was not coding ability but something else: behavioral readiness for uncertainty.
One could not start. The other could not sustain. This article is about why that happens and what universities can do about it.
When I ask MIS students why they haven't launched their projects, the answer is almost always the same: “I'm not ready.”
Not ready financially. Not ready skill-wise. Not ready strategically. The market isn't right. The timing is off.
But here is what I have learned watching students for twelve years: “ready” is not a fixed state. It moves. The more they prepare, the further it shifts.
Preparation becomes a substitute for action. Students keep learning, planning, and refining. It feels productive. It avoids real risk entirely.
The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (2024/2025) reports that 49% of people cite fear of failure as a barrier to starting a business — up from 44% in 2019. In Lebanon, where the economy is collapsing, that fear is not irrational. But for MIS students who already have the technical skills, the gap between “can build” and “actually builds” is often psychological, not technical.
Perfectionism makes it worse. Many students wait for near-certainty before launching. But digital entrepreneurship does not work that way. Successful ventures rarely come from perfect planning. They come from putting something out there, seeing what happens, and iterating.
MIS students know how to debug code. They need to learn how to debug their own fear of starting.
I cannot talk about student hesitation without talking about Lebanon's reality. It is not background noise. It is an active factor in every decision.
In 2023, only 12 startups raised funding in Lebanon, totaling $1.1 million — a 95 percent drop from the previous year (AGBI, 2024). For a student thinking about launching, this signals a fragile ecosystem with little safety net.
At the same time, 77 percent of Lebanese youth aged 18 to 24 say they want to emigrate (UNDP, 2022). This creates a strange psychological pull. Why invest time and energy in a local venture if you plan to leave?
Add to this the absence of modern commercial law, bankruptcy protection, and functional investment structures. The risks of failure are not just financial — they can be personal and lasting (UNDP, 2022).
Under these conditions, hesitation is not laziness. It is a rational response to a hostile environment. But rationality, when taken too far, becomes paralysis.
My students spend a lot of time online. They see funding announcements, product launches, and success stories. They see the polished version of entrepreneurship.
What they do not see is the mess behind it — the failed launches, the embarrassing bugs, the months of zero traction, the near-collapses.
This creates a distorted comparison. Students compare their unfinished, uncertain projects to the highlight reels of successful founders. And they come up short.
UNICEF Lebanon (2024) has linked the economic crisis to rising stress and anxiety among young people. Social media amplifies that anxiety. Every success story online becomes indirect evidence of their own inadequacy.
There is also a quiet misconception among MIS students: that entrepreneurship requires a completely original idea. It does not. Many successful digital ventures in fragile markets come from adaptation — taking a model that works elsewhere and adjusting it to local conditions. But students rarely hear that.
Financial risk is one thing. Social risk is another.
In Lebanon, failure is often not seen as experience or learning. It is seen as judgment. On competence. On family. On character.
This makes inaction feel much safer than exposure. If you do not launch, no one can say you failed.
I have watched students choose stable employment over their own projects. I have watched them enroll in more degrees, more certificates, more planning. The idea stays alive in theory. It never gets tested in reality.
These are not bad decisions. They are protective ones. But protection, over time, becomes a cage.
Lebanese universities have invested heavily in technical and business training. MIS students graduate with strong skills. UNICEF Lebanon (2024) reports that tens of thousands of young people have been reached through entrepreneurship programs.
Yet the gap remains. Knowing how to build a database is not the same as being able to keep building when no one is buying, when money is running out, and when you are completely alone.
The second student I mentioned — the one who launched the e-commerce platform — had the technical skills. What he did not have was support during the hardest phase: the first six to twelve months of operation, where uncertainty peaks and isolation is crushing.
University entrepreneurship education prepares students for the launch. It rarely prepares them for survival.
From watching students year after year, I have noticed a predictable pattern:
Over time, waiting becomes a habit. Then it becomes a default state.
This is not a skills problem. It is a behavioral loop. And it needs a behavioral solution.
Better entrepreneurship courses are not enough. Universities need to treat psychological readiness as a core educational outcome, not a soft extra.
Stage One: Psychological Empowerment Courses
A mandatory, credit-bearing course in the first or second year. The content should include:
This is not therapy. It is behavioral conditioning for uncertainty.
Stage Two: Post-Launch Accompaniment
The most vulnerable phase of entrepreneurship is not before launch. It is after.
Universities should build a structured six- to twelve-month support system for student founders who have launched:
The goal is not to guarantee success. It is to prevent early isolation from becoming early exit.
MIS students in Lebanon do not lack technical skills. They know how to build. What they lack is a supportive environment for action — psychologically, socially, and structurally.
The two students in this article represent a shared failure of support. One could not start. The other could not sustain. Both outcomes were preventable.
Entrepreneurial readiness is not something students need to arrive with. It is something that emerges when action is supported, not postponed.
Universities must shift from teaching entrepreneurship as knowledge to enabling it as lived practice under uncertainty. For MIS students — who already have the tools to build — this shift matters more than anywhere else.