The good news, Bill Aulet says, is that entrepreneurship can be taught. The bad news is that America’s supply of good entrepreneurship education is nowhere near enough to meet the country’s demand for it.

Aulet, who heads the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, spoke at the Kauffman Foundation on Nov. 19 as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week. He’s also the author of Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup, which lays out a process for generating and developing business ideas.

The first step is determining exactly who your customer is, Aulet said. “Once you have that, you have a business.”

Too many startups make the mistake of creating a product or solution, and then trying to push that on an audience that doesn’t really need it.

While entrepreneurship can be taught, it’s a mistake to promote it as an easy thing to do, Aulet said. (His publishers originally flinched at the idea of including “disciplined” in the book’s title because it might turn people off and wondered if there had to be 24 steps. Aulet suggested they just call it “Six-Pack Abs in Four Minutes.”)

You can read more about the book and Aulet’s process at this website.