The food: Lunch plate of (clockwise from top left) vegan fried steak, braised beancurd sheets with radish, mixed steam vegetables, red rice and vegetable soup

Where to find it: Loving Hut, Wan Chai District, Hong Kong, China

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Welcome to another edition of #FoodEntrepreneur Friday, where I serve up an order of international food with a side of insight for entrepreneurs.

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While filming in Hong Kong I sat down for a square meal—literally. Each rectangualar compartment on my lunch tray came complete with a nutritionally balanced protein (made of vegetables), vegetable and more vegetables. It reminded me of my school lunches, only with an Asian-vegetarian twist. Sure, it looks like something that Lunchlady Doris would have slopped onto your tray as you shuffled down the school lunch line. But Loving Hut’s innovative approach to vegetarian food expands your conceptions of what people can do with totally vegetarian ingredients.

They were able to pull off imitation steak and fish with soy-based products. And they actually tasted good!

This brings me to my topic for today’s #FoodEntrepreneur Friday: the traditional ways of thinking that your school teachers taught just won’t cut it in this entrepreneurial, real world. Entrepreneurship is everything they didn’t teach you in school. Just like this vegetarian lunch, you’ve got to be innovative.

Here are a few differences between school vs. the real, entrepreneurial world.

In school, you’re graded on a curve. Therefore, when one person wins, then another loses. In the real world, people work in teams; so when one person wins, then everyone wins.

In school, students learn from a teacher. This teacher sets expectations, tells students what to do and what to know. In the real world, you are your own teacher; you must figure out what you want to know, how to find the information and how to use it.

In school, you must take multiple choice tests where there is only one correct answer. In the real world, there are many answers.

Since graduating from college, both me and the many young entrepreneurs I know have faced a real challenge: un-learning two decades of traditional education. However, this un-learning has been totally worth it. In fact, it’s been empowering. In traditional education you’re taught to get a degree, get a job, stay in that job until you can no longer do that job and then die. But if you view life from the perspective of the entrepreneurial, real world, then life is what you make of it. You can do anything, even make imitation meat taste good.