Youth Entrepreneurship: What's the Big Deal?

The benefits of teaching youth entrepreneurship go well beyond the obvious practice of taking a product and selling it in the marketplace. There’s not only a plethora is life skills learned through the practice of entrepreneurship, but for some kids, especially at-risk kids, entrepreneurship can show them that their future can be different.

Life Skills

There are a wide range of skill sets needed to run a business: decision-making, calculated risk-taking, financial management, creativity, strategic-planning, teamwork, leadership, mathematics, communicative (oral and written), etc.

Aside from these life skills, there are also intrinsic benefits to teaching kids entrepreneurship. For most, it can be the one thing in their lives that they truly own and have complete control over. They can see the cause and effect of hard work and the importance of accountability. Youth entrepreneurship builds self-esteem and self-awareness. It is also the one course in which failure is a component to learning. In other words, the business world accepts mistakes as part of the path to success.

In a report by the D.C. Children and Youth Investment Corporation, other positive outcomes include:

• improved academic performance, school attendance; and educational attainment
• increased problem-solving and decision-making abilities
• improved interpersonal relationships, teamwork, money management, and public speaking skills
• job readiness
• enhanced social psychological development (self-esteem, ego development, self-efficacy), and
• perceived improved health status

21st Century Skills and STEM Education

While we can see how teaching youth entrepreneurship relates to 21st Century skills, there are increasingly vast opportunities to incorporate STEM education into the mix.
Traditional courses simply teach students how businesses run by studying large established businesses. While this is a necessary component of case study, it’s unrealistic for the student to actually apply the knowledge in his or her own setting. Most businesses in the US are considered small and how the small business operates, grows and succeeds is different from its large corporate counterparts. To instill 21st Century skills so that the student knows the relevancy and how to apply it takes real-world practice.

Traditional business courses also do not incorporate STEM education, which is a vital component to product development and innovation. Typically STEM education and entrepreneurship are kept separate when in fact they are skill sets that should be married. For example: Our SciPreneur program is aimed at getting young girls interested in science by showing them the relevancy of their innovations. The girls spend time creating beauty products using their own formula by understanding what each ingredient does when mixed with others. When their products are formulated, they learned how to properly package them and start a business. The outcome is that they not only see how their scientific skills relate to innovation, but they also get to experience marketplace opportunities. And the results do not simply stop when the course is over.

If we turn the table, we can show students the relevancy of STEM education if entrepreneurship is a partner in learning. It’s easy to compartmentalize coursework in relation to future career choices. For example, I have a cousin who is a math major at Boston College. While she loves math and excels in the subject, she believes the only viable career choice for it is to become a math teacher. She hasn’t learned how her mathematical skill sets can transfer over to a variety of career options. If a student loves chemistry but doesn’t want to become a chemist and work in a lab, have we shown him or her other career options in which those skill sets are valuable? Have we shown them that innovative ideas have value in the marketplace and that they are necessary for the well-being of communities?

Community and Workplace Preparedness

Businesses keep our communities sustainable. They provide jobs, skill training and revenue. New businesses that enter the market keep prices competitive and offer products that solve problems. Yet, in order to keep these businesses viable, talent must be produced.
Teaching entrepreneurship does not always translate into creating entrepreneurs; but it can provide for an entrepreneurial mindset. This is advantageous whether the student becomes an employer or an employee.

Job preparedness must focus on more than writing a resume and learning how to interview, especially in today’s environment. Approximately, 17 out of 100 teens are gainfully employed, leaving the majority of kids inexperienced when trying to enter the workforce. Couple that with the fact that 15 million jobs need to be created to support the influx of the existing and future labor market makes delaying one’s career a definite reality.

Teaching Youth Entrepreneurship: Why Start Them Young?

Most students leave high school with little or no knowledge of the business world and those wishing to learn more will simply wait until they enter college (if they do at all.)
Kids see the world far differently then their adult counterparts. When young, their perception of risk isn’t thwarted by the financial responsibility to raising a family, paying a mortgage and saving for retirement. They are natural problem solvers who have yet to be jaded by the complexities of adulthood. Entrepreneurship can and should be taught beginning at the elementary school level.

Teaching entrepreneurship isn’t a complex subject that requires extensive knowledge of business acumen. No two businesses run the exact same way and there’s nothing written in stone that to be successful, one must think inside the box; 2+2 can equal 5.

Biz in a Boxx

Biz in a Boxx was developed to provide kids with an experiential education in entrepreneurship. Unlike traditional coursework, the system is designed for students to take any idea and create a business around it whether in a school setting, afterschool club or in their home. It’s not dependent upon a teacher with business knowledge to teach it, rather someone who will guide his or her students through the process. It enables students to take complete ownership over their ideas because it’s through that ownership that students learn those vital skill sets best.

Entrepreneurs aren’t created overnight. Like playing a sport or musical instrument, it takes practice.

The Risk and Failure of Entrepreneurship

Junior Achievement recently conducted a survey and found that 74 percent of teens stated risk and failure were the biggest deterrents for starting their own business.

I can certainly understand this mindset if it were coming from an adult, especially from someone with a mountain of responsibilities, like feeding a family and providing shelter. But why would a kid who has far more to gain than lose have such an aversion to risk? And what has dampened their psyche at such a young age to believe that failure should be avoided at all costs?

The beauty about entrepreneurship is that it’s one of those fields where risk and failure are vital components. They present opportunities for learning and correcting mistakes. If you’re an architect and design a building that crashes down or a doctor who cuts off the wrong body part, you’ve failed. There are no do-overs. But entrepreneurship is full of do-overs. It’s an accepted practice.

While risk/failure-averse teens won’t be the ones to necessarily jump off a bridge because their friends are doing it, there’s a propensity to avoid other things in which they can reap rewards, such as running for student council or trying out for a sports team. Naively fearing risk and failure isn’t selective but a learned behavior that flows across all decisions; learning how to take calculated risks and accepting failure as part of the process enables an analysis of each decision. And there are long-term consequences to raising a generation of risk/failure-averse people.

Starting and running a business isn’t solely about the benefits to the owner. Communities are dependent upon them for goods and services at competitive prices. They provide revenue to fund vital programs and jobs and income to provide for families. Our lives are better for each and every person willing to take the leap and start his own.

Where will we be with a country full of people who are crippled by the fear of risk and failure? Where could we be if they are not?