Giving Compass' Take:

• Andrea Keith, writing for Getting Smart, explains how empowering student innovation and entrepreneurship in the classroom is the future for the 21st-century workforce. 

• Can teachers gain development skills specifically to learn how to foster entrepreneurship in school? 

• Read more about teaching  business and entrepreneurship. 

When you hear the word “entrepreneur,” you likely think of Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey, or Elon Musk. It’s easy to think of entrepreneurship in the context of people who have built global empires and are worth billions of dollars and, while they provide admirable models of success, they would be far on one end of an entrepreneurial success range.

Everyone with an idea won’t be the next billionaire, yet entrepreneurial thinking could be the most important skill the world will need in the future. That’s why it is crucial that we define entrepreneurship in the 21st century based on the skills required, not the money we make.

At its heart, entrepreneurship is the process of developing, organizing and managing a business venture to (hopefully) make a profit. Of course, that means taking risks, and likely failing, painfully and often. Harnessing the power of creativity and moving an idea through the process of innovation to reach a final result―be it a business, a product, or a social movement―is the true manifestation of entrepreneurial thinking.

The process of innovation doesn’t begin with entrepreneurship, and jumping straight into design thinking doesn’t provide the foundation children need to develop soft skills like collaboration, critical thinking, and resilience.

While changing the standard public education curriculum is its own wicked problem, there are strategies teachers and administrators can employ now to start addressing this gap in preparing students for success.

  • Build a strong culture of innovation within your district, school, and classrooms.
  •  Involve your parents and community in supporting student innovation.
  • Practice communication, collaboration, and reflection. Students can’t learn the “how-to” of innovation without regular practice.

Read the full article about student innovation and entrepreneurship by Andrea Keith at Getting Smart