Mentor them young - Why entrepreneurship should be taught in schools

Authors - Ajayya Kumar, COO, Emircom and Mohamad Abou-Zaki, CEO, Emircom

Entrepreneurship is much more than about doing business and making money. It is also about shaping a new world, a better one. And that’s why it’s important to make it a part of the curriculum in schools.

Mikaila Ulmer’s story is a sweet one, literally, although it started with a sting. When she was just four and a half years old, she was stung by bees, twice. This made her weary to even step outside, but her parents had an idea. No, it wasn’t the ‘face your fears’ sermon you find in movies, instead, they asked her to understand her fear. In other words, Ulmer’s parents asked her to learn about bees. And that worked. The young girl, who could barely read at the time, found out a lot about bees, how important their role was in the food cycle and how they were dying at an alarming rate. And she decided that she wanted to do something about it!  Her light bulb moment came when she received a family cookbook from her grandma in which she found a recipe for flaxseed lemonade and decided to that she could use honey local Texas sellers as a sweetener to bring attention to the problem. With that idea, she entered a children’s business competition. Her lemonade became a hit and ‘Me & the Bees Lemonade’ was born.

Ulmer is 15 now. She is a Shark Tank winner, and by now, Me & the Bees Lemonade has launched more than just lemonade. She once said in an interview, “Without knowing it, I was doing the first three most important steps in starting a business: First, I was identifying a problem; second, I was researching the problem; and finally, I was starting to do something I felt passionate about.” Besides her sheer brilliance, Ulmer had an important advantage: her parents were business graduates themselves and they transferred the passion for entrepreneurship to her  in her early years. 

Since not every kid has this privilege, it is essential to start lessons of entrepreneurship right at school curriculum level. Here are some of the benefits:

1.    Equipping the child for the new world

Entrepreneurship lessons are more than just doing business. There are also about communication, teamwork and time management which are all crucial skills your child needs as she grows up. 

A 2015 report titled ‘The Value of Soft Skills to the UK Economy’ notes that such soft skills are worth ￡88 billion to the UK economy. Clearly, our children require more than the chalk and talk education to survive and flourish in the future that awaits them. Lessons in entrepreneurship would essentially help them close the skills gap and equip them for the future.

2.    Letting children learn from their failures

Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group, has always been a vocal advocate of starting entrepreneurship lessons in schools. In one of his blog entries he wrote that if one wanted to raise successful kids, they should be allowed to fail. But this is the one thing that schools don’t allow. You fail? You are left behind others, considered a misfit, an anomaly, treated as an outcast. Most schools do not leave room for out-of-the-box thinking. On the other hand, entrepreneurship is all about out-of-the-box thinking, daring to fail, learning from mistakes and moving forward to win.

3.    Kindling the aptitude for innovation and creativity

The workplace as we knew it is gone. The future lies in innovation and the culture of innovative thinking is being integrated into every modern-day workplace. Last year, in its first-ever Kid of the Year award, Time Magazine announced 15-year-old Gitanjali Rao as the winner. Rao, from Colorado, is a water testing scientist whose innovations included artificial intelligence technology to detect cyberbullying. How better to instil such a sense of innovation in your child than through a lesson or two in entrepreneurship? It encourages her to think creatively and sets no limit to her ambitions. It makes her confident and forward looking. Think about a child who goes through the process of identifying a problem, thinking of a solution, devising a market analysis, prototyping the development and the product-market-fit and finally, launching the product. Surely that that sounds better than just mugging up and scoring marks on paper.

4.    Instilling a sense of commitment

Entrepreneurship is not just about making money, it is also about commitment to your organisation, colleagues and to society at large. A lot about entrepreneurship is about giving back to society through creating opportunities, generating jobs, creating an inclusive atmosphere, keeping the economy running and making the world a better place. When a child is taught about entrepreneurship, she is being made a better person and is being taught that doing business is not just about making money. Lessons in entrepreneurship would make our children better future citizens and pave the way for a generation that is more sensitive, empathetic and socially responsible.

I think it is clear that the future of this world is in the hands of our children and we have a responsibility to give them a head start. That is why I can’t stress enough how important is to impart entrepreneurship lessons in schools. Yes, not every student would go on to become an entrepreneur, but think about the other ways in which they could benefit from it - professionalism, critical thinking, public speaking skills...the list is endless. It is encouraging to see that the thought is seeping into society in different forms. 

Programmes like the Young Enterprise in the UK and Junior Achievement in the US are signs that we are moving forward in this direction. It the UAE, Youth Entrepreneurship programme by SHERAA partners with organizations to help pre-university students from the ages of 10 to 17 gain insight into the foundations and rewards youth entrepreneurship. 

It is time to start thinking about the next step. In the words of Richard Branson: “children and teenagers need a curriculum that encourages young people to rise to their full potential, embrace failure, and challenge the status quo wherever they can”.