Doing Good: Entrepreneurship and Our Kids
"Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship... the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth."
-- Peter Drucker
VC’s can be a cynical bunch. It takes a lot to get our attention. Well, this morning I was absolutely blown away by what I saw at the NFTE/Chase Teen Business Plan Competition. David Weinstein, CEC’s high energy entrepreneurial czar, helped to launch NFTE’s competition here in Chicago with funding from Motorola (thanks Jim O’Connor!). NFTE (National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship) is a national organization that runs entrepreneurship programs at schools in low-income communities. Christine Poorman and Lauren McLaughlin oversee the Chicago chapter and ran the competition. Over the course of a school year, students take a course in entrepreneurship while also preparing a business plan for a potential business.
I sat through 3 hours of presentations and watched in amazement as kids from some of the poorest communities in Chicago spoke about P/L statements, sales & marketing strategies (4 P’s for the MBA set), ROI, ROS, sources of start up capital and more. Over half the kids had actually launched small businesses and some were pulling in several thousand dollars a year. Over 60% of the presenters were girls, which I think is huge as this kind of involvement has a dramatic impact on life choices regarding teenage pregnancy, future studies and such. All of the kids were hoping to go onto 4-year colleges. All the plans also had a philanthropy component in them such as food to shelters, donations to causes and such.
As I have written in the past, we are in big trouble if we don’t get kids interested in engineering and, more importantly, entrepreneurship. Small businesses drive the majority of job creation in our economy and are the key driver of innovation for our society. This is where the next Cisco or Google comes from. We are also seeing a massive digital divide form between economic classes. Just as I hope we start rolling out engaging science programs in our schools, I believe we need to bake as many entrepreneurial experiences as possible into our youth’s schooling.
Other great programs involved in teaching this include Biz World and Junior Achievement.