I have no idea how this would play out you see this was an experiment for me and right here in the middle of the room there was a boy and he was sitting there and he was slouched down he was clearly not interested in what I had to say in fact at one point he sat there and he said this is a waste of time.
Why bother so I addressed him right head-on and I said hey you know what this is a real business you guys get to be totally in charge you're the decision-makers you get to set your own goals and at the end you get to keep the profits well with that he sat up and I knew he was on board and a week later when I came back he was actually standing in front of the group and he had the entire class brainstorming they were coming up with different marketing ideas .
The highest profit now what was so interesting was when I sat down later to do a debriefing with the principal and the teacher and they shared with me that this was a boy that typically did not participate in school in fact he rarely passed in homework assignments he frequently skipped classes and yet they were fascinated by his level of engagement.
And they wanted to know what it was about this project that captured his imagination entrepreneurial skills when we think about what people need today they need a strong set of entrepreneurial skills and what I mean by that is creativity critical thinking problem-solving .
But they're not enough skills are no longer and we have to help people develop young people develop an entrepreneurial mindset now when we think about the future it's really important that kids today that they they're flexible and they're adaptable need to be able to see change before it happens .
They need to be able to identify opportunities and have the confidence to move foot towards them really what it's all about is actually being able to be constantly focused on growing and developing and improving you see and I want to point out right from the very beginning that I'm not talking I'm not suggesting in any way that everybody needs to be entrepreneur .
What I am saying is that young people today regardless of whether they work for themselves and start a business or if they work for an employer what they need is a strong set an entrepreneurial mindset that's going to enable them to be successful an entrepreneurial mindset is actually critical to success in our rapidly changing world so that brings us to an important question
And the question is can an entrepreneurial mindset be nurtured absolutely in fact as I started specializing this area I realized very early on that not only can it be nurtured but it's important to start young so I created a program and it's an entrepreneur project for elementary kids and for students between the ages of nine and twelve to start their businesses .
And they actually develop an entrepreneurial mindset by launching a business venture so they have to create business plans they develop products and marketing materials and at the end they participate in a real-life event called the young entrepreneur show it's like a trade show they get to interact with customers and they earn real money the program is facilitated.
I think is the most powerful piece is that it's facilitated by the classroom teacher and it makes topics like math and English language arts and social studies more meaningful and relevant for kids it's already reached about 40,000 kids and I'm really excited to be able to share some of their stories with you here today now the idea of coming up with a product to sell for real to customers is incredibly exciting for kids and in fact they take it very very seriously.
Sometimes the students will create products that you know people enjoy other times they go a little bit deeper and they think you know what can i how can i solve a problem or how can I make a difference in the world by creating a product Mimi is one of our students that decided to come up with this cat toy and a toy that looked like a cat I should say and she took this two materials a mock suede and a mock fur she cut strips sew them together and had a cat face at the front and a tail and she really wanted to have a fun name for this so she called them roadkill kitties.
If that wasn't enough she took a big branch that had fallen from a tree in her garden she mounted it on top of the table and then she had all the products hanging up here so as you walk by all you could see are these feline creatures like in dad at you and then she'd take them down she was all about showmanship so she'd take them down and lay one on the arms customers would come up and the customers would smooth it down and it would roll up and Mimi's product came alive the roadkill Kitty came alive .
Mimi's business came alive and Mimi came alive you see Mimi wasn't strong she wasn't a strong academic student and yet had perhaps the most successful business in her class and what was so exciting was that she was able to achieve that success by showcasing her entrepreneurial and her artistic flair the product development stage is also very powerful because students starting to come up with an idea but then they have to use market research they do prototyping and then they get into production so it's very rich with learning opportunities.
Tyler was very determined that he wanted to create the sock puppet and he is just market research to really perfect the design so when he asked the question what color would you like everybody see him teal one of the options was tie-dye and everybody seemed to pick that choice so it was an obvious design decision the problem he had though was when it came time to pick the the hair at the top and the tongue inside and there didn't seem to be a general consensus in his survey