Business and Entrepreneurship Education for 5th Class

Business and Entrepreneurship Education in Primary Schools

Tim Draper – a partner with DFJ, came up with the idea to teach his daughter’s class about entrepreneurship. Later, he founded Bizworld.org, as he realized that most schools do an OK job teaching kids about math and sciences but fall short on teaching the basics of business and entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurial skills will become increasingly valuable in the future – particularly as traditional math and science skills become commodities.

In a typical Bizworld class, a class is divided into competing teams – startups - who vie to achieve the highest valuation. Every team has to go through the lifecycle of a startup – including creating a product, raising money, coming up with a marketing campaign and selling the product.

Acording to Antony Awaidal, CEO of StartLeap which helps companies innovate in their sales and marketing and jumpstart their sales, the Bizworld is a great fun for the fifth graders and they also gained great business insights. He points out remark made by his sone in the fifth class regarding a local family theme park – Bonfante Gardens which was largely empty on a Saturday afternoon. His kids are bored and
he asked his younger son: “Don’t you like Bonfante Gardens?” His son concluded: “I like it 10% as much as Great America” – a local cheesy theme park with stomach turning wild rides.

HIs older son the fifth grader - commented: “Perhaps Mr. Bonfante should have attended a BizWorld Class. He would have realized who the customer really is and what they really want. The real customer is us – the kids!”

A key lesson he and his classmates learned powerfully in Bizwold is the importance of understanding who the customer is and focusing on their needs. While many of the bizworld teams focused on creating – what they thought were great products - and sophisticated commercials. The winning team, created simple but colorful products, and their commercial - a raunchy/slapstick commercial - was a great hit with the customers - 2nd graders.

Read about Bizworld the organization and programs in the post
http://edu-research-news.blogspot.com/2008/01/bizworld-organization-and-program.html


Reference
http://nexuspartners.typepad.com/weblog/2006/09/getting_into_th.html