6 Benefits of having an entrepreneurial mindset from an early age

What is the meaning of an entrepreneurial mindset?

The set of skills that allows people to identify opportunities and make the best out of them, learn from the failures and setbacks encountered, and succeed with time, comprises an entrepreneurial mindset. Research on numerous fronts shows that many employers and decision-makers value an entrepreneurial mindset. It also enhances the value and educational performance needed to attain business goals .

Gone are those days when students used to heavily depend upon traditional methods of learning to score only good marks in examinations. To be successful in today’s generation, it is much necessary that one prepares themselves holistically. This is where the entrepreneurial mindset comes into play.

Nowadays various governments around the world are specifically focusing on developing entrepreneurial mindset among young children by introducing the needful courses, workshops, and sessions in their curriculum.

One of our recent collaborations was with the Haryana Government during Start-up Saksharta to Saksham Abhiyan in schools ,where the focus was to instil confidence and required skills among students from an early age so that they can take up start-up ventures.

Various skills like observing the need of the society around oneself, problem identification, available and potential solutions, developing the product for solving the problem, learning, re-learning, and unlearning, constitute basics on entrepreneurial mindset.

Need for entrepreneurship in early education and curriculum:

- To upskill students with 21st century skills like collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, communication prowess, problem-solving, and perseverance. This would help them keep up the pace with the modern generation.

- Triggers motivation and high level of engagement among children to create meaningful values for others based on the knowledge they have acquired.

- Discover their area of interest and develop aptitude for the value creation. From an early age, they start developing the habit of ideating and implementing on their own and understanding the issues surrounding them.

- Understanding to take failure as a building block of success. Students who try different types of ideas may fail due to various reasons, but continuous experimentation gives them inspiration to learn from the failure, rather than getting demotivated.

-Instils the values of teamwork and ethics in the student when entrepreneurship is introduced at an early stage. This can come with more exposure towards different activities that aim at working in a group, finding a solution together, and taking accountability of the work.

- Teaches students to deal with tasks patiently. Developing an entrepreneurial temperament requires a lot of effort and sometimes to see your ideas getting fruitful, one has to wait a lot. This helps them develop patience and composure which comes handy when they grow old too.

All the skills that a student can gain through early exposure to entrepreneurial mindset helps them progress in their career. Even if they opt for a job in self, corporate or government setup, the qualities help them to become ‘best in their work.’

Reports and Statistics by the different organisation:

• Recent data by the United Nations suggests that “to meet youth employment needs, an estimated 600 million jobs need to be created in the next 15 years.” However, the number of young people not in a job, education, or training is high, and a lot of work needs to be generated to meet the job needs of this demographic.
  

• The Government of India emphasises instilling entrepreneurship in the early years of education, which would result in more and more quality employment generated in the future. In fact, the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship collaborated with Purdue University and the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India to develop a broad curriculum that would cover schools too.
  

• Reports from OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) suggest that entrepreneurial education has seen exponential growth in higher education institutions throughout the world. The United States saw the course offered to 1200 business schools in 2001 alone.

· Entrepreneurial temperament from a young age impacts the job generation in the MSME sector too, where the majority of young people from small cities are employed. It is a major engine for the economic growth of any country. Currently, China leverages 60% of GDP from the MSME (Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises) sector alone as compared to India’s 17%. Hand Holding the ideas of young innovators are the need of the hour for economic development.

6 Benefits of nurturing an early entrepreneurial mindset

There are two different kinds of entrepreneurs – One is a commercial entrepreneur who develops services based on the value consumers will have to pay for. Another type is a social entrepreneur who addresses social necessity with no specific mention of creating economic value (definition by UNICEF, Ashoka). Nurturing an early mindset helps students get clarity on what path to take in the coming time. Here, we enumerate the benefits of an early entrepreneurial mindset:

1. Understanding the potential: From a young age, children are trained to understand their potential, their area of interest, and what pain points they have identified and need to solve around themselves. Students can recognise what they are good at from a very young age only when they are allowed to experiment more. A major stakeholder in this regard has to be the teachers and parents of these students, who should see this as a part of the curriculum and an opportunity for a brighter future.

2. Accepting failures as a part of the process: Failures are an integral aspect of any entrepreneurial venture. One may try different strategies and ways of working, but they can fail at times. Understanding how entrepreneurship works from a young age comes as a boon to young minds who start taking failures as a part of the journey and do not get frustrated by them easily. It helps them at a later stage of their life as well. It also makes them more tolerant and aware of their ability to carve the right path.
   

3. Emphasising skill-based development: From a young age, students are told to focus more on marks and develop a result-oriented approach. However, including entrepreneurship-based education helps in skill-based development, enhancing the growth of students on a different level. They learn the skill of communication, negotiation, perseverance, adaptability, collaboration, innovation, and creative thinking that helps them not only academically but in holistic growth. Even the 21st-century skills favoured by many international organisations focus on “skill-based learning” methods important for any nation.
   

4. Opportunity Recognition: As the students are open to a more varied form of learning in the form of entrepreneurial education, they get to think about the situation around them with open-mindedness. They develop a habit of tapping opportunity present and providing an amicable solution to them. Generally, the traditional mode of learning teaches students problem learning via a case study, which may or may not be helpful later in life. But with entrepreneurial education, students identify the problem themselves. Skilleit’s interaction with students from schools and colleges in different states of India and their response to entrepreneurial training is a case in this regard.
   

5. Assists growth of future workforce: Considering the pace at which the demographic dividend is growing, the entrepreneurial mindset from a young age will help students to become not only better prospects in the job market but they can also become good job creators too. Giving up the notion of seeking the perfect job for the private or government sector, we have seen how many students become job generators for many through their initiatives and vision. Even if they are thrown into a zone of uncertainty, the entrepreneurial skills of “getting things right” will help them pave a way out of it too.
   

6. Boosts innovation and creativity: As per Roberta B. Ness (frequent advisor to the National Institutes for Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), what we lack in today’s generation is a “lack of imagination,” even though our desire for innovation has been the most. An entrepreneurial mindset allows one to think on a different horizon and keep experimenting in different frames and setups, allowing to boost innovation. One has to be more creative in their approach and break away from the conventional theory of going “word-by-word” about anything that is taught to make a groundbreaking innovation.

How will it help in progressing the economy of the world?

According to UNICEF (United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund), many low- and middle-income countries are not creating enough jobs to absorb the ever-increasing workforce. By incorporating entrepreneurship-based education from a young age, the economies will progress as there will be skill development of the younger generation. Besides, more people will come forward as job generators and serve as social entrepreneurs too.

Even the World Youth Report by United Nations suggests that social entrepreneurship has the potential to provide sustainable jobs to youth in coming times. Instilling entrepreneurship helps in developing knowledge, cognitive, and non-cognitive skills that are needed for possible career opportunities in the future too. A new stage of innovation or path-breaking discovery as a result of this process helps the country to pave the way towards more economic development in the world.

In the words of Indian Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, “Innovation by the people and for the people is the direction for our New India.”

Skilleit’s Programs for Students from Schools and Colleges:

Skilleit has been vocal since its inception about the need to develop entrepreneurship-based education as a part of regular learning and foster 21st-century skills among students from a very young age. To provide entrepreneurship-based learning at the grassroots level throughout the world, we have specially designed our programs, courses, and sessions that can be accessible to everyone. Keeping students and the demand of the start-up environment in mind, we have made special efforts that our specialised programs cater to different levels.

With over 60000+ learners from India and abroad, our programs are available online and offline, offering innovative training tools for future skilling purposes. Student start-up programs, along with technical support for registration, assessment, report, and certificate generation, are available for stages like Basic, Foundation, Incubation, and Faculty Training programs, each with different and unique learning outcomes. Students learn about the start-up, various roles, understanding entrepreneurship from scratch, ideation, learning techniques to validate ideas, finding a solution to the problem, and developing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) around them.

To know more about our program, please visit our page: https://www.skilleit.com/start-upprograms, and you can even schedule a call with us to learn more about the programs in detail designed specifically for your institutional needs.

About Heuristic (the world’s first start-up game):

To enhance entrepreneurship development among young minds, we have devised a unique, innovative, and interactive form of learning. This employs the use of Heuristic, the world’s first start-up physical card game based on entrepreneurship. In this game, using different kinds of cards (just like the usual card games), we help students learn about the 13-stage journey of the start-up in detail, from idea to scalability, challenges, solutions, and strategies involved in a start-up. The game uses the series card, trick cards, double trouble, and catch the match cards to unravel the journey related to start-up for students.

Other tools used in Heuristic:

• Brainstorming cards: Students can learn via role play as entrepreneurs, mentors, and investors to understand the start-up work aptly.
  

• Innovation cards: Students role-play as innovators to understand human-centric design and get into the shoes of an innovator.
  

• Start-up crossword: One of the most liked games where students use the knowledge imparted in training to solve the crossword puzzle related to start-up and its different terminologies.
  

Our programs, workshops, and sessions have helped different government and private educational institutes to engage more students in entrepreneurial learning with immersive tools and techniques.

The School Innovation Council, launched by Institute Innovation Council, Ministry of education, AICTE, CBSE recognised 12800 teachers across the country as Innovation Ambassadors to promote the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Indian schools. Skilleit has been a proud partner of the Government’s initiative to build a positive environment for skill-based learning from childhood and boost the entrepreneurial ecosystem of India, which has the largest demographic dividend in the world.

We really look forward to motivating more young minds, talents, and changemakers of tomorrow to have a positive outlook for developing the entrepreneurial ecosystem in India and the world. If you are looking for a similar program for your students or faculty training, please feel free to contact us right away on the link: https://www.skilleit.com/connectwithus