Skip to main content. Encourage your people to be bold and creative to reap the benefits of an innovative workforce, urges Duke University's professor Dorie Clark. For example, I recently profiled a nurse, Lenny Achan, who ultimately became the head of communications for his hospital after his boss discovered he had been developing iPhone apps on the side, and was impressed by his initiative.
Set the tone by being upfront about your own mistakes and miscalculations. If your teen is interested in pursuing entrepreneurship, learning to take an idea from inception to launched business, or simply wants to get a unique and impressive extracurricular opportunity under their belt that will give them the skills to build businesses in the future, click here to learn more about our Beta Bowl packages and how we work with teens to build businesses.
Beta Bowl is an entrepreneurial enrichment program and independent extracurricular opportunity, and teens develop a robust startup skillset, as well as come away with a tangible, feasible business they can run on their own, even beyond the program. They have weekly group calls with peers and startup mentors to ensure they get their questions answered and get the one-on-one help they need every step of the way.
As much as parents hate to see their kids struggle and sometimes want to fight their battles for them, the best way to encourage their creativity, problem-solving skills, and entrepreneurial spirit is to encourage them to solve their problems on their own. This is due to the simple fact that necessity breeds solutions. If a kid knows they can come to their parent for the answer, they have much less incentive to wrack their brains, get creative, try a few different approaches, and arrive at a solution on their own.
That kind of creativity, determination, and drive to solve problems will take them far in life and entrepreneurship, and fostering those skills early is in their best interest.
When a child or anyone, for that matter, is starting a business, they are going to face some challenges and obstacles, just as they will in every other aspect of life. What separates those who succeed in business and who achieve greater success in life, as well, is their ability to learn from and positively respond to those challenges and obstacles.
In order to foster an entrepreneurial spirit , we need to help children and teens learn from the challenges and obstacles that do arise. Talk to your child about the issue at hand, ask them why it occurred and what they can glean from it, and help them brainstorm ways to mitigate similar problems in the future.
Regardless, the freedom, tools, and encouragement to explore those options is what helps kids and teens find their way, and sometimes they find their way right into their first business. We created Beta Bowl, not only to help teach and cultivate teen entrepreneurs , but also to give motivated teens a place to put their creativity and innovative thinking skills to good and productive use, with a tangible outcome they can be proud of.
Each student has a unique journey and comes out with a unique business. The most rewarding thing about the Beta Bowl program for students and their parents is to realize just how far their own creativity can take them. Help your child identify their strengths, and help them lean into those strengths. And if your child does exhibit some unique talent or affinity for a certain subject, be sure to encourage that beyond the classroom or your living room.
That strength could be just the thing your child builds an entire empire around one day. Most successful people had mentors, teachers, and role models who helped guide them on their ascent to success, and finding these mentors early is a huge advantage. If your child is pursuing a certain subject or field, they should not be shy about reaching out to the successful people in that field.
Oftentimes these successful seasoned veterans are more than willing to help the eager youth become their future successors. Mentorship is also incredibly important to entrepreneurship , and many successful entrepreneurs will credit the scale or speed of their success to their personal mentor.
We believe that mentorship is so important that we assign every Beta Bowl Gold and Platinum student an individual startup mentor for weekly one-on-one calls, feedback, guidance, and hour email access. Multiple Beta Bowl students who had gone through other similar entrepreneurial programs echoed the same sentiment: Beta Bowl was their first and only opportunity to receive individual attention on a weekly basis, get specific and meaningful feedback, and to forge a personal relationship with a mentor who knew their business inside and out by the end of the program.
Encourage divergent thinking : Through informal discussions, ask open-ended questions, work on problem-solving, share ideas and build on learning experiences together. Teach children to question, research, and ask for further information. Ask them to take notice of things in their daily lives. For example, when they see a problem or feel frustrated about something, ask them how they would solve the issue, or make it better.
Let your child guide, discover and make connections on their own. When the opportunity presents itself, practice divergent thinking at home. Create a safe-space for ideas: Divergent thinking is most likely to thrive in a safe environment that welcomes all types of ideas, encourages risk-taking and allows for fast failure. Kids who feel safe are more likely to share ideas, step outside of their comfort zones, and take on more challenges.
You can support divergent thinking, encourage individual expression and foster creativity by building a safe space for youth.
Challenge ideas: Encourage your children to ask why we do things in a certain way. Teach them to look at problems and find various solutions. When we make challenges, it forces us to begin thinking of alternatives. Encourage leaders through ownership: Praise kids for unique ideas to solving problems, and for having the confidence to share their solutions.
Build an Idea Box: When I taught middle school, many parents asked me how to encourage innovation at home. In my classroom, I kept an empty box for students to drop idea notes. When they had an idea, figured out how to solve a problem, or noticed how to make an improvement, they wrote down their thoughts, and added them to the "Idea Box. Using this strategy can encourage everyone to share new possible ventures, foster communication skills, and build confidence in a group setting.
After you've gone through some viable ideas, encourage kids to take action. The third prescription was the importance of engaging the private sector from the start. Here the role of government is indirect and one of a facilitator not a manager. This is the opportunity for local success stories to become role models for others.
However, care must be taken by governments not to try to pick winners or over engineer the system. High growth firms by nature are inherently risky and highly innovative firms are typically unique.
As such there is no magic formula for their success. This can take the form of government grants and venture capital funds that are too easily obtained. What is important is to grow firms with strong root systems that can sustain their own growth as much as possible before seeking additional funding.
Such firms should be financially sound; profitable and well managed, or their likely success rates will be low. The focus should be on encouraging sustainable, growth oriented and innovative firms not simply fostering more start-ups. Starting a new business is the easy part, successfully growing it is the challenge. The challenge for government policy is to develop policies that work, but avoid the temptation to try to effect change via direct intervention.
A study of entrepreneurial ecosystems undertaken by Colin Mason from the University of Glasgow and Ross Brown from the University of St Andrews for the OECD, developed a set of general principles for government policy in the relation to these ecosystems. Such programs are essentially transactional in nature.
It is not that they are of no value, but they cannot guarantee success via such direct intervention. This focuses on the entrepreneurial leadership of these growth firms. It seeks to understand their networks and how to foster the expansion of such networks at the local, national and international level.
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