“Some organizations incubate companies – we incubate people. The mission of the Sandbox Network is to accelerate young leaders and help them have a global impact before they become 30.” http://www.sandbox-network.com/
“Imagine if a country’s assessment system measured the growing impact a young person has had on sustainability, environmental responsibility, equity or social justice, rather than their ability to recall subject-based facts and content!” Stephen Harris
I had the outstanding opportunity recently of joining around 200 young entrepreneurs at the Sandbox Network Summit in Lisbon, Portugal. It was an at times challenging, but always interesting, experience to be one of only a handful of invited ‘senior mentors’ at this event.
Part of me was thinking – what if this had been around when I was in my twenties – would that have made a significant difference to my life, work and career. I suspect it would have accelerated the desire to ‘change the world’. The Sandboxers are an amazing group of energetic young people who seemingly hold no limits to their imagination and capacity. And I have no doubts that wherever they move, they will inspire, create, achieve, question and re-order their communities.
I came to the Sandbox Summit fresh from ten days in Rwanda – establishing an ‘open space’ summit for later May, 2012 (http://scil.com.au/rwanda), that will look to create fresh models for twenty first century learning in the rural regions of developing countries. It was the perfect segue to bridge the gap of my immediate experience from developing world to developed world, as the optimism of the Sandbox participants reminded me that the notion of creating a ‘collision of minds’ in Rwanda, as a means to generate change, was not only viable, but logical.
I loved every rich conversation at the Sandbox Summit; every observed interaction; every activity shoe-horned into the crammed 72 hours. (I left the late night nightclubbing to those more accustomed to 72 hours of being awake!)
But the Sandbox Summit has challenged me in new ways. What did these 200 young people look like ten years ago when they were in school? How did their schooling enhance and grow their entrepreneurial skills? Did the school system support them or fail them?Have they written off their latter school years in their minds as just a journey of tolerance, ultimately teaching them patience – and perhaps even winding an inner spring that would bounce into energy once released into post-schooling world?
As someone passionate about transforming the educative experience of schooling to something relevant and engaging, I started to analyze what an entrepreneur was – and through this, consider how entrepreneurship might be into integrated into school curriculum. Why? Quite clearly entrepreneurial thinking is an accelerant to changing societies and making inroads into some of the world’s current dilemmas. Perhaps teaching real life entrepreneurship could bring a real life relevance to learning. Imagine if a country’s assessment system measured the growing impact a young person has had on sustainability, environmental responsibility, equity or social justice, rather than their ability to recall subject-based facts and content! Perhaps we would get real change in communities.
I have a hunch that seriously teaching entrepreneurial skills at secondary school level would significantly assist lowering post-school high unemployment rates in a many contexts. This alone should create an imperative to explore the possibilities further.
I am left with a myriad of questions and a desire to connect the world of creative entrepreneurship with learning.
- What does it take to grow an entrepreneurial framework?
- What qualities most accurately describe entrepreneurial perspectives?
- Can we teach entrepreneurial skills?
- How might entrepreneurship be introduced?
- What might experience based entrepreneurship development look like?
Some early observations:
Entrepreneurial qualities are dynamic; entrepreneurial qualities are highly practical; entrepreneurial qualities lead to energetic outcomes. Entrepreneurship is about identifying and picking the ‘low hanging fruit’. Entrepreneurship is about creativity, risk, fear,
intuition and relentless endeavor. Entrepreneurship is about failing forward and not giving up.
Defining entrepreneurship (from first hand observation at the Sandbox Summit)
|Negotiating||Energized||Make income from risk and initiative|
|Ideas focused||Possibilities thinker||Action oriented|
|Structured thinking||Goal oriented||Inspirational|
|Increased efficiency||Enthusiastic||Balance confidence with fear|
|Delegating||Risk taking||Tech comfortable|
|Time management||Confident||Catalysts for economic change|
|Organizing||Extroverted||Big picture thinker|
|Networking||Learner||Control own future|
|Connecting||Strive for excellence||Can focus intensely|
|Client focus||Not afraid of failure||Make connections between disparate ideas
|Transferring vision||Inventor||See opportunities|
|People management||Visionary||Generate ideas|
|Technology skills||Leader||Demonstrate vision|
|Creating advantage||Passionate||Thrive on change|
|Investing in self||Persistent||Can self-promote (for positive community
|Accessibility||Adaptive||Can create teams|
|Growing teams||Rock solid reputation||Ability to think what if / why not / try
|Multiplying efforts||Conceptualizer||Can turn ideas into reality|
Where to from here?
- I’d love to hear from Sandboxers
and other entrepreneurs about their school experiences. Did their education
help or hinder their entrepreneurial capacities? How and why?
- I’d love to hear from
Sandboxers and other entrepreneurs who may be interested in establishing a
mentor/speaker/role model link with schools. We could start a database.
- I’d love to establish a global
school-aged group of young entrepreneurs who can share ideas via a web based
community and encourage each other to initiate and implement ideas.
- Why would we not want to teach
these skills to and nurture the qualities identified above for every child? I’d
love to work with a team who would be interested to create some
project/challenge based learning modules in order to develop entrepreneurial
capacity for high school students – modules that could be used anywhere in the
world (developing world and developed world).
- Schools should identify students
with outstanding and evident entrepreneurial abilities and direct them to the
Sandbox Network http://www.sandbox-network.com/