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1.1: Chapter 1 – Introduction to Entrepreneurship

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• Page ID 21253

• Lee A. Swanson
• University of Saskatchewan

Whilst there is no universally accepted definition of entrepreneurship, it is fair to say that it is multi-dimensional. It involves analyzing people and their actions together with the ways in which they interact with their environments, be these social, economic, or political, and the institutional, policy, and legal frameworks that help define and legitimize human activities. – Blackburn (2011, p. xiii)

Entrepreneurship involves such a range of activities and levels of analysis that no single definition is definitive. – Lichtenstein (2011, p. 472)

It is complex, chaotic, and lacks any notion of linearity. As educators, we have the responsibility to develop our students’ discovery, reasoning, and implementation skills so they may excel in highly uncertain environments. – Neck and Greene (2011, p. 55)

Learning Objectives

• Examine the challenges associated with defining the concepts of entrepreneur and entrepreneurship
• Discuss how the evolution of entrepreneurship thought has influenced how we view the concept of entrepreneurship today
• Discuss how the list of basic questions in entrepreneurship research can be expanded to include research inquiries that are important in today’s world
• Discuss how the concepts of entrepreneurial uniqueness, entrepreneurial personality traits, and entrepreneurial cognitions can help society improve its support for entrepreneurship
• Apply the general venturing script to the study of entrepreneurship

This chapter provides you with an overview of entrepreneurship and of the language of entrepreneurship. The challenges associated with defining entrepreneur and entrepreneurship are explored, as is an overview of how entrepreneurship can be studied.

The objective is to enable you to apply current concepts in entrepreneurship to the evaluation of entrepreneurs, their ventures, and the venturing environment. You will develop skills, including the capability to add value in the new venture sector of the economy. You will acquire and practice evaluation skills useful in consulting, advising, and making new venture decisions.

Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship

Considerations influencing definitions of entrepreneur and entrepreneurship.

It is necessary to be able to determine exactly who entrepreneurs are before we can, among other things, study them, count them, provide special loans for them, and calculate how and how much they contribute to our economy.

• Does someone need to start a business from scratch to be called an entrepreneur?
• Can we call someone an entrepreneur if they bought an ongoing business from someone else or took over the operations of a family business from their parents?
• If someone starts a small business and never needs to hire employees, can they be called an entrepreneur?
• If someone buys a business but hires professional managers to run it so they don’t have to be involved in the operations, are they an entrepreneur?
• Is someone an entrepreneur if they buy into a franchise so they can follow a well-established formula for running the operation?
• Is someone an entrepreneur because of what they do or because of how they think?
• Can someone be an entrepreneur without owning their own business?
• Can a person be an entrepreneur because of the nature of the work that they do within a large corporation?

It is also necessary to fully understand what we mean by entrepreneurship before we can study the concept.

Gartner (1990) identified 90 attributes that showed up in definitions of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship provided by entrepreneurs and other experts in the field. The following are a few of these attributes:

• Innovation – Does a person need to be innovative to be considered an entrepreneur? Can an activity be considered to be entrepreneurial if it is not innovative?
• Activities – What activities does a person need to do to be considered an entrepreneur?
• Creation of a new business – Does someone need to start a new business to be considered to be an entrepreneur, or can someone who buys a business, buys into a franchise, or takes over an existing family business be considered an entrepreneur?
• Starts an innovative venture within an established organization – Can someone who works within an existing organization that they don’t own be considered an entrepreneur if they start an innovative venture for their organization?
• Creation of a not-for-profit business – Can a venture be considered to be entrepreneurial if it is a not-for-profit, or should only for-profit businesses be considered entrepreneurial?

After identifying the 90 attributes, Gartner (1990) went back to the entrepreneurs and other experts for help in clustering the attributes into themes that would help summarize what people concerned with entrepreneurship thought about the concept. He ended up with the following eight entrepreneurship themes:

1. The Entrepreneur – The entrepreneur theme is the idea that entrepreneurship involves individuals with unique personality characteristics and abilities (e.g., risk-taking, locus of control, autonomy, perseverance, commitment, vision, creativity). Almost 50% of the respondents rated these characteristics as not important to a definition of entrepreneurship (Gartner, 1990, p. 21, 24).

• “The question that needs to be addressed is: Does entrepreneurship involve entrepreneurs (individuals with unique characteristics)?” (Gartner, 1990, p. 25).

2. Innovation – The innovation theme is characterized as doing something new as an idea, product, service, market, or technology in a new or established organization. The innovation theme suggests that innovation is not limited to new ventures, but recognized as something which older and/or larger organizations may undertake as well (Gartner, 1990, p. 25). Some of the experts Gartner questioned believed that it was important to include innovation in definitions of entrepreneurship and others did not think it was as important.

• “Does entrepreneurship involve innovation?” (Gartner, 1990, p. 25).

3. Organization Creation – The organization creation theme describes the behaviors involved in creating organizations. This theme described acquiring and integrating resource attributes (e.g., Brings resources to bear, integrates opportunities with resources, mobilizes resources, gathers resources) and attributes that described creating organizations (new venture development and the creation of a business that adds value). (Gartner, 1990, p. 25)

• “Does entrepreneurship involve resource acquisition and integration (new venture creation activities)?” (Gartner, 1990, p. 25)

4. Creating Value – This theme articulated the idea that entrepreneurship creates value. The attributes in this factor indicated that value creation might be represented by transforming a business, creating a new business growing a business, creating wealth, or destroying the status quo.

• “Does entrepreneurship involve creating value?” (Gartner, 1990, p. 25).

5. Profit or Nonprofit

• “Does entrepreneurship involve profit-making organizations only” (Gartner, 1990, p. 25)?
• Should a focus on growth be a characteristic of entrepreneurship?

7. Uniqueness – This theme suggested that entrepreneurship must involve uniqueness. Uniqueness was characterized by attributes such as a special way of thinking, a vision of accomplishment, ability to see situations in terms of unmet needs, and creates a unique combination.

• “Does entrepreneurship involve uniqueness?” (Gartner, 1990, p. 26).

8. The Owner-Manager – Some of the respondents questioned by Gartner (1990) did not believe that small mom-and-pop types of businesses should be considered to be entrepreneurial. Some respondents felt that an important element of a definition of entrepreneurship was that a venture be owner-managed.

• To be entrepreneurial, does a venture need to be owner-managed?

Examples of Definitions of Entrepreneur

An entrepreneur can be described as “one who creates a new business in the face of risk and uncertainty for the purpose of achieving profit and growth by identifying significant opportunities and assembling the necessary resources to capitalize on them” (Zimmerer & Scarborough, 2008, p. 5).

An entrepreneur is “one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise” (Entrepreneur, n.d.).

Examples of Definitions of Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship can be defined as a field of business that

seeks to understand how opportunities to create something new (e.g., new products or services, new markets, new production processes or raw materials, new ways of organizing existing technologies) arise and are discovered or created by specific persons, who then use various means to exploit or develop them, thus producing a wide range of effects (Baron, Shane, & Reuber, 2008, p. 4)

A concise definition of entrepreneurship “is that it is the process of pursuing opportunities without limitation by resources currently in hand” (Brooks, 2009, p. 3) and “the process of doing something new and something different for the purpose of creating wealth for the individual and adding value to society” (Kao, 1993, p. 70)

The Evolution of Entrepreneurship Thought

This section includes an overview of how entrepreneurship has evolved to the present day.

The following timeline shows some of the most influential entrepreneurship scholars and the schools of thought (French, English, American, German, and Austrian) their perspectives helped influence and from which their ideas evolved. Schools of thought are essentially groups of people who might or might not have personally known each other, but who shared common beliefs or philosophies.

Figure 1 – Historical and Evolutionary Entrepreneurship Thought (Illustration by Lee A. Swanson)

The Earliest Entrepreneurship

The function, if not the name, of the entrepreneur is probably as old as the institutions of barter and exchange. But only after economic markets became an intrusive element of society did the concept take on pivotal importance. Many economists have recognized the pivotal role of the entrepreneur in a market economy. Yet despite his central importance in economic activity, the entrepreneur has been a shadowy and elusive figure in the history of economic theory (Hebert & Link, 2009, p. 1).

Historically those who acted similarly to the ways we associate with modern day entrepreneurs – namely those who strategically assume risks to seek economic (or other) gains – were military leaders, royalty, or merchants. Military leaders planned their campaigns and battles while assuming significant risks, but by doing so they also stood to gain economic benefits if their strategies were successful. Merchants, like Marco Polo who sailed out of Venice in the late 1200s to search for a trade route to the Orient, also assumed substantial risks in the hope of becoming wealthy (Hebert & Link, 2009).

The entrepreneur, who was also called adventurer , projector , and undertaker during the eighteenth century, was not always viewed in a positive light (Hebert & Link, 2009).

Development of Entrepreneurship as a Concept

Risk and uncertainty.

Richard Cantillon (1680-1734) was born in France and belonged to the French School of thought although he was an Irish economist. He appears to be the person who introduced the term entrepreneur to the world. “According to Cantillon, the entrepreneur is a specialist in taking on risk, ‘insuring’ workers by buying their output for resale before consumers have indicated how much they are willing to pay for it” (Casson & Godley, 2005p. 26). The workers’ incomes are mostly stable, but the entrepreneur risks a loss if market prices fluctuate.

Cantillon distinguished entrepreneurs from two other classes of economic agents; landowners, who were financially independent, and hirelings (employees) who did not partake in the decision-making in exchange for relatively stable incomes through employment contracts. He was the first writer to provide a relatively refined meaning for the term entrepreneurship . Cantillon described entrepreneurs as individuals who generated profits through exchanges. In the face of uncertainty, particularly over future prices, they exercise business judgment. They purchase resources at one price and sell their product at a price that is uncertain, with the difference representing their profit (Chell, 2008; Hebert & Link, 2009).

Farmers were the most prominent entrepreneurs during Cantillon’s lifetime, and they interacted with “arbitrageurs” – or middlemen between farmers and the end consumers – who also faced uncertain incomes, and who were also, therefore, entrepreneurs. These intermediaries facilitated the movement of products from the farms to the cities where more than half of the farm output was consumed. Cantillon observed that consumers were willing to pay a higher price per unit to be able to purchase products in the smaller quantities they wanted, which created the opportunities for the intermediaries to make profits. Profits were the rewards for assuming the risks arising from uncertain conditions. The markets in which profits were earned were characterized by incomplete information (Chell, 2008; Hebert & Link, 2009).

Adolph Reidel (1809-1872), form the German School of thought, picked up on Cantillon’s notion of uncertainty and extended it to theorize that entrepreneurs take on uncertainty so others, namely income earners, do not have to be subject to the same uncertainty. Entrepreneurs provide a service to risk-averse income earners by assuming risk on their behalf. In exchange, entrepreneurs are rewarded when they can foresee the impacts of the uncertainty and sell their products at a price that exceeds their input costs (including the fixed costs of the wages they commit to paying) (Hebert & Link, 2009).

Frank Knight (1885-1972) founded the Chicago School of Economics and belonged to the American School of thought. He refined Cantillon’s perspective on entrepreneurs and risk by distinguishing insurable risk as something that is separate from uncertainty, which is not insurable. Some risks can be insurable because they have occurred enough times in the past that the expected loss from such risks can be calculated. Uncertainty, on the other hand, is not subject to probability calculations. According to Knight, entrepreneurs can’t share the risk of loss by insuring themselves against uncertain events, so they bear these kinds of risks themselves, and profit is the reward that entrepreneurs get from assuming uninsurable risks (Casson & Godley, 2005).

Distinction Between Entrepreneur and Manager

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832), also from the French School, advanced Cantillon’s work, but added that entrepreneurship was essentially a form of management. Say “put the entrepreneur at the core of the entire process of production and distribution” (Hebert & Link, 2009, p. 17). Say’s work resulted in something similar to a general theory of entrepreneurship with three distinct functions; “scientific knowledge of the product; entrepreneurial industry – the application of knowledge to useful purpose; and productive industry – the manufacture of the item by manual labour” (Chell, 2008, p. 20).

Frank Knight made several contributions to entrepreneurship theory, but another of note is how he distinguished an entrepreneur from a manager. He suggested that a manager crosses the line to become an entrepreneur “when the exercise of his/her judgment is liable to error and s/he assumes the responsibility for its correctness” (Chell, 2008, p. 33). Knight said that entrepreneurs calculate the risks associated with uncertain business situations and make informed judgments and decisions with the expectation that – if they assessed the situation and made the correct decisions – they would be rewarded by earning a profit. Those who elect to avoid taking these risks choose the relative security of being employees (Chell, 2008).

Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), from the English School of thought, was one of the founders of neoclassical economics. His research involved distinguishing between the terms capitalist, entrepreneur, and manager. Marshall saw capitalists as individuals who “committed themselves to the capacity and honesty of others, when he by himself had incurred the risks for having contributed with the capital” (Zaratiegui & Rabade, 2005, p. 775). An entrepreneur took control of money provided by capitalists in an effort to leverage it to create more money; but would lose less if something went wrong then would the capitalists. An entrepreneur, however, risked his own reputation and the other gains he could have made by pursuing a different opportunity.

Let us suppose that two men are carrying on smaller businesses, the one working with his own, the other chiefly with borrowed capital. There is one set of risks which is common to both; which may be described as the trade risks of the particular business … But there is another set of risks, the burden of which has to be borne by the man working with borrowed capital, and not by the other; and we may call them personal risks (Marshall, 1961, p. 590; Zaratiegui & Rabade, 2005, p. 776).

Marshall recognized that the reward capitalists received for contributing capital was interest income and the reward entrepreneurs earned was profits. Managers received a salary and, according to Marshall, fulfilled a different function than either capitalists or entrepreneurs – although in some cases, particularly in smaller firms, one person might be both an entrepreneur and a manager. Managers “were more inclined to avoid challenges, innovations and what Schumpeter called the ‘perennial torment of creative destruction’ in favour of a more tranquil life” (Zaratiegui & Rabade, 2005, p. 781). The main risks they faced from firm failure were to their reputations or to their employment status. Managers had little incentive to strive to maximize profits (Zaratiegui & Rabade, 2005).

Amasa Walker (1799-1875) and his son Francis Walker (1840-1897) were from the American School of thought, and they helped shape an American perspective of entrepreneurship following the Civil War of 1861-1865. These scholars claimed that entrepreneurs created wealth, and thus played a different role than capitalists. They believed that entrepreneurs had the power of foresight and leadership qualities that enabled them to organize resources and inject energy into activities that create wealth (Chell, 2008).

Entrepreneurship versus Entrepreneur

Adam Smith (1723-1790), from the English School of thought, published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in 1776. In a departure from the previous thought into entrepreneurship and economics, Smith did not dwell on a particular class of individual. He was concerned with studying how all people fit into the economic system. Smith contended that the economy was driven by self-interest in the marketplace (Chell, 2008).

Also from the English School, David Ricardo (1772-1823) was influenced by Smith, Say, and others. His work focused on how the capitalist system worked. He explained how manufacturers must invest their capital in response to the demand for the products they produce. If demand decreases, manufacturers should borrow less and reduce their workforces. When demand is high, they should do the reverse (Chell, 2008).

Carl Menger (1840-1921), from the Austrian School of thought, ranked goods according to their causal connections to human satisfaction. Lower order goods include items like bread that directly satisfy a human want or need like hunger. Higher order goods are those more removed from satisfying a human need. A second order good is the flour that was used to make the bread. The grain used to make the flour is an even higher order good. Entrepreneurs coordinate these factors of production to turn higher order goods into lower order goods that more directly satisfy human wants and needs (Hebert & Link, 2009).

Menger (1950 [1871], p. 160) established that entrepreneurial activity includes: (a) obtaining information about the economic situation, (b) economic calculation – all the various computations that must be made if a production process is to be efficient, (c) the act of will by which goods of higher order are assigned to a particular production process, and (d) supervising the execution of the production plan so that it may be carried through as economically as possible (Hebert & Link, 2009, p. 43).

Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), from the English School of thought, considered entrepreneurs to be innovators. They “depart from routine, discover new markets, find new sources of supply, improve existing products and lower the costs of production” (Chell, 2008).

Joseph Schumpeter’s (1883-1950) parents were Austrian, he studied at the University of Vienna, conducted research at the University of Graz, served as Austria’s Minister of Finance, and was the president of a bank in the country. Because of the rise of Hitler in Europe, he went to the United States and conducted research at Harvard until he retired in 1949. Because of this, he is sometimes associated with the American School of thought on entrepreneurship (Chell, 2008).

Whereas Menger saw entrepreneurship as occurring because of economic progress, Schumpeter took the opposite stance. Schumpeter saw economic activity as leading to economic development (Hebert & Link, 2009). Entrepreneurs play a central role in Schumpeter’s theory of economic development, and economic development can occur when the factors of production are assembled in new combinations .

Schumpeter (1934) viewed innovation as arising from new combinations of materials and forces. He provided the following five cases of new combinations.

• The introduction of a new good – that is one with which consumers are not yet familiar – or of a new quality of good.
• The introduction of a new method of production, that is one not yet tested by experience in the branch of manufacture concerned, which need by no means be founded upon a discovery scientifically new, and can also exist in a new way of handling a commodity commercially.
• The opening of a new market, that is a market into which the particular branch of manufacture of the country in question has not previously entered, whether or not this market has existed before.
• The conquest of a new source of supply of raw materials or half-manufactured goods, again irrespective of whether this source already exists or whether it has first to be created.
• The carrying out of the new organisation of any industry, like the creation of a monopoly position … or the breaking up of a monopoly position (Schumpeter, 1934, p. 66).

Another concept popularized by Schumpeter – in addition to the notion of new combinations – was creative destruction . This was meant to indicate that the existing ways of doing things need to be dismantled – to be destroyed – to enable a transformation through innovation to a new way of doing things. Entrepreneurs use innovation to disrupt how things are done and to establish a better way of doing those things.

Basic Questions in Entrepreneurship Research

According to Baron (2004a), there are three basic questions of interest in the field of entrepreneurship:

• Why do some persons but not others choose to become entrepreneurs?
• Why do some persons but not others recognize opportunities for new products or services that can be profitably exploited?
• Why are some entrepreneurs so much more successful than others (Baron, 2004a, p. 221)?

To understand where these foundational research questions came from and what their relevance is today, it is useful to study what entrepreneurship research has uncovered so far.

Entrepreneurial Uniqueness

Efforts to teach entrepreneurship have included descriptions of entrepreneurial uniqueness based on personality, behavioural, and cognitive traits (Chell, 2008; Duening, 2010).

• Need for achievement
• Internal locus of control (a belief by an individual that they are in control of their own destiny)
• Risk-taking propensity
• Behavioural traits
• Cognitive skills of successful entrepreneurs

Past studies of personality characteristics and behavioural traits have not been overly successful at identifying entrepreneurial uniqueness.

As it turned out, years of painstaking research along this line has not borne significant fruit. It appears that there are simply not any personality characteristics that are either essential to, or defining of, entrepreneurs that differ systematically from non-entrepreneurs…. Again, investigators proposed a number of behavioural candidates as emblematic of entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, this line of research also resulted in a series of dead ends as examples of successful entrepreneurial behaviours had equal counterparts among samples of non-entrepreneurs. As with the personality characteristic school of thought before it, the behavioural trait school of thought became increasingly difficult to support (Duening, 2010, p. 4-5).

This shed doubt on the value of trying to change personality characteristics or implant new entrepreneurial behaviours through educational programs in an effort to promote entrepreneurship.

New research, however, has resurrected the idea that there might be some value in revisiting personality traits as a topic of study. Additionally, Duening (2010) and has suggested that an important approach to teaching and learning about entrepreneurship is to focus on the “cognitive skills that successful entrepreneurs seem uniquely to possess and deploy” (p. 2). In the next sections we consider the new research on entrepreneurial personality traits and on entrepreneurial cognitions.

Entrepreneurial Personality Traits

While acknowledging that research had yet to validate the value of considering personality and behaviour traits as ways to distinguish entrepreneurs from non-entrepreneurs or unsuccessful ones, Chell (2008) suggested that researchers turn their attention to new sets of traits including: “the proactive personality, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, perseverance and intuitive decision-making style. Other traits that require further work include social competence and the need for independence” (p. 140).

In more recent years scholars have considered how the Big Five personality traits – extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism (sometimes presented as emotional stability ), and openness to experience (sometimes referred to as intellect) – might be used to better understand entrepreneurs. It appears that the Big Five traits might be of some use in predicting entrepreneurial success. Research is ongoing in this area, but in one example, Caliendo, Fossen, and Kritikos (2014) studied whether personality constructs might “influence entrepreneurial decisions at different points in time” (p. 807), and found that “high values in three factors of the Big Five approach—openness to experience, extraversion, and emotional stability (the latter only when we do not control for further personality characteristics)—increase the probability of entry into self-employment” (p. 807). They also found “that some specific personality characteristics, namely risk tolerance, locus of control, and trust, have strong partial effects on the entry decision” (p. 807). They also found that people who scored higher on agreeableness were more likely to exit their businesses, possibly meaning that people with lower agreeableness scores might prevail longer as entrepreneurs. When it came to specific personality traits, their conclusions indicated that those with an external locus of control were more likely to stop being self-employed after they had run their businesses for a while. There are several implications for research like this, including the potential to better understand why some entrepreneurs behave as they do based upon their personality types and the chance to improve entrepreneurship education and support services.

Entrepreneurial Cognitions

It is only fairly recently that entrepreneurship scholars have focused on cognitive skills as a primary factor that differentiates successful entrepreneurs from non-entrepreneurs and less successful entrepreneurs. This approach deals with how entrepreneurs think differently than non-entrepreneurs (Duening, 2010; Mitchell et al., 2007).

Entrepreneurial cognitions are the knowledge structures that people use to make assessments, judgments or decisions involving opportunity evaluation and venture creation and growth. In other words, research in entrepreneurial cognition is about understanding how entrepreneurs use simplifying mental models to piece together previously unconnected information that helps them to identify and invent new products or services, and to assemble the necessary resources to start and grow businesses (Mitchell, Busenitz, et al., 2002, p. 97).

Mitchell, Smith, et al. (2002) provided the example of how the decision to create a new venture (dependent variable) was influenced by three sets of cognitions (independent variables). They described these cognitions as follows:

Arrangements cognitions are the mental maps about the contacts, relationships, resources, and assets necessary to engage in entrepreneurial activity; willingness cognitions are the mental maps that support commitment to venturing and receptivity to the idea of starting a venture; ability cognitions consist of the knowledge structures or scripts (Glaser, 1984) that individuals have to support the capabilities, skills, norms, and attitudes required to create a venture (Mitchell et al., 2000). These variables draw on the idea that cognitions are structured in the minds of individuals (Read, 1987), and that these knowledge structures act as “scripts” that are the antecedents of decision making (Leddo & Abelson, 1986, p. 121; Mitchell, Smith, et al., 2002, p. 10)

Cognitive Perspective to Understanding Entrepreneurship

According to Baron (2004a), by taking a cognitive perspective, we might better understand entrepreneurs and the role they play in the entrepreneurial process.

The cognitive perspective emphasizes the fact that everything we think, say, or do is influenced by mental processes—the cognitive mechanisms through which we acquire store, transform, and use information. It is suggested here that this perspective can be highly useful to the field of entrepreneurship. Specifically, it can assist the field in answering three basic questions it has long addressed: (1) Why do some persons but not others choose to become entrepreneurs? (2) Why do some persons but not others recognize opportunities for new products or services that can be profitably exploited? And (3) Why are some entrepreneurs so much more successful than others (Baron, 2004a, p. 221-222)?

Baron (2004a), illustrated how cognitive differences between people might explain why some people end up pursuing entrepreneurial pursuits and others do not. For example, prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1977) and other decision-making or behavioural theories might be useful in this regard. Research into cognitive biases might also help explain why some people become entrepreneurs.

Baron (2004a) also revealed ways in which cognitive concepts like signal detection theory, regulation theory, and entrepreneurial might help explain why some people are better at entrepreneurial opportunity recognition. He also illustrated how some cognitive models and theories – like risk perception, counterfactual thinking, processing style, and susceptibility to cognitive errors – might help explain why some entrepreneurs are more successful than others.

Cognitive Perspective and the Three Questions

• Prospect Theory
• Cognitive Biases
• Signal Detection Theory
• Regulation Theory
• Entrepreneurial Alertness
• Risk Perception
• Counterfactual Thinking
• Processing Style
• Susceptibility to Cognitive Errors

Entrepreneurial Scripts

• “Cognition has emerged as an important theoretical perspective for understanding and explaining human behavior and action” (Dutta & Thornhill, 2008, p. 309).
• Cognitions are all processes by which sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used (Neisser, 1976).
• Cognitions lead to the acquisition of knowledge, and involve human information processing.
• Is a mental model, or information processing short-cut that can give information form and meaning, and enable subsequent interpretation and action.
• The subsequent interpretation and actions can result in expert performance … they can also result in thinking errors.
• the processes that transfer expertise, and
• the actual expertise itself.
• Scripts are generally framed as a linear sequence of steps, usually with feedback loops, that can explain how to achieve a particular task – perhaps like developing a business plan.
• Sometimes scripts can be embedded within other scripts. For example, within a general venturing script that outlines the sequences of activities that can lead to a successful business launch, there will probably be sub-scripts describing how entrepreneurs can search for ideas, screen those ideas until one is selected, plan how to launch a sustainable business based upon that idea and including securing the needed financial resources, setting up the business, starting it, effectively managing its ongoing operations, and managing the venture such that that entrepreneur can extract the value that they desire from the enterprise at the times and in the ways they want it.
• The most effective scripts include an indication of the norms that outline performance standards and indicate how to determine when any step in the sequence has been properly completed.

General Venturing Script

Generally, entrepreneurship is considered to consist of the following elements, or subscripts (Brooks, 2009; Mitchell, 2000).

• Idea Screening
• Planning and Financing
• Ongoing Operations

Searching (also called idea formulation or opportunity recognition)

• This script begins when a person decides they might be a potential entrepreneur (or when an existing entrepreneur decides they need more ideas in their idea pool ).
• This script ends when there are a sufficient number of ideas in the idea pool.
• overcome mental blockages to creativity which might hinder this person’s ability to identify viable ideas;
• implement steps to identify a sufficient number of ideas (most likely 5 or more) which the person is interested in investigating to determine whether they might be viable given general criteria such as this person’s personal interests and capabilities;

Idea Screening (also called concept development)

• This script begins when the person with the idea pool is no longer focusing on adding new ideas to it; but is instead taking steps to choose the best idea for them given a full range of specific criteria .
• This script ends when one idea is chosen from among those in the idea pool.
• Evaluate the political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal climates
• Evaluate the degree of competitiveness in the industry, the threat of substitutes emerging, the threat of new entrants to the industry, the degree of bargaining power of buyers, and the degree of bargaining power of suppliers.
• Do a market profile analysis to assess the attractiveness of the position within the industry that the potential venture will occupy.
• Formulate and evaluate potential strategies to leverage organizational strengths, overcome/minimize weaknesses, take advantage of opportunities, and overcome/minimize threats;
• Complete financial projections and analyze them to evaluate financial attractiveness;
• Assess the founder fit with the ideas;
• Evaluate the core competencies of the organization relative to the idea;
• Assess advice solicited from trusted advisers

Planning and Financing (also called resource determination and acquisition)

• This script begins when the idea screening script ends and when the person begins making the plans to implement the single idea chosen from the idea pool, which is done in concert with securing financing to implement the venture idea.
• This script ends when sufficient business planning has been done and when adequate financing has been arranged.
• The scripting process involves a logical flow of steps to develop a business plan and secure adequate financing to start the business.

Set-Up (also called launch)

• This script begins when the planning and financing script ends and when the person begins implementing the plans needed to start the business.
• This script ends when the business is ready to start-up.
• The scripting process involves a logical flow of steps, including purchasing and installing equipment, securing the venture location and finishing all the needed renovations, recruiting and hiring any staff needed for start-up, and the many other steps needed to prepare for start-up.
• Start-Up (also called launch)
• This script begins when the set-up script ends and when the business opens and begins making sales.
• This script ends when the business has moved beyond the point where the entrepreneur must continually fight for the business’s survival and persistence. It ends when the entrepreneur can instead shift emphasis toward business growth or maintaining the venture’s stability.
• The scripting process involves a logical flow of steps needed to establish a new venture.

Ongoing Operations (also called venture growth)

• This script begins when the start-up script ends and when the business has established persistence and is implementing growth (or maintenance) strategies.
• This script ends when the entrepreneur chooses to harvest the value they generated with the venture.
• The scripting process involves a logical flow of steps needed to grow (or maintain) a venture.

Studying Entrepreneurship

The following quotations from two preeminent entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education researchers indicate the growing interest in studies in this field.

Entrepreneurship has emerged over the last two decades as arguably the most potent economic force the world has ever experienced. With that expansion has come a similar increase in the field of entrepreneurship education. The recent growth and development in the curricula and programs devoted to entrepreneurship and new-venture creation have been remarkable. The number of colleges and universities that offer courses related to entrepreneurship has grown from a handful in the 1970s to over 1,600 in 2005 (Kuratko, 2005, p. 577).

Interest in entrepreneurship has heightened in recent years, especially in business schools. Much of this interest is driven by student demand for courses in entrepreneurship, either because of genuine interest in the subject, or because students see entrepreneurship education as a useful hedge given uncertain corporate careers (Venkataraman, 1997, p. 119).

Approaches to Studying Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is a discipline, which means an individual can learn about it, and about how to be an effective entrepreneur. It is a myth that people are born entrepreneurs and that others cannot learn to become entrepreneurs (Drucker, 1985). Kuratko (2005) asserted that the belief previously held by some that entrepreneurship cannot be taught has been debunked, and the focus has shifted to what topics should be taught and how they should be covered.

Solomon (2007) summarized some of the research on what should be covered in entrepreneurship courses, and how it should be taught. While the initial focus was on actions like developing business plans and being exposed to real entrepreneurs, more recently this approach has been supplemented by an emphasis on technical, industry, and personal experience. “It requires critical thinking and ethical assessment and is based on the premise that successful entrepreneurial activities are a function of human, venture and environmental conditions” (p. 172). Another approach “calls for courses to be structured around a series of strategic development challenges including opportunity identification and feasibility analysis; new venture planning, financing and operating; new market development and expansion strategies; and institutionalizing innovation” (p. 172). This involves having students interact with entrepreneurs by interviewing them, having them act as mentors, and learning about their experiences and approaches through class discussions.

Sources of Information for Studying Entrepreneurship

According to Kuratko (2005), “three major sources of information supply the data related to the entrepreneurial process or perspective” (p. 579).

• Academic journals like Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice , Journal of Business Venturing , and Journal of Small Business Management
• Proceedings of conferences like Proceedings of the Academy of Management and Proceedings of the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada
• Textbooks on entrepreneurship
• Books about entrepreneurship
• Biographies or autobiographies of entrepreneurs
• News periodicals like Canadian Business and Profit
• Trade periodicals like Entrepreneur and Family Business
• Government publications available through sources like the Enterprise Saskatchewan and Canada-Saskatchewan Business Service Centre (CSBSC) websites and through various government resource centers
• Data might be collected from entrepreneurs and about entrepreneurs through surveys, interviews, or other methods applied by researchers.
• Speeches and presentations by practicing entrepreneurs

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Home | Blog | 12 Easy Entrepreneurship Activities For Any Class (Plus 3 Free Lessons)

12 Easy Entrepreneurship Activities For Any Class (Plus 3 Free Lessons)

Get your free entrepreneurship lessons

1. The Envelope Exercise

For this activity, print fake money and place small amounts in envelopes for individuals or small groups of students. You can choose to give everyone different amounts of money or keep it all equal. Explain that your students’ goal is to increase their investment — and in doing so, use the collaboration and critical thinking skills that are important in entrepreneurship.

Give students 20 to 30 minutes to brainstorm before having each individual or group share their ideas. Odds are high that they will be surprised by how easy it is for them to make money!

2. Defining Problems Exercise

Entrepreneurs find solutions to problems they see in the world . This means that the ability to clearly define problem s is important in entrepreneurship careers . To help students build this skill, s how them pictures that depict issues (like the one below) and ask them to define the problems they can see.   

Next, ask the students what information they would need to help define the problem better . They’ll want to start coming up with solutions right away but challenge them to focus on clearly defining the issue before trying to resolve it.   

3. Ready, Set, Design!

For this exercise, divide students into groups and give each group a challenge such as thinking of a new way to drink on the go or a new method of communication; keep the challenge open ended. Give each group a bag of everyday materials such as rubber bands, pipe cleaners, and foil. Have students design a product based on the challenge.   

After 15 minutes, have each group present their design and explain why that product meets the challenge. The point of this activity is to get students thinking creatively without getting hung up on the details.  

4. The StartUp Podcast

The StartUp podcast is excellent for sparking conversations about entrepreneurship in class. It illuminates important concepts revolving around entrepreneurial life. You can have students listen to an episode for homework and then facilitate a class discussion on what stood out to them in the episode.  

5. The Business Proposition

This activity will give students practice articulating a value proposition, which is a simple statement summarizing why a customer would choose your business or product. To get started, go over the definition of a value proposition and give students a brief faux business/product idea or have them come up with their own.   

Ask students to express their value proposition in a concise way. It may sound easy but keeping it brief can be challenging. This is a great exercise for helping students develop their entrepreneurial spirit.  

6. Wacky Ideas and 2-Minute Pitch

For this fun entrepreneurship activity, give students any two objects and have them brainstorm ways they can combine the objects into one invention. Then they must define the invention. Have them answer questions such as:  

• What is it?  
• What can it do?   
• Who uses it?   
• How could it be used differently?   

After defining the invention, students have two minutes to pitch it to the class. They should start by introducing themselves, the name of their company, and their invention. Once they’ve made their introductions, have them explain how their invention works and why people need it.  

7. Reverse Brainstorming

In reverse brainstorming exercises, you take a problem and try to make it worse. This process allows you consider perspectives you may not have thought of before. An example problem you can present to students may be that they’re trying to study in the library, but people are being too loud in the hallway.   

Next, ask students how they can make the situation worse such as opening the library door, so the hallway commotion is louder. For every idea they come up with for how to make the situation worse, they then must find a solution for the issue. Problem solving and creative thinking are highly valued entrepreneurship skills, and this activity focuses on building both.  

8. Entrepreneurship Videos

There are tons of short, free videos online discussing all aspects of entrepreneurship. You can play one at the beginning of class to introduce students to the topic of entrepreneurship careers or have them watch the videos as homework. Below are a few examples of short videos you can use.  

• What is an Entrepreneur?  
• Who Even is an Entrepreneur?  
• The Best Advice for Entrepreneurs  

9. Entrepreneurial Mindset Cards

There are 24 entrepreneurial mindset cards from venturelab that help your students build entrepreneurship skills. Y ou can print the cards or u se the random card generator on the site to play their suggested games or any other game that you come up with . One of their suggested games starts with dealing a card to each student . Then h av e them take turns reading the mindset definition and answering the question on the card.  

10. Pitch Challenge Toolkit

The P itch Challenge Toolkit is a free, five-lesson pitch challenge consisting of a simple set of activities to help your students learn entrepreneurship soft skills such as creativity, problem solving, critical thinking, and presentation skills. This is an excellent toolkit for developing workforce readiness skills for 21 st century careers , regardless of whether students pursue a career in entrepreneurship.  

11. Free Entrepreneurship Lessons

Realityworks offers a free series of lessons focused on a variety of entrepreneurship-related topics which includes many of the activities mentioned above! These lessons will help teach students about what it’s like to be, think, and act like an entrepreneur. You can teach all three lessons together or choose which ones fit best in your class. These lessons offer an easy way to integrate a brief entrepreneurship program into any CTE course .  

Access your free entrepreneurship lessons

12. Realityworks Contemporary Entrepreneurship Program

Our ready-to-use Contemporary Entrepreneurship Program helps you create an engaging two-to-three-week unit all about entrepreneurship.

Through this program, students will learn how to be an entrepreneur, generate business/product ideas, conduct market research, consider legal and financial issues, and write their own business plan.  

Looking for more entrepreneurship teaching resources? We suggest these resources:  

• Checking out this in-depth blog post all about our Contemporary Entrepreneurship Program  
• Watching our webinar, “Best Practices for Integrating Entrepreneurship Into CTE Courses:”  

• And of course, don’t forget to download these three free entrepreneurship lessons .

2 thoughts on “ 12 Easy Entrepreneurship Activities For Any Class (Plus 3 Free Lessons) ”

Hello. I’m a CTE Business and Marketing instructor in Idaho and I’m very interested in purchasing the Contemporary Entrepreneurship course packet. Is it possible to get a quote and a copy of your company’s W9 so my school district can set you up as a vendor?

Thank you for reaching out, Sarah! We’d love to assist you. I will pass your information to our Account Services Team, who will reach out if they need anything more from you to provide the quote. If you have any questions, in the meantime, you can contact them anytime via email ([email protected]), phone (800-830-1416) or by live chatting on our website. Thank you! 🙂

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23+ Free Entrepreneur Lesson Plans (Projects, Worksheets, etc.)

By: Author Amanda L. Grossman

Posted on Last updated: December 14, 2022

Need free entrepreneurship curriculum, lesson plans, and projects? Here's entrepreneur lesson plans for high school, middle school, and elementary.

So, you’re looking for entrepreneur lesson plans to help turn your kids or students into the innovators of tomorrow.

And not just to make them into entrepreneurs, but to benefit your kids and students with the following results of teaching entrepreneurship :

• Improved academic performance
• Increased problem-solving and decision-making capabilities
• Improved interpersonal relationships
• Higher self-esteem

But, exactly how are you supposed to teach entrepreneurship?

Entrepreneurs, among other qualities, need to be able to recognize opportunities in the marketplace. This means finding a need, and figuring out how to solve that need in a profitable way.

This can be as simple as a kidpreneur/kidpreneurship (or kidpreneur-in-the-making) opening a lemonade stand on a smoldering July day near a construction site, and as complicated as creating a machine knob specifically for tea growers in Japan.

And having this ability doesn't have to result in a person starting their own business; it works equally as well for your child if they work for someone else in the form of more merit raises, one-time bonuses for one-off projects, promotions, leverage in salary negotiations, etc.

In fact, the skill of recognizing an opportunity, and seizing it by writing my own job description resulted in me snagging my first job out of college (worth an awesome $40,000 + benefits to me at the time). More on that in a bit.

What are the other skills a child needs to learn to help them as an entrepreneur?

Psst: you'll also want to check out my resource list of youth entrepreneurship programs , entrepreneur biographies for kids , kid entrepreneur kits , and full review of the Teen Entrepreneur Toolbox . 

Article Content

How Do You Teach Entrepreneurship?

Teaching entrepreneurship is a bit trickier than, say, teaching algebra. With algebra, the equations come out with the same solutions, every time. But with entrepreneurship?

There are an endless number of variables that go into it, and an endless number of outcomes that can come out of it.

How are you supposed to teach for that?

One of the best ways to teach entrepreneurship is to choose entrepreneurial projects, activities, and lesson plans that aim at nurturing these entrepreneur skills:

• Ability to identify opportunities
• Self confidence
• At least basic knowledge of business finances/financial literacy
• Knows how to take measured risk
• Vision and creativity

Elementary School Entrepreneurship Curriculum

Excited to start teaching your elementary school-aged kids about entrepreneurship? Let me share some entrepreneurship lesson plans, resources, and curriculum with you.

Also, check out these 3 kid business plan examples .

1. Venture Lab

Who It’s For : Grades 1-12

Financial Aid : ( Free for non-commercial use ) Curriculum that organizations can purchase to use with students

Length of Program : 90-minute lessons

Location : N/A

Venture Lab offers a curriculum suited for 1st – 12th graders (curriculum is divided into lower elementary, upper elementary, and middle school/high school.) This is a course in a box with all of the lesson plans already completed and is meant to be utilized as part of regular coursework, after school programs, or camps.

Its focus is on teaching girls components of entrepreneurship such as STEAM concepts and design thinking.

2. Money Monsters Start their Own Business

Who It’s For : 4th – 8th grade

Students will read through the Money Monsters Start their Own Business book (PDF provided – 51 pages), and then play a game that has them experience the ups and downs of starting a business.

I love how a Toy Store Income Tracker is included so that each student can track their own earnings and see the numbers for themselves.

Psst: you'll also want to check out Federal Reserve Bank's webinar on teaching kids entrepreneurship , which will give you some lesson plan ideas. 

Starting a Business Lesson Plans for Middle School

Do you want to teach your middle school kid (or student) how to start a business, and you need a lesson plan? I’ve actually created a Take Your Child to Work Day printable which will give you lots of ideas for your starting a business lesson plan.

More middle school business lesson plans for how to start a business (all free):

• Federal Reserve Bank's Jay Starts a Business (Grades 3-6; comes with teacher's manual with lesson plans)
• Free Kid Business Plan Templates
• Biz Kid’s Crash Course on Entrepreneurship for Middle School
• EverFI’s Venture Entrepreneurial Expedition (for grades 7-10).
• Small Business Administration’s Young Entrepreneurs course
• Foundation for Economic Education’s Booms and Busts , What is Entrepreneurship? , What is the Entrepreneur’s Role in Creating Value? , etc. (students can earn a Certificate of Achievement)
• TeenBusiness’s Entrepreneur Lesson Videos series
• Parade of Entrepreneurs Lesson Plan
• Lemonade Stand Worksheets , and my best Lemonade Stand Ideas

Psst: Try holding a market day in your class. Here are 22 things for kids to make and sell , 17 boy crafts to sell , and help pricing their products in this market day lesson plan .

Teaching Entrepreneurship to High School Students – Free Entrepreneurship Curriculum

There are some great curriculum and materials out there for teaching entrepreneurship in high school, many of which include entrepreneur worksheets for students.

Psst: you also might want to check out these 5 business books for teens , and 11 business games for students .

1. Alison’s Entrepreneurial Skills Path

Who It’s For : Business students, and people interested in learning about creating a business

Financial Aid : Free

Length of Program : 6 lessons, each between 1 and 3 hours

Alison is a free, online platform with tons of courses, and one of the paths you can go down is an entrepreneurial skills one.

Teachers of the courses include venture capitalists, professors at Harvard, and professional entrepreneurs.

Lessons include:

• Characteristics of the Successful Entrepreneur
• Critical Skills for Entrepreneurs
• Creating an Entrepreneur’s Checklist for Success
• Entrepreneurship – Creating the Business
• Key Elements of Entrepreneurial Success
• Why Entrepreneurs Should Think Big

2. Youth Entrepreneurs

Who It’s For : Students

Financial Aid : Schools pay for this program, with the cost based on how many students get free and reduced lunches

Length of Program : 1 year

With this program, students first focus on economics, then they focus on starting their own businesses.

3. Diamond Challenge Business Curriculum

Who It’s For : Kids and teens

Length of Program : 14 modules

Looking for a video business curriculum with instructional guides? The Diamond Challenge’s program covers the following:

• What is Entrepreneurship?
• Opportunity Recognition
• Opportunity Screening
• Types of Businesses
• Building a Business like a Scientist
• Using a Business Model Canvas

They also offer a Social Curriculum track that’s 6 video modules long, including:

• What is Social Entrepreneurship?
• Wicked Problems and Grand Challenges
• Social Entrepreneurship Processes and Challenges

4. INCubateredu

Who It’s For : 10th and 12th graders

Financial Aid : Free (at schools where it’s available)

Length of Program : 1 year (followed by acceleratoredu for the 2nd year)

Through Uncharted Learning’s program, 10 th to 12 th graders develop their own business, pitch their idea ta a shark-tank style event, and even have a chance at receiving funding.

5. JA BE Entrepreneurial®

Who It’s For : Grades 9-12

Financial Aid : Free for students

Length of Program : 7, 45-minute sessions

Location : Anywhere

Through your child’s school, they can take Junior Achievement’s Entrepreneurial program. The course teaches students how to create a business plan, plus how to start a venture.

Lessons covered include:

• What’s My Business?
• Who’s My Customer?
• What’s My Advantage?
• Competitive Advantages
• Ethics are Good for Business
• The Business Plan

6. JA Company Program Blended Model

Length of Program : 13 classes (2 hours/class), or as a 1-year program with 26 classes (1 hour/class)

Location : Anywhere (online course)

This is an online program that teaches high schoolers how to solve a problem/fill a need in their community through entrepreneurship.

• Start a Business
• Vet the Venture
• Create a Structure
• Launch the Business!
• Run the Business

7. The Mint's Be Your Own Boss

Who It’s For : Teens

Length of Program : 3 lessons

Starting with the Be Your Own Boss Challenge , The Mint takes your teen through the following three lesson:

• Planning Your Business
• Money & Your Business
• The Law & Your Business

8. Wharton High School's Entrepreneurship

Who It’s For : High School students

Length of Program : 50+ lesson plans

These lesson plans go through the following:

• Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurial Opportunities
• Global Markets
• Business Plans

9. YE$ Youth Entrepreneurship

Who It's for : high school students

Cost : Free

Location : Anywhere (it's a PDF)

Here's a free PDF with tons of entrepreneur lesson plans and research done for educators, that is meant to go along with a 4-H program. You'll find some nuggets in here, plus, it's free!

Now let’s take a look at entrepreneurial projects that can teach your kids and teens all about starting a business with hands-on experiences.

10. Build a Business Plan

Who It's For : Middle School and High School

Location : Anywhere (online)

Check out this plug n' play business plan creator! You could send your students to this page to work through a business idea of theirs.

Then, at the end, they can print out their business plan!

Questions they'll need to answer include:

• Your big idea
• Who will buy
• How you'll spend and make money

Entrepreneur Worksheets for Students

While I would recommend taking on one of the projects below, or one of the hands-on lesson plans from above, there are also entrepreneur worksheets students can use to learn about businesses.

Here's a few of my favorites (all free):

• Lemonade Stand Free Printables (here's my best lemonade stand ideas , too)
• Lemonade Stand Worksheets
• Family Guide to Getting a Family Business Going (kid-centered)
• Small Business Administration's Lean Startup Business Plan
• Take your students through the DECA Idea Challenge (you'll need to pick your own everyday item to challenge students with, as the competition has ended for the year)
• Take your students through the DECA Entrepreneur of Tomorrow Challenge (again, the competition is over, but the PDF is still available for you to set up your own)

Psst: you might want to check out my review on the Teen Entrepreneur Toolbox .

2 Entrepreneurial Projects – What is an Entrepreneurial Project?

Entrepreneurial projects are a smart way to teach entrepreneurship to kids, because, as with any project, it gives them a chance to dive deeper into a topic that interest them (all under the guise of teaching them how to start and run a business).

Entrepreneur Project #1: Winter Beverage Outdoor Tasting Contest

It’s soooooo easy to sit inside all winter long and slowly accumulate cabin fever (plus a few pounds). That's why you've got to look for fun things to do in the winter.

Well today? We’re going to switch things up. I’ve created a family date night for you ( family winter activities !) that has both an indoor AND an outdoor component.

But don’t worry – with this fun winter activity we’ll keep things toasty throughout.

So, what’s the game plan? Each of your kid(dos) will make (rather,  create ) a warm winter beverage recipe  indoors . Then here's the twist: you’re going to host a family taste testing contest around your fire pit in the backyard.

Not only will this make a fun family memory, but your kid(dos) will actually walk away with more money knowledge in the process centered around the all-important lesson of how to make a profit!

Psst: Now that’s a money lesson I could have used as a kid, specifically as I’ve gone into biz for myself as an adult.

Host a Winter Beverage Outdoor Taste Testing

Finding fun things to do in the winter doesn't have to mean you're freezing your tootsies off. There's nothing better to keep you warm outdoors in the wintertime than a toasty drink. Well, a toasty drink around a roaring fire.

Here’s how it’s going down:

Step #1: Choose an Event Date

Build the anticipation for your family by choosing a date 1 to 2 weeks out (so that there’s time for you guys to complete the rest of the prep work).

Fill out the invitation on Page 1 of the free printable, and display prominently on your family’s bulletin board/gathering center in the kitchen so everyone knows the date of the big event.

Set the stage for the competition by having your family read their mission out loud. Other cool factors you can add in: make it a Friday or Saturday family date night, under the stars. Let the kids stay up a little past bedtime to complete.

Step #2: Your Kid(dos) Research Hot Drink Ideas to Enter into the Competition

Your kids are the ones entering the competition. They’ll be in the driver seat of actually creating their own recipe from scratch (with some inspiration from below).

There are lots of toasty, kid-friendly drink recipe ideas to get them started:

• Hot caramel apple cider
• Vanilla steamer with cinnamon
• Harry Potter Warm Butterbeer

They’ll get lots of help not only from looking up recipe examples on sites like Pinterest, but also from the worksheet in the free printable (Page 2).

Step #3: Shop for the Ingredients

Once your budding restaurant consultant has determined possible ingredients they’ll need for their signature drink, they’ll need you, Mama Bear, to purchase them.

Take the list your kid(dos) have created and go to the store (solo, or with them) to make the purchases.

Having trouble coming up with a pool of possible ingredients to buy? Use the lists below for inspiration of what to pick up (a few of these ingredients you probably already have at home) and let your kids create what they can from it:

• Bases : hot cocoa, apple cider, chai tea, milk
• Flavors : cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla extract, flavor syrups
• Sweeteners : sugar, brown sugar, caramel
• Creamers : milk, half & half, almond milk, heavy cream, etc.
• Top-offs : whipped cream, caramel sauce, orange peels for zesting

Save your store receipt, as your kid(dos) will need this information to price their drinks later on.

Step #4: Your Kid(dos) Tinker + Perfect their Drink

Using the purchased ingredients as well as anything in your home they can find, host a kitchen lab session where your kid(dos) tinker with ingredients and perfect their super-secret, signature recipes (talk about fun things to do in the winter inside!).

They’ll write down the exact portion sizes to each ingredient that they use as they go along, which is important for the next step.

Step #5: Your Kid(dos) Figure Out the Profit Margin of their Signature Drink

Remember, the goal is to create a new drink for this restaurant that not only costs less than $5, but has at least a 60% profit margin for the owner.

Ahem: between you and me, that means their cost needs to come in under $2.00.

So, as your kid tinkers with ingredients, they need to keep price in mind.

Note: this step can seem a bit unwieldy, but is SO important for the whole process. Just know – I’m outlining both how to do this all by hand, as well as giving you shortcuts to online calculators where your kid(dos) will still learn the process by setting up the inputs and thinking through how it all fits together.

Of course, we’re not talking about the cost of the entire ingredient that you’ve purchased. After all, it’s unlikely they’ll use an entire carton of milk to create one drink. We’re talking about the small portion size that they used of the product.

In other words, they’re not going to get the cost of a single drink they’ve created from your grocery store receipt as it is now. They need to do some calculating based on the measurements of each ingredient that goes into each drink.

You need to know how much it costs to create just ONE of your super-secret signature drinks so that you can calculate the profit margin.

What’s a profit margin? It’s the percentage of what you keep as profit from each $1.00. For example, a 20% profit margin means that we earn $0.20 on every dollar. That means that the other 80% or $0.80 are expenses. Remember that Jack, the man from The Yeti Slide, needs a 60% profit margin, or $0.60 on each dollar in profit after expenses are taken out.

Step #1: Write down your ingredients + quantities.

Step #2: Convert each quantity in your recipe to the quantity on the product label.

Divide your ingredients up by dry ones (like cocoa powder), and wet ones (like heavy cream or vanilla extract).

Then use the appropriate table below to convert the amount in your recipe to the amount that’s found on the ingredient’s product label (front of package).

For example, if you used 3 teaspoons of cocoa powder (dry ingredient), then your conversion is to a ½ ounce (the cocoa powder can is in ounces). Or if you used 2 tablespoons of almond milk, you find on the Wet Conversion table that you used 1 fl. Oz. (the almond milk carton is in Fl. Oz.).

Hint: Can’t find the conversion or a little confused? You can plug the exact quantity of your ingredients into  this liquid converter  or  this dry converter calculator  online and convert it into the measurement found on your product label).

Conversion tables:

Dry Conversions

Liquid Conversions:

Step #3: Calculate the cost of each quantity of ingredient used.

Now you need to price each converted quantity of ingredient by figuring out how much each ounce or fluid ounce costs, and then multiplying it by the amount you’ve used.

Hint: A good estimate to use for dashes of spices such as cinnamon or nutmeg is $0.05.

• Write down the overall price of each ingredient used.
• Write down the converted amount you used of it.
• Divide the total amount in the product package by its price to find what each ounce or fluid ounce costs.
• Then multiply that by the converted amount you used.
• Write down the cost. Then add all of the individual ingredient costs to get your total expense to create the drink.

Example: I used 1 tablespoon (tbsp.) of heavy cream. One 8 fl. oz. container of heavy cream at the store costs $2.99. That is $0.37/ounce. I look at the conversion chart below, and see that 1 tbsp. converts to ½ ounce. So, I divide $0.37/2 ounces, and see that this ingredient for just one drink costs $0.186 (you can round up to $0.19).

Ingredient Cost:   $2.99 _ Converted Amount Used:  ½ fl. Oz.  Total Product Amount:  8 fl. Oz.   Cost per ounce:  _$0.37/fl. Oz.  Cost of Ingredient Used:  $0.37 X ½ = $0.186 .

Looking for a shortcut?  Here’s a free online tool for pricing out beverages . You’ll need the converted amounts.

Step #4: Calculate Your Profit Margin

Figure out how high your profit margin is if you sell the drink for $5.00.

Profit on Drink: $5.00 –  total drink cost  = _ $ _________.

Profit Per Dollar:  Your answer from above  \  Cost drink is sold for ($5.00)  =  $ Profit

Profit Margin:  $ Profit  X 100 =  Profit Margin%

Step #6: Taste Judging Begins

By now you’ve set the scene for some fun things to do in the winter outdoors – think a crackling bonfire out in the backyard (or in your fire pit. Heck, you can de-hibernate the grill for some winter outdoor cooking/heating), plus a table/flat surface where your kids can place their super-secret signature creations.

Bust out some blankets, cover straw bales with table cloths…you get the idea. (And if you’re in Houston like we are? Well, a hoodie should suffice).

Have your kid(dos) place their drinks on the tasting mat, as well as fill in how much their drink costs and what the profit margin is (all calculations they’ll be guided through on the free printable).

Now they get to take a break, while the parents taste + score each one!

Included in the printable are both a tasting mat as well as a score card with specific criteria, such as inventiveness, taste, and profit margin.

Step #7: Declare the Winners

There are winners in a variety of categories, and then an overall drink that is chosen for The Yeti Slide's Yeti Roasts:

• Most Inventive
• Best Money-Maker
• Newest Yeti Slide Signature Drink

Looking for fun things to do in the winter? This two-part activity for your child that will leave them understanding profit margins like a pro, plus give your family an awesome family date night under the stars on a winter evening when you might otherwise be watching tv.

What could be better than that? If nothing else, you’ll have created quite the memory.

Entrepreneur Project #2: A System for Your Child to Identify a Need in Your Home + Propose a Solution

We want to encourage your child to come to you with things they see that could use improvement, and ways they could add value or provide a solution for you.

Let's go through how to do this.

Step #1 : Discuss with your child the idea that people need things + services.

Here's a conversation outline for you with a few blanks to fill in (where underlined) :

“People need things and services in their lives. They need things to maintain their health, they need things to make life more enjoyable. They need parts to make repairs to their belongings. They need really cool items to buy as gifts for others. They need better systems or processes to make things work more efficiently, which just means taking less time and less money and getting the same (or better) results. All over the world, people need things. In my own life, three needs that I've satisfied through purchasing something include  X ,  Y , and  Z . By purchasing them, they made my life easier because  <<FILL IN SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR EACH EXAMPLE YOU GAVE>> . Generally, when people need something, they are willing to pay money for the solution. That's why there are so many companies, all which provide products + solutions for people's needs.”

Pssst: MAN I wish I could go back 17 years and give myself this talk! Would've saved me several adult years of banging my head against the wall trying to understand how to make money.

Step #2 : Task your child with identifying a need around the house/property/car.

What could this look like?

A Few Examples for you + your kiddo :

• Find a more efficient way to organize the “command center” in your home.
• Use Google Maps or another program to find a more efficient route for your commute.
• Organize the wood pile + create newspaper logs that are fireplace-ready.
• Find a better way to organize/clean/maintain the video game center in your home.
• Clean out your car (I used to do this for my parents!) + add a car trash can to the back area so that in the future the kids can just use that instead of throwing things on the ground.
• Introduce a better laundry system for the family's clothes so that they actually  all  end up in the laundry room, sorted, and ready to be washed.

The possibilities are endless, and specific to what needs your child sees in your family life.

Step #3 : Once they've identified a need and come to you with it, you must decide if it's worth it to you to move forward. Don't be afraid if, after they've told you a need they  think  you have but that you don't  actually  have, to tell them that it isn't a current need of yours. Hey, the road to success is paved with failed products! This is excellent feedback so that they start to understand their “customer” and dig deeper. Perhaps they'll even start to ask YOU what you want from them!

Step #4 : What are both of your expectations for this job so that you know when the job is completed correctly?

Let them tell you what they propose to accomplish and what that would look like.

Then you share what you, as a paying customer, expect in results. Hash this out if need be (just like a real negotiation between a biz and their potential client).

This includes a deadline.

Step #5 : Now you need to ask them for a price.

I know, I know. You might be wondering, “why on earth am I going to let my child choose how much I'm willing to pay them for something they want to do around the house? Isn't it MY money?”

I totally get that. But remember that the nature of this lesson is to ignite that entrepreneurial spirit in them. Instead of you offering what you're willing to pay, have them go through the exercise of pricing their efforts. Then the negotiations start.

This sets them up for good negotiation + valuation skills in the future.

Determine the market price you'll pay, which is where their price (the supplier) and your price (based on how much you need what they're offering + a dash of several other things) meets. $__________.

Step #6 : Your child completes the work + notifies you.

Step #7 : Using the checklist you both created, provide oversight and see if everything is as it was supposed to be.

Step #8 : Pay the agreed upon rate once everything is up to par. And if they don't quite complete the project + deliver what they promised, it's up to you whether you want to make a partial payment, or not pay at all (satisfaction guaranteed could be added to this lesson as well).

If your child makes it through this process, then they will have successfully figured out a “market” need, fulfilled it, and gotten paid from their initiative. This is something that will no doubt shape their futures.

And if they don't quite succeed? Well the lessons are vast for all entrepreneurs as they traverse through the mistakes, failures, and successes.

It's really a win-win situation.

Let me show you what I mean, with an example in my own life.

How I Used this Skill Set to Write My Own First Job Offer Worth $40,000 + Benefits

While some of my dorm mates were floundering around trying to find employment, I was busy enjoying my last two months of college before entering the “real world”.

Why is that? Because I had a job waiting for me. And the only reason why I had that job was I spotted a need in a local company, and wrote my way into it.

I had interned for an organization in my small college town, and they ended up building a start-up company set to open its doors sometime around when I was due to graduate. One day I asked them if I could have a full-time job there come June. The director looked at me, and said, “go ahead and write up a job description of what you propose you would do here. Then we'll see.”

So I went back to my college dorm and worked on a job description. I thought about what the company was trying to achieve, and tied this into what I wanted to do with my life (at least what I thought I wanted to do at the time).

I wish I had saved a copy of the actual job description, but my sharp memory tells me it went something like this:

“Amanda L. Grossman will be the International Marketing & Sales contact at Chesapeake Fields. The International Marketing & Sales Person is responsible for researching new markets around the world where Chesapeake Fields' products would be well received. Primary responsibilities include understanding these markets, making contact with potential wholesalers and distributors, sending samples, and being the brand ambassador for Chesapeake Fields within these markets.”

With one minor change − they put sales in front of marketing in my job title − I got an offer from them for $40,000 + benefits to do just that. Within the one year I worked there, I ended up negotiating an initial container load of $27,000 worth of our product to a major food retailer in Taiwan.

Unfortunately, my job AND that company went under not long after my first and only year there. But writing my way into a company right out of college based on a need I saw that I could fill? Well that was enough to impress future employers who then hired me.

See how lucrative learning this skill could be for your child? I'd love to hear below what needs (perceived or actual ones) your child comes up with to fulfill.

• Latest Posts

Amanda L. Grossman

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• 50 Banking Activities for Kids (Student Financial Literacy) - February 14, 2024
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Thursday 8th of June 2017

Uh, I totally love this post! My hubby and I are both entrepreneurs and want to instill the same in our children... definitely going to use these tips!!

Friday 9th of June 2017

*Squee*! Thanks, Lauren. I'd love to hear what your kiddos come up with:).

VentureWell

13 Class Activities To Stimulate Inventor-Entrepreneurs

We updated this article with new class activities. The article was originally published in September 2017.

How can you bolster and maintain student engagement throughout your course? If you’re in search of ideas, we’ve curated a collection of cutting-edge class activities used by VentureWell Course & Program Grants recipients. These class activities are designed to prepare early-stage innovators in taking the first steps toward transforming their ideas into impactful inventions and ventures.

1) The “If I Knew…” Exercise Aileen Huang-Saad University of Michigan “Each term, I end the class with the “If I knew” assignment. Students are asked to fill out a simple PowerPoint template that asks the following questions:

• When I signed up to take this class, I was expecting…
• This is what I got out of the class…
• If I had only known…
• This is what I would change…

Before class, I go through all of the student responses and aggregate the feedback into the themes. I then present the summary to the students for the last class and we discuss their reflections. This summary presentation is then used to iterate on the course for the following year and is assigned as the first reading for the next cohort of students as their first assignment. This sets the stage for the next class.”

2) The Envelope Exercise Pritpal Singh Villanova University

“I like class activities like the envelope exercise developed by Tina Seelig at Stanford University. In this exercise, the students are asked to plan for a two-hour activity to increase an initial, unknown investment provided to them in an envelope. The amount of money in the envelope is very small – around $2. The students are usually surprised at how little money is in the envelope. Yet, every time I’ve done this exercise, the students have increased the investment money provided to them. The exercise helps students realize how easy it is for them to make money. I was particularly delighted when the students at the Bluefields, Indian, and Caribbean University in Nicaragua came to this realization. These students are generally from relatively poor communities and lack confidence in their ability to make money. When they performed this exercise and realized how easily they could make money, it was really eye-opening and thrilling for them. It was also a very rewarding experience for me.”

3) The Get Out of the Building Exercise Rodney Boehm Texas A&M University

“I provide exercises that get students out of the building. Nothing shapes a student’s perception about their idea or market better than talking with a customer . Most students are uncomfortable when they start a conversation with a potential customer. Once they are comfortable with the skill, it transforms them and their way of thinking.”

4) The Pure Imagination Exercise Laquita Blockson Agnes Scott College

“During the second week of my introductory entrepreneurship courses, I conduct a team exercise to convey the importance of creativity. I first show my students the “ Pure Imagination ” scene from the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, asking them to listen carefully to the lyrics. This prepares them to think beyond normal convention during the exercise. I then provide each team with a common household item—a clothespin, a pill bottle, a cotton t-shirt, for example—and instruct them to think of alternative uses for their item. Once the teams have identified ways their item can be repurposed, I encourage them to contemplate how to deconstruct and reconstruct each item to make it more user-friendly. I find this exercise particularly useful because many of my students are not business or engineering majors, so by inspiring them with a film that they have likely seen, and by using common items, they are able to better internalize the connection between creativity and entrepreneurial opportunity.”

5) The Defining Problems Exercise Ruth Ochia Temple University “In my introductory course, I work on students developing a sense for defining problems. I show pictures that contain many potential issues. The students are asked to define the issues they can see and what questions they would ask or additional information they would want to help define the problems. They always want to start with solutions, but the key is to get them to define the problem better, which is half the work of solving the problem anyway.”

6) The Flipped Classroom Exercise Deb Streeter Cornell University

“I think almost all entrepreneurship professors use class activities to create what is now considered to be a “flipped classroom.”  I’m no different. Students in my courses work to develop business ideas and concepts, go out to understand customers, pivot, pitch, and spend time outside the building to learn and practice Lean Startup concepts. I also try to spark interesting conversations inside my classroom. Sometimes I do that by using short, focused video clips or the Startup podcast. I use the mishaps and adventures featured in the podcast to illuminate important ideas and concepts. The episodes are a perfect match with so many concepts related to entrepreneurship and Lean Startup. The class becomes very invested and opinionated about the founders and the company.”

7) The Business Thesis Exercise Jed Taylor University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

“There is a simple business thesis exercise that we use in our I-Corps program that teaches teams to articulate their value proposition and customer segment in a concise way.  It sounds simple, but it always amazes me how challenging it is for students to do at first.  I even crack out this exercise every time that I give a guest lecture across campus.”

8) The Soft Skills Exercise Cheryl Bodnar Rowan University “I use game-based class activities to help students develop their soft skills such as oral communication and teamwork, both of which are critical for entrepreneurs. Each player has a card with various symbols on it, and only one of the symbols on their individual card is defined. Without showing their cards to other players, participants have to decode the symbols and reveal the message on their individual cards, using only oral communication. The end result: all players enter a color on a rainbow-colored game board and the whole class wins.”

9) The Blindfold Exercise Joe Tranquillo Bucknell University

“In some classes I teach, I will hand out blindfolds and ask everyone to put them on. Then they pair up. Their task is to leave the second floor of the engineering building, navigate the campus, find the library, stand in line at the café and order a coffee or tea. The pair only gets to take off their blindfold when they get their beverage. Afterward we deconstruct this activity. The most important insight is that we as educators talk a lot about knowing your customer. Sometimes the only way to really understand a customer is to live in their world. After this activity the challenge is to find ways to become or simulate how to be your customer. Students seem to remember these class activities for a very long time!”

10) The Two-Minute Pitch Exercise Christine E. King University of California, Irvine

“I teach the students how to design websites and we train them how to perform two-minute pitches. I love watching the students get excited about their project, and learn how to understand the big picture. These pitches are then presented at our final symposium to industry judges. We provide the winning team with funding and resources to start their company. Each year, we have 1 to 3 student teams form companies and continue to develop their venture beyond their degree. It creates such an exciting environment to teach in, as what we show them becomes applied immediately into their careers.”

For many student inventor entrepreneurs, their first exposure to innovation and entrepreneurship happens in the classroom. That’s why it’s important to continuously develop and improve upon innovation and entrepreneurship class activities to ensure early-stage innovators are well-equipped to solve the world’s biggest problems. Learning curriculum development ideas and best practices from other faculty in the ecosystem can help educators adopt, implement, and refine their own coursework for maximum impact.

11) The Value in Waste Exercise Taryn Mead University of Arkansas and Western Colorado University

“I teach about various topics related to the circular economy, including regenerative innovation, or the process of developing supply networks for new products using waste materials. With VentureWell’s support, I recently led a class—and later an innovation challenge—in which students had to develop a product and business model to turn waste into new products. The teams have come up with great concepts, and some of them are going to apply for business accelerator programs at the state level.”

Editor’s note: Learn more about Taryn’s work using the waste stream in the classroom .

12) Life Cycle Analysis for Sustainable Engineering Design Nancy Ruzycki University of Florida

“In my exercise, students track an object through its life cycle to understand its impact all along the product journey. This is especially eye-opening for materials engineers, who might not have considered the impact of their materials choices. This gives them something to think about as they move into an engineering design career and start making decisions for a company. I love the life cycle analysis for the impact it has on students in their understanding of engineering materials selection.”

Editor’s note: For more information on materials choices, check out our Tools for Design and Sustainability .

13) The How Might We… Mini-Design Challenge Carlee Bishop Agnes Scott College

“We kick off our Human Centered Design (HCD) course with a mini-design challenge to introduce students to the design process and products. This helps students focus on a larger course project that addresses how to create a sustainable, human-centered intervention in the agriculture space. Our philosophy is to establish a learning environment for students to learn HCD by doing HCD.”

You might also like these blog articles with example class activities you can use:

  6 Virtual Classroom Exercises To Keep Students Engaged

7 Class Exercises To Amplify Innovative Thinking

Activities for Teaching Innovation: Game-Based Learning

Curious to know more about our Course & Program Grants, which offer up to $30,000 in funding to faculty and staff? Learn more .

• teaching resources

Introduction to Entrepreneurship

(3 reviews)

Katherine Carpenter, University of Victoria

Copyright Year: 2021

ISBN 13: 9781989864500

Publisher: Kwantlen Polytechnic University

Language: English

Formats Available

Conditions of use.

Learn more about reviews.

Reviewed by Larry Clay, Assistant Professor, Marymount University on 2/12/24

This book is a sufficient option for my 201: Principles of Entrepreneurship course. It is aligned with my course objectives, and includes the basic of business venturing and modeling, but also offers the fundamental terms and definitions for... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

This book is a sufficient option for my 201: Principles of Entrepreneurship course. It is aligned with my course objectives, and includes the basic of business venturing and modeling, but also offers the fundamental terms and definitions for learners outside of business can connect and understand how to start and maintain a viable business venture.

Content Accuracy rating: 4

This book details an accurate account of what is entrepreneurship, what are some of the qualities, attributes, and traits needed to be an entrepreneur, and practical suggestions to how to approach an entrepreneurship endeavor. The statistics of failure and success in this sector is key for students to understand that they are going against the grain starting a business, and it takes commitment, self motivation, and smart hustling to move towards a trajectory of profit.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

This book has the basic information that is relevant to understanding the fundamental processes of designing products and services, and build capacity of an organizational system.

Clarity rating: 4

The book is consistent with clarity of information and injects case scenarios that help students understand entrepreneurship.

Consistency rating: 4

This book is consistent with other textbooks as it relates to content around entrepreneurship. Some of the basic constructs, structures, and processes in entrepreneurship have not change much, but there are new strategic and analytical tools available to entrepreneurs now that students can employ in experiential learning exercises that will also be complementaries to this book.

Modularity rating: 5

This book is easily digestible and separated in a logical flow.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

The content is in a logical and clear flow that I believe students can read and absorb the information.

Interface rating: 4

The different formats offerings make this book a good fit as a learning interface for students. I noticed students in this generation prefer digital interfaces, so the PDF and digital version of the OER textbook with interactive tools embedded is a positive, and I foresee no interface issues between the content and students.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

I did not recognize any grammatical errors in my review.

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

This book was not found to have any offensive or derogatory content that might be viewed as insensitive to a particular group or culture.

When teaching entrepreneurship, I find the biggest cognitive struggle students have is approaching the business and financial modeling. I usually look for books that include an excel or spreadsheet template so students can practice dash boarding and managing their financials and non financial resources.

Reviewed by Mary Hill, Lecturer II, University of New Mexico on 5/12/23

no index or glossary found. as indicated by the title - this is an early introduction to the subject. read more

no index or glossary found. as indicated by the title - this is an early introduction to the subject.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

very accurate from my perspective as a person who has taught entrepreneurship for health care professions students for 10 years.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

very relevant. Able to be updated without difficulty.

Clarity rating: 5

very clear.

Consistency rating: 5

very consistant .

easily broken into small pieces.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

well organized. It is 67 pages and gives a very early introduction to the subject.

Modules 1 and 2 are masterfully designed and easy to navigate with clear paths. Likely, course instructors would wish to have other specific course assignments as the assignments within the book do not relate to concrete/crystalized knowledge, but on reflection (which may be less productive for some learners). If the book is downloaded as a .pdf, then the phrase "One or more interactive elements has been excluded..." appear 2-3 times per page on the .pdf. Effectively, the .pdf is not a full text of the course. When the course is viewed through the pressbooks interface, then interactive questions, well shot video transcripts and attractive visuals improve the material. Some aspects of the pressbooks interface are less intuitive to navigate. For example, the interactive business design in unit 3 focuses on sustainable development goals (SDGs). I like the connection of SDGs to entrepreneurship, but the entry level questions are difficult to navigate and are not geared to a novice learner (as the name "introduction to entrepreneurship" would indicate. The entrepreneurship plan in chapter 4 has many components bout entrepreneurship philosophy that will help learners consider what they need in order to create their endeavor. Absent, however, are the government permits / supports / business license logistics that sometimes are the reasons that businesses fail.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

No cultural offense observed (from my perspective of a person of priveledge). Authors made effort to not to highlight any gender or any cultural accomplishments over others.

I will incorporate components in the chapter 4 entrepreneurial plan into my course on health care private practice entrepreneurship.

Reviewed by Christina Wooten, Business Technology Faculty, Rogue Community College on 3/30/23

The text is a good introduction and covers several high-level topics that pertain to entrepreneurship. There are many more topics that could be added to this text. It may not be sufficient to support an entire course. There is not a glossary... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

The text is a good introduction and covers several high-level topics that pertain to entrepreneurship. There are many more topics that could be added to this text. It may not be sufficient to support an entire course.

There is not a glossary or index available.

The text appears accurate and unbiased. I did note a few writing errors in the text (missing period, additional period, etc.)

There are some references in the transcripts, text, and videos that could make the text obsolete. These references could also be confusing or non-inclusive to some students. "...someone who goes on Dragon's Den" These type references are limited to the introductory section of the text.

Overall, the text/transcripts/videos are clear. The final sections (3 and 4) do have sections that are not as clear. In 3.1 and 3.2 (The Entrepreneurial Process) there are some areas that could benefit from careful revision. These sections (3.1 and 3.2) also lack substantial videos that could help the learner connect the ideas.

The book is consistent in terms of framework and terminology.

The text/transcripts/videos are easily divisible into sections. The creator did a nice job segmenting the material. The material is organized in a way that engages the reader visually. There are quizzes embedded in the material that do not cause disruption to the reader/viewer. The overall work is segmented into clearly defined and numbered sections. There is a particularly helpful activity throughout the text called: "Read/Watch/Listen – Reflect" where the learner has an opportunity to read articles, watch videos, listen to podcasts and then reflect (journal) their thoughts in a writing activity. The resources linked in this activity throughout the text are splendid!

The topics are presented in a logical, clear fashion . The final project is also clearly defined and well-presented.

Interface rating: 5

This material appears free of interface issues on a PC. There are no distortions of images or text.

Grammatical Errors rating: 4

Text/transcripts free of grammatical errors. There are, as previously referenced, a few writing errors that could be addressed in a revision.

I found no evidence of insensitive or offensive information in my review.

While I do not feel that this book would be enough material to support a quarter-long class, I do feel it has ample information in it to be a part of a class. The layout and delivery of the material is user-friendly. There are multiple modes of delivery used (video, written lecture, and transcript of videos) available to the learner. This text is one I will use to supplement the Entrepreneurship course I teach.

Table of Contents

• 1. Defining Entrepreneurship
• 2. The Role Entrepreneurs have in Today’s Society
• 3. Different types of Entrepreneurship
• 4. Entrepreneurial Traits, Skills and Abilities
• 5. The Entrepreneurial Mindset
• 6. Creativity and Innovation in Entrepreneurship
• 7. Entrepreneurial Process
• 8. Unit 4 Assignment Preparation
• 9. Unit 4 Assignment Delivery: Entrepreneurial Plan
• 10. Course Wrap up and Reflection

Ancillary Material

About the book.

Learn about entrepreneurship and what makes entrepreneurs successful, all while developing your entrepreneurial skills.

About the Contributors

Katherine Carpenter (Cochrane) has an MBA from the University of Victoria and has been a full-time Faculty Member with Kwantlen Polytechnic University since 2020. Katherine has over 12 years of experience teaching in-person and online and delivering advisory projects to various entrepreneurial organizations. In addition to entrepreneurship, her areas of expertise include student engagement, online learning, program development and renewal, and instructional design.

Katherine is currently a developer in the Open Education for a Better World mentoring program and is a 2021 OER Grant Recipient through the KPU Open Education Working Group. When she’s not instructing with KPU, Katherine also teaches at other public and PVI organizations across the country, and advocates for UDL, open education, online delivery, and continuously improving programs to meet the needs of those learners worldwide.

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1.3 The Entrepreneurial Mindset

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Explain what it means to have an entrepreneurial mindset
• Describe what is meant by entrepreneurial spirit or passion

Entrepreneurship takes many forms (see Table 1.1 ), but entrepreneurs share a major trait in common: An entrepreneur is someone who identifies an opportunity and chooses to act on that opportunity. Most business ventures are innovative variations of an existing idea that has spread across communities, regions, and countries, such as starting a restaurant or opening a retail store. These business ventures are, in some ways, a lower-risk approach but nonetheless are entrepreneurial in some way. For example, Warby Parker , a profitable startup founded by four graduate students at Wharton, disrupted a major incumbent ( Luxottica ) by providing a more convenient (online initially), affordable, and stylish product line for a large segment of consumers. In this sense, their innovation is about creating something new, unique, or different from the mainstream. Yet they attracted an existing, and in some ways mature, sector of an established industry. In a different way, McDonalds , which is 90 percent owned by franchisees, introduced an “all day breakfast” menu in 2017 that was hugely successful; it also targeted a larger segment (in part younger consumers) and brought back consumers who had chosen other options. In summary, many entrepreneurs start a new venture by solving a problem that is significant, offering some value that other people would appreciate if the product or service were available to them. Other entrepreneurs, in contrast, start a venture by offering a “better mousetrap” in terms of a product, service, or both. In any case, it is vital that the entrepreneur understand the market and target segment well, articulate a key unmet need (“pain point”), and develop and deliver a solution that is both viable and feasible. In that aspect, many entrepreneurs mitigate risks before they launch the venture.

Being aware of your surroundings and the encounters in your life can reveal multiple opportunities for entrepreneurship. In our daily lives, we constantly find areas where improvements could be made. For example, you might ask, “What if we didn’t have to commute to work?” “What if we didn’t have to own a vehicle but still had access to one?” “What if we could relax while driving to work instead of being stressed out by traffic?” These types of questions inspired entrepreneurial ventures such as ride-sharing services like Uber , the self-driving vehicle industry, 21 and short-term bicycle access in the free bike-sharing program in Pella, Iowa ( Figure 1.10 ). 22

These ideas resulted from having an entrepreneurial mindset , an awareness and focus on identifying an opportunity through solving a problem, and a willingness to move forward to advance that idea. The entrepreneurial mindset is the lens through which the entrepreneur views the world, where everything is considered in light of the entrepreneurial business. The business is always a consideration when the entrepreneur makes a decision. In most cases, the action that the entrepreneur takes is for the benefit of the business, but sometimes, it helps the entrepreneur get ready to adopt the appropriate mindset. The mindset becomes a way of life for the entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs often are predisposed to action to achieve their goals and objectives. They are forward thinking, always planning ahead, and they are engaged in “what if” analyses. They frequently ask themselves, “What if we did this?” “What if a competitor did that?”—and consider what the business implications would be.

Most people follow habits and traditions without being aware of their surroundings or noticing the opportunities to become entrepreneurs. Because anyone can change their perspective from following established patterns to noticing the opportunities around them, anyone can become an entrepreneur. There is no restriction on age, gender, race, country of origin, or personal income. To become an entrepreneur, you need to recognize that an opportunity exists and be willing to act on it. Note, however, that the execution of the entrepreneurial mindset varies in different parts of the world. For example, in many Asian cultures, group decision-making is more common and valued as a character trait. In these regions, an entrepreneur would likely ask the advice of family members or other business associates before taking action. In contrast, individualism is highly valued in the United States and so many US entrepreneurs will decide to implement a plan for the business without consulting others.

Entrepreneurial Spirit and Passion

An entrepreneurial spirit allows entrepreneurs to carry a manner of thinking with them each day that allows them to overcome obstacles and to meet challenges with a can-do attitude. What does it mean to have an entrepreneurial spirit? For the purposes of this discussion, it could mean being passionate, purposeful, positive, bold, curious, or persistent.

The founders of Airbnb have a passion for supporting individual rights to rent out unused space. Why should the established model of hotels prevail? Why shouldn’t an individual homeowner have the freedom to rent out unused space and leverage that space into an income? Airbnb has succeeded in creating more flexible and affordable options in the space of the rapidly growing "sharing" economy. At the same time, some states and municipalities have raised issues about the regulations monitoring ventures like this. While entrepreneurial spirit is partly about fighting for individual rights and freedoms, there should be a balance between economic freedom and consumer protection. The entrepreneurial spirit involves a passion for presenting an idea that is worthwhile and valuable, and a willingness to think beyond established patterns and processes, while still keeping in mind local laws and regulations, in the quest to change those established patterns, or at least to offer alternatives to those established patterns.

Passion is a critical component of the entrepreneurial process. Without it, an entrepreneur can lose the drive to run the business. Passion can keep an entrepreneur going when the outside world sends negative messages or less-than-positive feedback. For example, if you are truly passionate about starting an animal shelter because of your love of animals, you will find a way to make it happen. Your internal drive to help animals in need will spur you on to do whatever it takes to make the shelter become a reality. The same is true of other types of startups and owners with similar passions. However, passion needs to be informed by the entrepreneur’s vision and mission—passion of the sake of passion is not enough. A clear mission statement —which details why the business exists and the entrepreneur’s objectives for achieving that mission—will guide an entrepreneur’s passion and keep the business on track. Passion, vision, and mission can reinforce each other and keep the entrepreneur on the right track with next steps for the business.

Some ideas might seem small or insignificant, but in the field of entrepreneurship, it’s important to recognize that for every new startup, someone else may recognize a spin-off idea that expands upon the original idea. The opportunities for identifying new possibilities are endless. Review your work in creating spinoff ideas for Angad Darvani’s projects, or Kevin F. Adler’s Miracle Messages venture. Or consider possible spin-off ideas around the technology used in agriculture. Creating spin-off ideas fits well with our discussion of divergent thinking and brainstorming. Through these processes, we can discover new uses for existing technology, just as Ring did by using video technology to add security by allowing customers to see who is at the door without opening it.

An Entrepreneurial Mindset in Your Discipline or Field

Within your industry of interest or area of study, what are the challenges that create frustration? How can these be turned into opportunities? Earlier in this chapter, we discussed Evernote , a company that focuses on expanding our memories by storing and organizing information. Let’s look at some other examples of entrepreneurial endeavors in specific industries to help you plan your own venture in your own industry.

In the agriculture industry, insects, weeds, weather conditions, and the challenges of harvesting crops are all ripe for entrepreneurial activities. The move toward organic produce has also affected this industry. From an entrepreneurial perspective, what products could you invent to support both organic farming and the problems of insects that damage or destroy crops? The old method was to use chemical sprays to kill the insects, but today, the growing demand for organic foods and increased awareness of the impact of chemical sprays on our environment are changing this scenario. One new idea to solve this problem combines a vacuum cleaner with an agriculture product.

Link to Learning

Watch this video on the creation of a crop vacuum that sucks up insects and bugs to learn more.

A bug vacuum is an example of how using divergent thinking contributed to the solution of removing bugs from crops without using chemicals. In the group activity of creating divergent ideas, this idea may not have been received well. However, in the incubation stage, the idea must have come forward as a viable solution. Entrepreneurs frequently face the challenge of pressure to conform to established habits and patterns within industries.

Often, the entrepreneurial mindset includes futuristic ideas that shake up the normal, conventional processes that are grounded in experience over time. Tried-and-tested processes and products that have a proven history of success can be a formidable obstacle to new ideas. A new idea may even appear as impossible or outlandish, perhaps even an embarrassment to the steady and predictable practices established within an industry. This can create a dilemma: Do we try something new and unproven that lacks documented research? Sometimes, we must disregard our past successes and research to be open to new possibilities for success and failure. An entrepreneurial mindset includes creativity, problem-solving skills, and a propensity to innovation. 23 Open-mindedness is one characteristic that supports creativity, problem solving, and innovation. Taking the time to explore new ideas, dream, reflect, and view situations from a new perspective contribute to the entrepreneurial mindset. Some innovations can lead to disruptions within the industry, or even create a new industry.

The innovator’s dilemma was presented by Clayton Christensen to explain disruptive technology , which are technologies that, once introduced, displace established patterns, processes, and systems previously accepted as normal or accepted. One example of a disruptive technology is Airbnb , a company that threatens the established hotel industry by connecting personal resources to people who desire those resources. If you have a spare bedroom that you aren’t using, why not sell that space to someone who wants and needs the space?

Airbnb has become a significant threat to the established hotel industry’s business model of building large hotels and renting rooms within those hotels to their customers. Airbnb has reconfigured that model, and since its 2008 launch, 150 million travelers have taken advantage of 3 million Airbnb listings in more than 191 countries. Airbnb has raised more than $3 billion (plus a $1 billion credit line) and is considering selling stocks to support significant expansion. The value of Airbnb is approximately $30 billion. Compare this market value to Hilton ’s market capitalization of $19 billion and Marriott ’s of $35 billion. If you were the CEO of Hilton or Marriott, would you be worried? The hotel industry recognized Airbnb as a threat, and in 2016, began a campaign to create legislation to rein in Airbnb’s growth and popularity. From the hotel industry’s perspective, Airbnb is not playing by the same rules. This is the definition of disruptive technology, the focus on creating a new idea or process that negates or challenges established process or products. 24

Sometimes disruptive technologies result from not listening to customers. Customers don’t always know what they want. Customer groups might need to be redefined by the entrepreneurial team on the basis of better models, knowing when to invest in developing lower-performance products that promise lower margins while still satisfying the need, and knowing when to pursue small markets at the expense of larger or established markets. Basically, disruptive technologies occur through identifying new and valuable processes and products.

The founders of Airbnb recognized that some people have unused resources, bedrooms, that other people need. We can apply this idea to other unused resources such as vehicles and motor homes. We see this model reproduced in short-term car rental and bike-sharing programs.

• 21 Matthew DeBord. “Waymo Could Be Worth as Much as $75 Billion—Here’s a Brief History of the Google Car Project.” Business Insider . September 9, 2018. https://www.businessinsider.com/google-car-project-history-2018-8
• 22 Ethan Goetz. “Bike Share Program Launched Monday.” The Chronicle . July 2, 2018. https://www.pellachronicle.com/gallery/bike-share-program-launched-monday/article_950cebac-7e49-11e8-97a0-8fd615410188.html
• 23 Emma Fleck. “Needed: Entrepreneurial Mindset.”  Central Penn Business Journal ,  34 (12), 10. http://pageturnpro2.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/Publications/201803/15/83956/PDF/131668002208352000_CPBJ033018WEB.pdf
• 24 Katie Benner. “Inside the Hotel Industry’s Plan to Combat Airbnb.” New York Times . April 16, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/16/technology/inside-the-hotel-industrys-plan-to-combat-airbnb.html

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101 contemporary entrepreneurship research paper topics and ideas.

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Entrepreneurship, the dynamic process of creating and managing a new venture, has emerged as a focal point of academic interest and real-world impact. Research papers on entrepreneurship delve into the multifaceted aspects of entrepreneurial activities, examining factors that drive innovation, foster economic growth, and shape the business landscape. These papers contribute to our understanding of how entrepreneurs identify opportunities, navigate challenges, and contribute to economic development.

Significance of Entrepreneurship Research:

The study of entrepreneurship is crucial for several reasons. Firstly, it sheds light on the mechanisms behind the birth and growth of new ventures, fostering insights that can inform business practices and policy-making. Secondly, entrepreneurship research explores the intersection of creativity, risk-taking, and strategic decision-making, providing valuable lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs and established businesses alike. Lastly, understanding entrepreneurship is pivotal for policymakers seeking to create an environment that nurtures innovation, job creation, and economic resilience.

Scope of Entrepreneurship Research Papers:

Entrepreneurship research papers cover a wide range of topics, from the identification and evaluation of entrepreneurial opportunities to the challenges faced by startups and the role of entrepreneurship in societal development. Key areas of focus include venture creation, innovation, financing, entrepreneurial strategies, and the impact of entrepreneurship on local and global economies.

Do you have to submit an entrepreneurship research paper or thesis? Are you struggling to find out the latest entrepreneurship research paper topics for your assignment? Don’t worry! In this blog post, we have included a list of the best entrepreneurship research paper topic ideas for you to consider. So, without wasting your time, just continue reading this blog post and gain exclusive research topics on entrepreneurship.

List of Entrepreneurship Research Paper Topic Ideas

Best entrepreneurship research paper topics.

• What are the major drivers of entrepreneurial growth?
• What are the common personality traits of a successful entrepreneur?
• What strategies do investors use to procure the top entrepreneurs?
• Discuss the effects of entrepreneurism on economic growth.
• What laws and fiscal policies encourage entrepreneurship?
• Explain the effect of taxes on entrepreneurs and their decision-making process.
• Compare regular jobs and entrepreneurism.
• Explain the implications of Cloud technology for entrepreneurship.
• Discuss the effect of corporate enterprise training on employee performance.
• What are the major inhibitors of entrepreneurial growth?
• Explain the theoretical models for global entrepreneurism.
• Discuss the alternative marketing tactics that will work for small-scale food entrepreneurs.
• What is crowdsourcing, and how does it function?
• How do entrepreneurs develop and grow the economy?
• Explain the benefits of becoming an entrepreneur.

Top-rated Entrepreneurship Research Paper Topics

• Is entrepreneurship a solution to unemployment?
• What factors affect individuals who wish to become entrepreneurs?
• What is the role of the university and government in supporting students pursuing entrepreneurship?
• How do entrepreneurs finance their business ideas?
• Outline the basics of becoming an entrepreneur.
• Discuss the impact of technological advancements on entrepreneurship.
• How do entrepreneurial innovations drive an organization forward?
• Explain how venture capital drives innovation in established organizations.
• Talk about gender culture and entrepreneurism.
• Discuss the psychology techniques entrepreneurs use to handle stressful situations.
• Prepare a case study on International entrepreneurism.
• Explain the main factors that affect new venture growth.
• How to create equal participation in modern entrepreneurialism?
• Research the most common risks entrepreneurs face.
• Explain how to overcome entrepreneurial challenges.

Latest Entrepreneurship Research Paper Ideas

• Explain the concept of crowd investing.
• Discuss the effect of startup culture on entrepreneurial development in your country.
• Is education important to become an entrepreneur?
• How do entrepreneurs leverage the internet to start and grow their businesses?
• How to sustain enterprise in the innovative landscape?
• Identify female personalities who are successful entrepreneurs.
• What is the role of enterprises in boosting foreign investment?
• Prepare a case study on the value and resource allocation for successful entrepreneurial finance.
• How to be innovative in business?
• Explain the impact of cultural factors on entrepreneurial performance.
• Discuss the relationship between entrepreneurship and market orientation.
• Explain the role and significance of entrepreneurship education.
• Discuss the relation between managerial skills and the promotion of entrepreneurial activities in the private sector.
• What is the effect of entrepreneurial development on the job market?
• Explain the concept of online entrepreneurship.

Interesting Dissertation Topics on Entrepreneurship

• Explain the strategies to improve small-scale enterprises.
• What are some of the online opportunities for entrepreneurship?
• How to become a successful multi-million entrepreneur?
• Talk about leading innovation and technology entrepreneurs.
• Is ‘Gut Feel’ a good reason to invest in a startup?
• How to source raw materials for small-scale enterprises?
• How do emotions influence the decision-making and behaviors of entrepreneurs?
• How to achieve Social Entrepreneurship?
• What are the effects of skill acquisition on entrepreneurship development?
• How can inventors find entrepreneurs to merge talents and finance new projects?
• What are the modern entrepreneurship theories and conceptualizations?
• Is there growing expertise in a family business and global entrepreneurship?
• What can governments do to promote entrepreneurial ideas?
• What made Jeff Bezos rich?
• What is high technology entrepreneurship?

Unique Entrepreneurship Research Topics

• What is the role of small-scale businesses in creating employment?
• How to protect assets in a startup company?
• Discuss the impacts of microfinancing on the performance of women entrepreneurs.
• The effectiveness of social media entrepreneurship in contemporary business society.
• What is your opinion about building a business with relatives and acquaintances?
• How does entrepreneurship help to build democracy in service-oriented business?
• Is it necessary for entrepreneurs to build trust?
• Explain the effects of entrepreneurship skills on product portfolio development.
• Explore the entrepreneurial mindset of students.
• How can a social startup commercialize?
• Discuss the life and accomplishments of Bill Gates.
• Explain the techniques for assessing the durability of small-scale business opportunities
• Discuss the impact of employee compensation on entrepreneurial productivity.
• How do the international experiences of managers contribute to attracting investments from venture capitalists?
• Talk about E-commerce entrepreneurship.

Outstanding Entrepreneurship Thesis Topics

• How to protect entrepreneurs by means of business laws?
• Important things to consider when launching a startup.
• Is it dangerous to become an entrepreneur?
• Discuss Larry Page’s entrepreneurial accomplishments.
• Should entrepreneurs get tax breaks?
• Discuss the entrepreneurial approach to budgeting.
• How important is business law for a beginner entrepreneur?
• Explain the famous business law cases against entrepreneurs.
• Talk about Social media marketing for entrepreneurs.
• Discuss the effects of customer culture on entrepreneurship.
• Describe the connection between entrepreneurship and inequality.
• How to save money as an entrepreneur?
• Perform an in-depth analysis of global entrepreneurship.
• Talk about motivational factors for entrepreneurs.
• How does debt influence entrepreneurs?

Impressive Entrepreneurship Research Topics

• What is scalable startup entrepreneurship?
• Explain the importance of angel investors for entrepreneurs.
• What does investing mean for an entrepreneur?
• Prepare a case study on the Khemka family business.
• What is imitator entrepreneurship?
• Analyze the concept of hustler entrepreneurship.
• Largest companies established by beginner entrepreneurs in the US
• Entrepreneurs and time management.
• Why is entrepreneurship so enticing?
• Explain the importance of mutual funds for an entrepreneur.
• Discuss US corporate law and how it applies to entrepreneurs
• Explain the reasons why entrepreneurs fail.
• The price of fuel and its effects on entrepreneurs.
• How much of the GDP in the US is produced by entrepreneurs?
• Talk about entrepreneurship in Canada.

Usually, professors will expect unique research paper topics from their students. So, if you wish to impress your professor and score an A+ grade for your academic paper, then feel free to go through the list of top entrepreneurship research paper topics suggested above and pick a topic of your interest.

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So You Want to Be an Entrepreneur?

• Emily Heyward

One founder’s advice on what you should know before you quit your day job.

Starting a business is not easy, and scaling it is even harder. You may think you’re sitting on a completely original idea, but chances are the same cultural forces that led you to your business plan are also influencing someone else. That doesn’t mean you should give up, or that you should rush to market before you’re ready. It’s not about who’s first, it’s about who does it best, and best these days is the business that delivers the most value to the consumer. Consumers have more power and choice than ever before, and they’re going to choose and stick with the companies who are clearly on their side. How will you make their lives easier, more pleasant, more meaningful? How will you go out of your way for them at every turn? When considering your competitive advantage, start with the needs of the people you’re ultimately there to serve. If you have a genuine connection to your idea, and you’re solving a real problem in a way that adds more value to people’s lives, you’re well on your way.

When I graduated from college in 2001, I didn’t have a single friend whose plan was to start his or her own business. Med school, law school, finance, consulting: these were the coveted jobs, the clear paths laid out before us. I took a job in advertising, which was seen as much more rebellious than the reality. I worked in advertising for a few years, and learned an incredible amount about how brands get built and communicated. But I grew restless and bored, tasked with coming up with new campaigns for old and broken products that lacked relevance, unable to influence the products themselves. During that time, I was lucky to have an amazing boss who explained a simple principle that fundamentally altered my path. What she told me was that stress is not about how much you have on your plate; it’s about how much control you have over the outcomes. Suddenly I realized why every Sunday night I was overcome with a feeling of dread. It wasn’t because I had too much going on at work. It was because I had too little power to effect change.

• EH Emily Heyward is the author of Obsessed: Building a Brand People Love from Day One (Portfolio; June 9, 2020). She is the co-founder and chief brand officer at Red Antler, a full-service brand company based in Brooklyn. Emily was named among the Most Important Entrepreneurs of the Decade by Inc.  magazine, and has also been recognized as a Top Female Founder by Inc. and one of Entrepreneur’s Most Powerful Women of 2019.

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Teaching Entrepreneurship

Experiences teach skills..

2022 Top Free Entrepreneurship Exercises

January 10, 2022 doan winkel comments 0 comment.

“Your posts help me keep my students engaged – they and I thank you!” – ExEC Professor

Based on the popularity of our 2019 Top 5 Lesson Plans and 2020 Top 5 Lesson Plans articles, here is the list of our 2021 top entrepreneurship exercises and lesson plans based on feedback from our fast-growing community of thousands of entrepreneurship instructors.

We designed the following exercises and lesson plans to transform your students’ experience as they learn how to stay motivated, prototype, and work with finances.

5. Teaching Business Model Canvas with Dr. Alex Osterwalder

Most entrepreneurship programs use the Business Model Canvas (BMC) in some way (it is a core element of the Experiential Entrepreneurship Curriculum ).

In collaboration with the BMC creator himself, Dr. Alex Osterwalder, we produced a series of lesson plans detailing how he teaches his powerful tool.

With this 3-part series, you can . . .

• Part 1 : Introduce the Business Model Canvas
• Part 2 : Teach students how to write business model hypotheses
• Part 3 : Demonstrate how to prioritize their riskiest assumptions

View Directions to Teach the Business Model Canvas the Way Dr. Osterwalder Does

4. Financial Modeling Showdown

Financial modeling is incredibly difficult to teach in an engaging way.

That’s why, in addition to our more advanced  Financial Projection Simulator , we developed a new game that makes introducing financial modeling fun and interactive.

If your students get overwhelmed by financial modeling, this game will help them learn the core concepts in an accessible way.

View The Financial Modeling Showdown Exercise

3. 60 Minute MVP

Imagine your students, in just one hour, building, and launching, an MVP . . . with no technical expertise ! In our 60 Minute MVP exercise, we present an exercise during which students build a landing page MVP that:

• Tells their customers the problem their team is solving,
• Uses a video to demonstrate how the team will solve the problem and
• Asks for some form of “currency” from their customers to validate demand.

If you’re looking for an immersive exercise that activates your class, complete with a chaotic, noisy, high-pressure environment, that teaches real entrepreneurial principles, give “60 Minute MVP” a shot.

View the 60 Minute MVP Exercise

2. Design Thinking with the Ideal Wallet

The Ideal Wallet is an awesome exercise for teaching students to use empathy, prototyping, and iteration to design creative solutions to problems. This exercise that comes from Stanford University’s d.school is a fast-paced way to introduce your students to design thinking.

During this intense exercise, students will learn:

• That what is important for them to discover is what is important to their customer
• To design solutions specifically related to their customers’ emotional needs
• To prototype their design with simple household materials and
• To gather customer feedback on prototypes

As a result, students will know how to develop powerful solutions for customers because they can empathize with the person or people for whom they are designing solutions.

Available in both an In-Person Version and an Online Version.

View the Design Thinking with the Ideal Wallet Exercise

1. Motivate Students with Pilot Your Purpose

Students engage when entrepreneurship feels relevant.

This exercise makes entrepreneurship relevant by helping students discover that entrepreneurial skills will help them pursue their passions – regardless of whether they become entrepreneurs.

This is our favorite exercise because when we help students discover their passions, it becomes clear to them that entrepreneurial skills will help them turn a passion into their life’s purpose.

Suddenly, entrepreneurship becomes relevant and engagement increases

In fact, our students like this exercise so much, we’re making it the first lesson plan in the next iteration of our full Experiential Entrepreneurship Curriculum .

View the Pilot Your Purpose Exercise

Want 15 Weeks of Lesson Plans?

If you are looking for a fully structured, experiential entrepreneurship curriculum, with a semester’s worth of lesson plans that students love , you don’t need to reinvent the wheel .

We’ve done the work for you.

• Check out the Experiential Entrepreneurship Curriculum
• Check out an entrepreneurship syllabus for Creativity & Innovation , New Venture Creation , Social Entrepreneurship , Intro to Entrepreneurship , & MBA Entrepreneurship & Innovation courses

What’s Next?

In upcoming posts, we will share lesson plans for new exercises we shared at our Winter Summit!

Subscribe here to be the first to access these new exercises.

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Business Education | Entrepreneurship | Student Engagement

How To Think Outside the Box with Entrepreneurship Activities

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July 11th, 2023 | 6 min. read

Emma Stanton

Emma plays a critical role in facilitating communication between valued educators and AES, daily. It's paramount for her to understand the needs and perspective of our teachers to ensure our mutual success, and add value wherever possible.

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High school business education teachers have an interesting mix of courses to teach.

While required courses may vary among schools or districts, nearly every business teacher needs more interesting ways to teach one key area: entrepreneurship.

There are many options out there to teach entrepreneurship in high school, and these can be excellent classroom resources.

But if you’re like most teachers, you want to mix it up with entrepreneurship activities and projects to supplement your standard lessons.

So, how can you think outside the box when it comes to teaching entrepreneurship ?

We’ve got three ideas to get you started!

1. Incorporate a Variety of Entrepreneurship Activities

One of the best resources for finding engaging classroom activities is Teachers Pay Teachers.

Specifically, this Entrepreneurship Activities Bundle is the perfect choice for any teacher looking for a variety of activities!

In the bundle, you’ll find four different options for high school entrepreneurship activities:

1. Entrepreneurship Business Game: Escape the Start-Up

This game is a great activity to kick off your lessons on entrepreneurship. Students solve puzzles to decipher a code needed to “escape” the scenario of being locked inside a room. Each puzzle in the game includes entrepreneur-related topics and concepts.

You could have students either work independently or in small groups to complete the puzzles and escape the “locked room.”

2. Entrepreneurship Card Set Group Activity

This group activity is a way to get your high schoolers thinking creatively and cooperatively from the perspective of a business owner.

The resource includes 40 question cards that you can use to spur discussions all related to the overarching concept of “If you started a business…” A few examples include:

• …what would you do if you received a bad review from a customer?
• …how would you identify and hire qualified employees?
• …what skills would you need to make the company a success?

3. Entrepreneurship Logic Puzzles

These four logic puzzles are perfect “brain break” activities that you can use at practically any time in your syllabus.

Your students will work independently to use their critical thinking skills to solve logic puzzles about entrepreneurs and their businesses.

4. Entrepreneurship Puzzle Activities

These last activities are a great way to introduce or reinforce the principles of entrepreneurship in your classroom. You’ll find a word search, crossword puzzle, and more!

Overall, the activities in this bundle will add a lot of hours to your high school entrepreneurship lessons, and the bundle is well worth $7!

Once you’ve found a few ways to work these activities into your syllabus, consider trying our next idea to really go the extra mile!

2. Add Excitement to Your Entrepreneurship Lesson Plans with Shark Tank Fridays

Many high school business teachers are using the TV show Shark Tank to talk about entrepreneurship with students.

Adding “Shark Tank Fridays” to your curriculum is a great way to incorporate open-ended discussions in your weekly entrepreneurship lessons.

For this activity to run smoothly, however, you need to do some work up front.

Preparation:

Start by choosing the episodes or clips of Shark Tank you want to use. Pick a variety of pitches and include ones that end with a deal and others that don’t.

It’s a great idea to choose some pitches made by younger people to show your students that anyone can be an entrepreneur!

Once you’ve chosen the episodes you plan to use, it’s time to create your discussion questions.

You can use standard questions you ask for each pitch, such as:

• What problem does this product solve?
• Who would buy this product?
• Do you think a shark will make a deal? Why or why not?

It’s also a good idea to have a few “extra” questions that you mix up each time.

Consider asking questions that relate to the concepts you covered that week. These could include:

• How would you describe the entrepreneur’s demeanor?
• If you were the entrepreneur, what would you have done differently in the initial pitch?
• What risks did the entrepreneur take when building their business?

Now that you’ve got your lists together, it’s time to introduce Shark Tank Fridays to your class!

By being up front about exactly what will happen and what is expected, everything will run smoother. Once everyone is on the same page, start the episode!

Play the first pitch up until the entrepreneur opens the floor for the sharks to ask questions.

After the entrepreneur’s pitch, ask your first two questions -- what problem does this product solve and who would buy it?

After a couple of students have raised their hands and answered, resume the episode.

At this point, your students will see what types of questions the sharks ask and how the entrepreneur answers.

Ultimately, the entrepreneur will either end up with an investment or leave without one.

After the final decision is made, pause the episode again.

Now you can use some of your more in-depth questions to really get the discussion going.

Start polling students on whether they thought the sharks would make a deal and have them explain their answers.

After that, transition to the questions you wrote that pertain to the lessons you taught this week. Open the class up for discussion and let your students go in-depth with their thoughts and opinions.

Just be sure to keep everything on track if the conversation starts to stray too far from the core of your discussion.

Overall, it may take a couple of days for everyone to get used to this style of class. But once you’ve got the rhythm down, Shark Tank Fridays are great additions to your entrepreneurship lessons.

You may even be surprised at how many students look forward to it each week!

3. Wrap Up Your Entrepreneurship Lessons with a Reflection Activity

While adding more engaging activities to your lessons can make a big difference day to day, including student self-reflection is just as important.

With a complex topic like entrepreneurship, it’s crucial to provide a way for students to reflect on what they’ve learned and how it has changed their viewpoint.

At the end of your unit or course, provide your students with a few prompts for reflection. Some ideas include:

• How do you think being an entrepreneur affects a person’s life?
• Have these lessons made you think differently about entrepreneurs? How so?
• Before this class, had you thought about becoming an entrepreneur? What about now?

You can choose to have students work on these reflection questions either in class or as homework.

Either way, the most important thing is for your students to reflect on what they’ve learned and think about how it could shape their futures!

Where to Go from Here with Teaching Entrepreneurship

So now you’ve got a bundle of activities , a plan for Shark Tank Fridays, and the perfect way to wrap up your entrepreneurship lessons.

What’s next?

The next step is to get some tried-and-true lesson plans that you can use to fill your curriculum.

Browse Course Material

Course info.

• Prof. Fiona Murray

Departments

• Sloan School of Management

As Taught In

• Entrepreneurship
• Operations Management
• Project Management

Learning Resource Types

Managing innovation and entrepreneurship, assignments.

This section includes instructions for the major course assignments, as well as an overview of the course assignments and guidelines.

Assignment Structure and Guidelines ( PDF )

Group Assignments ( PDF )

Final Assignment ( PDF )

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How to Start a Business: A Startup Guide for Entrepreneurs [Template]

Published: February 15, 2024

I started a local HVAC business in the summer of 2020, and since then, I’ve learned a lot about which steps are most important for getting a business venture off the ground. To help you make your business idea a reality, I've put together a complete guide that walks you through the steps of starting a business.

The guide covers every step I’ve discovered you need to start a business, from the paperwork and finances to creating your business plan and growing your business online. At the bottom, you’ll find a library of the best free tools and resources to start selling and marketing your products and services.

Use the links below to navigate to each section of the guide:

• What do you need to start a business?

How to Start a Business

How to make a business plan, how to decide on a company name.

• How to Choose a Business Structure

How to Register Your Business

How to comply with legal requirements, how to find funding for your new business, how to create a brand identity for your new business, tips for starting a business, resources to start a business, how to start a business online.

Let's get started.

Every budding entrepreneur wants more visitors, more qualified leads, and more revenue. But starting a business isn’t one of those “if you build it, they will come” situations. So much of getting a startup off the ground has to do with timing, planning, and the market, so consider if the economic conditions are right to start a company and whether you can successfully penetrate the market with your solution.

In order to build and run a successful company , you’ll also need to create and fine-tune a business plan, assess your finances, complete all the legal paperwork, pick your partners, research apps for startup growth, choose the best tools and systems to help you get your marketing and sales off the ground … and a whole lot more.

When I first started my business, I felt overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of requirements, which is why I’ve summed up the process to make it easier for you.

In brief, the requirements for starting a business are:

• A business plan.
• A business name.
• An ownership or business structure.
• A business registration certificate.
• A legal license or seller’s permit (as well as other legal documents).
• A source of funding.
• A brand identity.

Without these elements in place, you unnecessarily risk your new business’s future. Now let’s go over these basic steps for starting a business.

• Write a business plan.
• Choose a business name.
• Choose an ownership structure.
• Register your business.
• Review and comply with legal requirements.
• Apply for funding.
• Create a brand identity.

Having a great business idea is only part of the journey. In order to be successful, you’ll need to take a few steps to get it off the ground. In order to refine your business idea and set yourself up for success, consider doing the following:

1. Write a business plan.

Your business plan maps out the details of your business, including how it’s structured, what product or service you’ll sell, and how you’ll be selling it. Creating a business plan will help you find any obstacles on the horizon before you jump into running a business.

Pro tip: Remember that part of a business plan is telling investors or funders which specific items you need funding for. Be sure to list what you need to be funded, the reasoning behind items, and how long you will need funding.

Recommended Reading:

• What is a Business Plan? Definition, Tips, and Templates
• How to Build a Detailed Business Plan That Stands Out
• How to Write an Ecommerce Business Plan
• How to Become an Entrepreneur With No Money or Experience

70 Small Business Ideas for Anyone Who Wants to Run Their Own Business

Jump to: How to Start a Business Plan →

Featured Resource: Free Business Plan Template

Below are the key elements in a business plan template, details about what goes into each of them, and example sections at the bottom. You’ll also learn tips for writing a business plan .

1. Use a business plan template .

2. Narrow down what makes you different.

Before you start whipping up a business plan, think carefully about what makes your business unique first. If you’re planning to start a new athletic clothing business, for example, then you’ll need to differentiate yourself from the numerous other athletic clothing brands out there.

What makes yours stand out from the others? Are you planning to make clothing for specific sports or athletic activities, like yoga or hiking or tennis? Do you use environmentally friendly material? Does a certain percentage of your proceeds go to charity? Does your brand promote positive body image?

Understanding your brand’s positioning in the market will help you generate awareness and sales.

Pro tip: Remember, you’re not just selling your product or service — you’re selling a combination of product, value, and brand experience. Think through these big questions and outline them before you dive into the nitty-gritty of your business plan research.

3. Keep it short.

Business plans are shorter and more concise nowadays than they used to be. While it might be tempting to include all the results of your market research , flesh out every single product you plan to sell, and outline exactly what your website will look like, that’s actually not helpful in the format of a business plan.

Know these details and keep them elsewhere, but exclude everything but the meat and potatoes from the business plan itself. Your business plan shouldn’t just be a quick(ish) read — it should be easy to skim, too, like the example below.

Pro Tip: If someone who doesn’t know a lot about your service can easily digest your business plan, you’re doing it right.

The executive summary should be about a page long. It should cover:

• Overview . Briefly explain what the company is, where you’ll be located, what you’ll sell, and who you’ll sell to.
• Company profile. Briefly explain the business structure, who owns it, what prior experience/skills they’ll bring to the table, and who the first hires might be.
• Products or services . Briefly explain what you’ll sell.
• The market. Briefly explain your main findings from your market analysis and product market fit .
• Financial considerations . Briefly explain how you plan to fund the business and what your financial projections are.

Featured Resource: Executive Summary Template

On the marketing side, you’ll want to cover answers to questions like:

• How do you plan to penetrate the market?
• How will you grow your business?
• Which channels will you focus on for distribution?
• How will you communicate with your customers?

Pro tip: Marketing trends change year after year, so be sure to keep up on the latest trends by subscribing to the Hubspot Marketing blog .

On the sales side, you’ll need to cover answers to questions like:

• What’s your sales strategy ?
• What will your sales team look like, and how do you plan to grow it over time?
• How do you plan to scale for growth ?
• How many sales calls will you need to make to make a sale?
• What’s the average price per sale?

Speaking of average price per sale, you’ll want to go into your pricing strategy as well.

Featured Resource: Marketing & Sales Alignment Template

More importantly, it typically doesn’t entail giving partial ownership of the business away. Instead, it’s a way of getting funding not from potential co-owners, but from potential fans and customers who want to support the business idea, but not necessarily own it.

What you give donors in exchange is entirely up to you — and typically, people will come away with early access to a product, or a special version of a product, or a meet-and-greet with the founders.

Pro tip: Choose the right platform for your crowdfunding campaign type. Some platforms are more geared towards traditional investors, while others are for donations. Learn more about crowdfunding here .

5. Venture Capital Financing

Only a very small percentage of businesses are either fit for venture capital or have access to it. All the other methods described earlier are available to the vast majority of new businesses.

If you’re looking for a significant amount of money to start your company and can prove you can quickly grow its value, then venture capital financing is probably the right move for you.

Venture capital financing usually means one or more venture capital firms make large investments in your company in exchange for preferred stock of the company — but, in addition to getting that preferred return as they would in series seed financing, venture capital investors also usually get governance rights, like a seat on the Board of Directors or approval rights on certain transactions.

VC financing typically occurs when a company can demonstrate a significant business opportunity to quickly grow the value of the company but requires significant capital to do so.

Pro tip: A lot of venture capital financing is simply being in the right room with the right people. Make sure to network extensively if this is your approach to financing.

When you’re first starting a business, you’ll need to build the foundation for a strong brand identity. Your brand identity is about your values, how you communicate concepts, and which emotions you want your customers to feel when they interact with your business. Having a consistent brand identity to promote your business will make you look more professional and help you attract new customers.

Here’s what you need to do to develop your brand identity:

1. Design a logo.

Creating the right logo for your business requires careful thought and consideration. It should be representative of your brand’s purpose and target audience, while also being memorable and distinct from competitors.

To start, you need a deep understanding of your business’s mission, values, and target audience. Think beyond what your company does and truly examine why you do what you do and who you do it for. This knowledge will serve as the foundation for your logo.

Conducting market research and identifying current logo trends can help you understand what works well for others and strategize on how to stand out. Then, start brainstorming design ideas that showcase what makes your business unique.

For instance, you could try writing out a list of words that best describe your business and what makes it special and then use those words as inspiration to start sketching ideas and concepts.

Once you have some sketches created, pick which ones you think are the best and share them with stakeholders, colleagues, and buyer personas to gather feedback and refine your design. After narrowing down a design, you’ll want to test its versatility and scalability to ensure it works well in different sizes and formats.

Pro tip: Check out this blog on designing your logo, and then try out different logo design features in Canva’s logo maker .

2. Develop a visual identity.

Your brand’s visual identity doesn’t stop at creating a logo — you’ll also need to establish guidelines for typography, color palette, imagery, and other graphic elements. The more consistent your brand is with its visuals, the more consumers will be able to recognize and trust it.

To get started, consider creating a brand mood board. Ask yourself: What kind of emotions do you want your brand to evoke? Is there a specific visual aesthetic that you want to emulate? This can help you gather visual inspiration that resonates with your brand.

Choose your color palette and typography wisely. Spend some time researching color theory , as color can have a major impact on how people perceive your brand. Make sure your typography is readable and looks good across different sizes and formats.

Additionally, you should create other visual assets such as patterns, shapes, illustrations, and icons that pair well with your color palette and typography.

Pro tip: If design and color palettes aren’t your thing, consider hiring a freelance graphic designer on LinkedIn or Fiverr to help you create your visual identity and incorporate it into your logo and overall design.

3. Craft a tagline.

In just a few words, your tagline should encapsulate your brand’s essence and communicate its value. Think of it as a written or verbal version of your logo. Both elements are created to immediately capture the attention of your audience. Even if consumers don’t remember anything about your product or service, they will remember a catchy tagline.

When crafting your tagline, keep it simple. You want your tagline to be memorable, so aim for a short phrase and focus on key benefits or unique aspects of your brand. Also consider using techniques like alliteration, rhyme, or play on words to make your tagline stand out — just make sure it aligns with the rest of your brand’s voice and tone.

Pro tip: This is another element of starting a business that could benefit from someone with experience. A marketing consultant or a content writer could help you establish a compelling tagline with the next step of developing your voice and tone.

4. Develop your voice and tone.

Your brand voice refers to the personality that your brand adopts in its communication with its audience. It provides direction on what to say and how to say it, allowing you to differentiate yourself and cut through the noise.

A well-defined brand voice helps create a distinct and memorable identity for your brand, allowing you to connect with your target audience on a deeper and more meaningful level.

When determining the appropriate voice and tone for your brand, remember that consistency is key. Ensure that your brand voice and tone align with your brand’s values, mission, and positioning. Alignment between your brand’s personality and its communication style is crucial for building trust and authenticity.

Pro tip: Adapt your voice and tone to suit the preferences and understanding of your audience. Additionally, use emotion and storytelling techniques to engage your audience and resonate with them.

5. Create brand guidelines.

Once you determine all of the previously mentioned brand elements, establish a set of brand guidelines that communicate how to appropriately use them. Having these rules and standards set in place ensures consistent and cohesive messaging and representation for your brand.

Get started by defining the rules for using your brand elements across different channels and applications, such as digital and print media, social media profiles, web design, packaging, and any other relevant materials.

Show practical examples of correct and incorrect usage scenarios to demonstrate the do’s and don’ts of brand representation. This helps stakeholders and users understand the guidelines and their application. You can also offer your team templates or mock-ups to ensure correct implementation.

Once the brand guidelines are set, distribute them to internal stakeholders and relevant external partners. To make sure everyone’s on the same page, take the time to review the guidelines with everyone and consider conducting training sessions if necessary.

As your brand evolves, so should your brand guidelines. Continuously review and update them to reflect any changes or refinements. Keep the guidelines easily accessible and communicate any updates effectively.

Pro tip: A writing style guide is a great place to start when creating brand guidelines. Check out this blog on brand style guide examples.

Starting a business online is a little different from starting a traditional business. Here are some important steps for starting and scaling your business online.

1. Determine your niche and business idea.

Your business niche is the target focus area for your product or service. It’s important to choose a niche because customers like brands and businesses that specifically cater to their needs. Most customers are more likely to purchase products or services from a brand that provides personalized experiences.

When determining your niche and business idea, first identify your target audience and specify everything from their age to their interests. Then, use that information to figure out their principal need. If your product doesn’t resolve a specific need, your business will fail to get off the ground.

Pro tip: You should have a good idea of the market at this point. Use that knowledge to position yourself in a way that differentiates you from your competitors.

2. Conduct market research.

Conduct market research to understand what product or service you should offer, whom you should serve, and where you face the stiffest competition. From physical goods to digital downloads, understanding your target market and competitors will help you determine how to best position your product.

Your research should help you create a strong selling proposition . In other words, what makes your business unique? Why should someone buy from you?

Pro tip: Sometimes, market research is as easy as calling around to competitors and getting a quote on services. Make sure your pricing is competitive but not so low as to be unsustainable.

3. Learn online business laws.

While online businesses may require fewer licenses and permits than traditional businesses, there are still legal requirements that you will need to adhere to. Be sure to check:

• What kind of business license (if any) do you need to start operations?
• What legal structure makes the most sense for your company?
• Are there any permits that you need to obtain?
• Are there any inspections that you need to pass?
• Do you need a sales tax license?
• Are there any specific regulations applicable to online businesses only?
• What are the laws regarding hiring contractors and hiring employees?

Pro tip: Check out this article for more information on starting an online business and navigating online laws.

4 . Make sure your business is insured.

Depending on your business type, you may be required by state law to be both licensed and insured. HVAC businesses have a lot of liability as they involve both plumbing and electricity. I spoke with several insurance agents before deciding on the best insurance for my business needs.

There are also many different business insurance types, such as:

• Liability insurance.
• Worker’s comp.
• Property insurance (think your business location, tools, and equipment you use).
• And more. Be sure to research these different insurance types and purchase the necessary ones.

Pro tip: Check out this article on small business insurance.

5. Create a website.

After handling the research, taking care of legalities, and honing your products or services, it is time to create your website . When creating your website, you will need to choose a strong ecommerce platform that will allow you to sell products online.

Pro tip: Check out Hubspot’s free CMS tool for website building here.

6. Set up shop.

Once your website is complete, it’s time to add products or services to your store. When adding your products, pay attention to product images and descriptions. Having a crisp image and a detailed but concise description will help your audience maneuver your website smoothly.

After you have finished setting up your store, it’s critical to ensure you offer a seamless shipping or delivery experience to your buyers. For example, you can use HubSpot to manage quality control before you ship products out.

Finally, you want to make sure everything is working before you hit the live button on your website. Make sure that everything is clickable and that all pages look good across all devices and browsers. Once you’ve checked that, you are ready to go live.

Pro tip: If you take credit card information on your website, you will need to abide by compliance laws that ensure the safety of sensitive data. Read more on credit card compliance .

7. Create a marketing plan.

You’ve created an awesome product, and now it’s time to get the word out. In other words, it’s time to grow your audience. There are numerous ways to reach your target customer, including:

• Social media : Use hashtags and paid ads to expand your reach.
• Influencer marketing : Send free samples to “celebrities” in your niche.
• Facebook groups : Connect with your target market on this platform.
• Google advertising : Put your products in front of people all over the web.
• Content marketing : Publish blog posts to bring organic traffic to your site.
• Word-of-mouth : Encourage customers to spread the word.
• YouTube videos : Start a channel to showcase your products.

Pro Tip: Google ads and LinkedIn ads regularly offer discounts or free ad money; consider using these promos to try online advertisements out.

8 . Grow your business.

You’ve heard it said that in business, you’re either growing or you’re dying. Here are a couple of tips for growing your business online:

• Reduce the amount of time it takes online viewers to receive value from you and your brand.
• Answer the questions no one in your industry is answering — for example, a lot of companies won’t talk about pricing, forcing customers to keep looking for someone who will.
• Create a dynamic website that changes with the times. Update your images and writing to reflect what’s happening with your business now, and ensure your website isn’t dating you.
• Invest in content and SEO . They aren’t cheap, but they are really important for being found online, organically.

Pro tip: Check out this blog on how to become an SEO expert, according to HubSpot’s SEO team.

9. Watch your income and expenditures closely.

The first year of your business is an essential set point for discovering your overhead and your profit. Have a date in mind of when you want your business to start turning a profit and a solid plan for if you aren’t meeting that goal. Read further on potential exit strategies below.

Pro tip: Use a free business budget template to monitor your finances.

10. Plan for an exit strategy.

If you’re like me, you didn’t consider an exit strategy when thinking up your business. You probably assumed you’d run your business for the foreseeable future. However, economic uncertainty or unexpected success can both impact the end of your business. In fact, 90% of startups fail , which makes it a wise choice to know under what circumstances you would close down your business.

You could also experience unexpected buzz and success and be offered a buyout. A good exit strategy will plan for this as well. What amount of money would make selling worth it? Consider also how long you would have to run your business before considering offers. Some want to sell high and fast, whereas other business owners want to see where things go during a set amount of time.

An exit strategy could also include who you want to inherit your business, maybe family or an employee.

Pro tip: Check out this blog on the importance of having an exit strategy.

Next Steps: Getting Ready to Launch Your Business

I know from experience that being a small business owner isn’t easy, but with the right plan, you can set up your business for success. Be sure to check and know your requirements, have a solid business plan, and submit your legal paperwork before you take your business live. Once you have a solid business plan and the financing to execute your goals, you’ll be well on the path to launching a successful enterprise.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in August 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Assignments

This section includes suggested assignments for each of the seven chapters. If you are taking this course for credit, your teacher will indicate which assignments you will need to complete and how. 

For teachers: please feel free to copy assignments into your schools' LMS. 

In this free version of the course the local teachers are in charge of the assessment. We can also offer a complete course solution with LMS, assessment and certification. For more information, contact [email protected].

Chapter 1: What is Entrepreneurship?

Assignment 1

Define entrepreneurship and explain what it means to you. What does having an entrepreneurial mindset mean? Why do employers value entrepreneurial thinking?  Make a mindmap or video about your thoughts. 

Assignment 2

An entrepreneurial person is proactive, customer oriented and considers financial implications of one's action. Describe a situation where you have acted according to these principles. 

Chapter 2: Entrepreneurial Skills and Strengths

Assignment 3

Reflecting on the VIA character test results, choose three strengths and describe what they tell about you.  Analyze how those three strengths are useful in working life and as an entrepreneur.

Chapter 3: World of Successful Companies 

Assignment 4

Benchmark a company in the field you are studying/interested in. What is the impact of the company to society and its services? Have companies in this field faced any major challenges e.g. due to robotization or other global changes? Report on your findings in a format instructed by your teacher.

Chapter 4 & 5: My Business Idea & Elements of Business

Assignment 5

What could be your business idea? How does it differ from what is already offered on the market? Do a SWOT analysis based on your thoughts. 

Assignment 6

Take your idea a step further and go through the business model canvas, making lists for solutions under each heading. 

Chapter 6: Setting up a Company

Assignment 7

Which type of company would you select for your first business? Why would you make this choice?

Chapter 7: Launching Your Business Idea to the World

Assignment 8

Describe your networks. Whom can you turn to for support in launching your business? 

• Email: [email protected]
• Phone: +61-730-407-305

Entrepreneurship Assignment Topics for MBA Students

Entrepreneurship-related studies are nowadays very trendy in search of finding new job opportunities. In the entire world, due to the economical encroachment, there is the importance of finding new start-ups where entrepreneurship is the only way. To learn the study of entrepreneurship, students need to solve different kinds of assignments for their institutional semesters. In this situation, students feel the scarcity of topics as they need a lot of experience and knowledge to find out topics of entrepreneurship topics. Without online assignment help services, such an entrepreneurship assignment can be a mess. To avoid such a mess there are some ideas which are presented below.

For entrepreneurship-related dissertation assignments , there are some topics. These are selected because it provides a large place of research to students.

• What can be the best new sector to create huge job opportunities?
• Which are the barriers in the national as well as international trade market?
• How to overcome the issues of employment across the world?
• How can entrepreneurship make the difference between the employed and unemployed peoples?
• Are there resource issues for entrepreneurship and employment creation in this present world?
• How can entrepreneurship change the unemployment issues?
• How can be entrepreneurship aligned with technology?

Entrepreneurship assignment topics are mostly now directing towards the new job opportunity creation.

Entrepreneurship assignment ideas:

If students are wandering towards their world, it is easy to find out different kinds of topics related to entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship assignment ideas come from finding out investors to finance the project, repulsing the settled companies to new business persons, and finding out the hindrances of successful entrepreneurship establishment. Another highly catchy entrepreneurship assignment ideas come from finding out different kinds of hindrances for entrepreneurship and developing the workforce from converting inefficient workforce into effective human resources.

Entrepreneur report assignments:

In MBA, students need to submit some reports related to entrepreneurship assignments with a huge word count. For examples of the entrepreneurship report topics, there is the acquisition-related activities in Nigeria, strategic management for the small-scale businesses, how small-scale businesses or entrepreneurs can change the scenario of unemployment issues, raw material collection, or sourcing for the small scall business continuation.

In the entrepreneurial processes, there are four stages as researching on the market financing risk-taking, development of the project, and management of the project. Initially, students should learn the process that the entrepreneurship process starts with the risk-taking, assessments, and management process within a business. Here, the entrepreneurship system needs vast knowledge about risk management and development with the changing economic condition of the world. Entrepreneurship assignment ideas come from the business development process as well as market research. Entrepreneurship assignment help services are very rare due to a lack of confident entrepreneurship-related subject matter experts.

How to find out Entrepreneurship assignment ideas:

• If you are a good researcher, then you can find it out from the changing world.
• If you follow your daily classes on Entrepreneurship then professors will provide you a clear outline.
• If you are not confident about the steps, then the most crucial thing is to take entrepreneurship assignment help services. Here in social media, you can meet with many companies where assignmentclassmates.com is the best with their services, terms, and conditions. For quality, timely deliverance, anti-plagiarism reports, and proper customer care assurances are always available in this management assignment help system. According to market research for achieving better marks students need online assignment help services with their entrepreneurship assignment.

If you are thinking about your Entrepreneurship assignment ideas, topics, reports, or other things, feel free to contact assignmentclassmates.com and achieve the HD grade in the final semester.

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• Entrepreneurship /

BBA Entrepreneurship

• Updated on  
• Feb 13, 2023

As India progresses further in the age of startups, students are looking for ways to delve into this new career option. While being an entrepreneur requires more than just a degree, certain innovative courses can make the students business ready by introducing innovative and relevant subjects for those who strive towards establishing their own identity in the market. One such course is BBA Entrepreneurship . Read this blog to learn more about the course and its specifications!

This Blog Includes:

What is bba entrepreneurship, why study bba entrepreneurship, eligibility criteria, admission process, bba in entrepreneurship: syllabus , subjects offered, top universities, top colleges offering bba entrepreneurship in india , bba entrepreneurship fees in india, jobs and salaries, bba entrepreneurship: future scope.

BBA Entrepreneurship is a 3-year degree course offered to students at the undergraduate level. Most colleges offer it to students who have studied either Commerce or Mathematics in their high school, while some offer the course to all subject streams. The course aims towards building a foundation of independent entrepreneurial thinking in students, teaching them about the present market environment and all the skills they require to establish themselves as a business. This course also complements students with a family business background, aiding them in an understanding of business operations and growth opportunities.

Check out the list of Young Entrepreneurs in India !

There are many reasons why students opt for BBA in Entrepreneurship. Check them out:

• The BBA Entrepreneurship programme offers opportunities to work as a business consultant, delivery manager, new venture developer, and other positions in a variety of industries, including banking , retail , automotive, advertising , real estate, and many more.
• This course equips minority and female entrepreneurs with the skills and knowledge they need to launch their businesses.
• The majority of candidates with a BBA in entrepreneurship work in the banking industry, real estate, advertising firms, etc. Others prefer to launch their own business, either by producing goods or providing a range of services.
• Depending on experience and skill, a business analyst or delivery manager can expect to earn an average salary of INR 3,00,000–20,00,00 annually.

The eligibility criteria to secure admission to BBA Entrepreneurship are given below:

• Candidates who have completed their 10+2 in any stream from an accredited council or board, preferably from the Commerce stream, with a minimum of 50% overall are eligible to apply for these courses.
• According to Indian government regulations, candidates from reserved categories like SC, ST, and OBC are eligible for a mark reduction.

Merit-based admissions to the BBA Entrepreneurship programme are also available, as are admissions based on performance in any entrance exam offered by a variety of organisations or institutions.

• Candidates must go to the entrance conducting body’s official website to register for any of the entrance exams.
• Name, father’s name, marks earned in the most recent qualifying examination, and other vital personal and academic information must be entered into the application form. A candidate must also upload a photo and their signature.
• Complete the registration process by paying the required application fee using a debit/credit card or net banking.
• After a specified date and time, the organising body provides a link for downloading the entrance exam admit cards.
• Candidates who have registered must go to the website and download the admit card.
• The website of the organisation that conducts the examination will have a list of the successful applicants for such entrances.
• Depending on the results, various colleges contact candidates for a round of in-person interviews where a candidate’s general aptitude is assessed and successful candidates are given admission offers.
• These applicants must complete all necessary admission requirements, including paying the admission fee and any other applicable fees.

Tabulated below is the semester wise break up of the syllabus for the course 

Similar to a traditional BBA course, BBA Entrepreneurship comprises commerce-centric subjects that build basic management skills, along with providing an in-depth knowledge of economics, accountancy and business communication. Coupled with that, there are certain entrepreneurial subjects taught at an advanced level. Here is a list of some important subjects in the course:

• Fundamentals of Management
• Micro and Macro Economics
• Quantitative techniques for Business
• Financial planning
• Valuation and Succession
• Business Communication 
• Family Business Management
• Equity and Venture Capital
• Mergers and Acquisitions
• Strategic Leadership

Here is a list of top Women Entrepreneurs in India !

There are several Government and Private colleges in India that provide a 3-year degree in BBA entrepreneurship. However, there are numerous undergraduate entrepreneurial Universities from abroad that students must consider while making a decision. Being affiliated with an Internationally renowned Institution can really give your career an additional boost of knowledge, experience and recognition. Here are some of our top picks:

• University of Leeds , UK
• Sloan School of Management, MIT, USA
• University College London , UK
• EU Business School , Germany
• Torrens University , Australia
• Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania , USA
• University of Toronto , Canada
• Limkokwing University of Creative Technology, Malaysia
• University of New South Wales , Australia
• University of Manchester , UK
• Geneva Business School, Spain
• Kelley School of Business , Indiana University , USA
• Swiss Business School, Switzerland
• Marshall School of Business , University of Southern California , USA

In comparison to other courses, the fees for pursuing BBA are slightly on the higher side. One of the reasons for this is that the BBA course is a professional course and there are many benefits attached to it. The average range in India for the BBA fees is from INR 5 thousand to 5 lakhs. The fees for BBA also depend on various factors such as the location and city of the college or university you are pursuing your BBA. 

Tabulated below are some important highlights of BBA Entrepreneurship –

Candidates who earn a BBA in entrepreneurship work primarily in the banking industry, retail real estate, etc., while others prefer jobs in the agriculture industry, mining firms, the oil and gas industry, etc. Below is a list of some typical jobs that would be relevant for such a candidate:

The immense scope of BBA Entrepreneurship is what sets this course apart from others. While most courses tend towards developing specific professional skills in students, BBA Entrepreneurship unleashes the working potential within the students themselves. The more a student is engaged in learning about the dynamics of business, the better he sets himself up to be successful. 

• BBA Entrepreneurship can set up students with the required knowledge to establish and run their own businesses, instead of looking up for jobs to ply their trade.
• If you already have a business, you can learn how to develop with the changing course of time, adapting and expanding their operations as per the new environment.
• If individuals want to look for jobs after completing their degree, they can apply for jobs as Business consultants, Franchise Operators, Financial Administrators or new Venture developers. Many middle and high-level management positions also require people with entrepreneurial skills.
• Students can further their academic knowledge by applying for an MBA. Many colleges and universities also offer specialized subjects that further develop Entrepreneurial skills and also get better compensation in the organised sector.

The Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) in Entrepreneurship programme is intended to provide future entrepreneurs with the skills and knowledge necessary to launch their own businesses.

The BBA is one of the best degrees for entrepreneurs and people who want to be entrepreneurs if you’re wondering what to study to become one. It develops a strong sense of business, exposes students to various business models, and imparts entrepreneurship training.

The primary distinction between a BBA (General) and a BBA (Entrepreneurship) is that the former is an all-encompassing graduate degree programme in management while the latter concentrates on a particular branch of management, namely entrepreneurship.

With the advent of such professional courses that develop all the skills possessed by a successful businessman, “Leaders are born” may soon become a notion of the past. This translates into a better entrepreneurial ecosystem with innovation, offering newer opportunities to the society. To know more about such interesting courses, connect with us at Leverage Edu . What’s even better, our experts offer career guidance tailored as per your personalised requirements. Join us by booking a free E- meeting right away.

Team Leverage Edu

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Unv youth advocates programme: applications now open, the talent programme by unicef and unv aims at empowering young people, including youth with disabilities, to become agents of change.

UNICEF has launched the UNV Youth Advocates programme , an initiative to recruit talent in partnership with United Nations Volunteers  (UNV) . We aim at empowering young people , including youth with disabilities, to become agents of change and champion children's rights.

Click here to go to the video | Click here to go to the assignments

The UNV Youth Advocates

After the success of the first initiative in 2018 - 2019, which mobilized 42 Youth Advocates (18-24 years old) in 27 countries, UNICEF, in partnership with UNV, is now looking for the second cohort.  We are searching for 20 young, passionate, and skilled advocates to join us and become agents of change advocating for the protection of children’s rights.

The UNV Youth Advocates Programme offers young people the chance to gain one-year professional experience through a National UN Volunteer (UNV) assignment with UNICEF , while also imparting their valuable insights into the organization's work for children and young people.

The recruited UNV Youth Advocates will have access to learning and professional development opportunities, including a suite of online learning programmes.

Young professionals with disabilities and from under-represented groups are especially encouraged to apply.

If you are 18-35 years of age and passionate about children´s rights, check out the assignment opportunities listed below.

Click here to go to the assignments

Listen to what Joyranig, Jean Junior, and Rediet,

UN Youth Volunteers at UNICEF have to say about their experience

and why they think you should join too.

Youth Advocates Assignments

Take note of the closing date for applications. Assignments are removed on the application closing date. Click on the country you are interested in to go to the assignment.

Disability Inclusion Assistant - UNICEF Iran

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