Problem Overview 🔍

The school was looking at developing a new enterprise programme to teach its students entrepreneurial skills.

They needed a programme which could:

Involve and engage all 180 students in the school year
Provide the students with entrepreneurial skills and learning outcomes
Expose the students to inspirational talks by entrepreneurs
Allow the students to collaborate and work in groups
Incorporate a competition and prize-giving element

Approach 🤔

We worked collaboratively with the school to design a programme that met their requirements as well as involving local entrepreneurial volunteers connected to the school's ecosystem. We also ensured to understand the limitations the school faced with regards to facilities and staff availability when designing the programme.

Solution 💡

Our learning programme involved partial whole-school teaching as well as splitting the students into groups for classroom learning. When in the classrooms, each room was assigned one expert entrepreneurial mentor as well as a teacher. Students had access to computers to allow them to login to the Startbook software platform and produce their business plans and pitches. The learning programme involved:

An introduction to entrepreneurship
- What is entrepreneurship?
- What is an entrepreneur?
- Examples of entrepreneurs
- Entrepreneurial values and skills
- Why is entrepreneurship important?
An introduction to ideation
- What is ideation?
- How do entrepreneurs come up with business ideas?
- What is effectual thinking?
Simple business plan creation
- What is the product or service your company will provide?
- What need does your company fulfill for your customers?
- Who are your customers?
- How much does your product or service cost?
- How will you market your business?
Pitching and presenting
- What to include in a business pitch
- Top tips on pitching and public speaking
- Multi-heat pitching competition and pitch final
Learnings and reflections
- Listening to entrepreneurs tell their stories
- Asking questions to a panel of entrepreneurs
- Reflecting on the programme and the take-home lessons

Startbook Software Platform 🖥️

Students were able to login and use the Startbook software platform, which guided them through the process of outlining their business idea, plan and creating a pitch.

A progress bar indicated the sections they needed to complete and students were able to collaborate when completing the various sections of their business profiles.

Feedback ✍️

At the beginning of the learning programme only a handful of students knew what an entrepreneur was, but by the end of the two days they had all produced an entrepreneurial business pitch and 1/3 of the students reported they would be interested in exploring the idea of pursuing an entrepreneurial career.

We received 76 pieces of feedback from the students - the feedback was incredibly positive - some examples can be seen in the carousel. We also received helpful suggestions and ideas, which we've built upon to further improve future programmes that we run.

We also received positive feedback from the teachers and staff of the school - some testimonials can be seen below.