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The teaching of entrepreneurship is something that is naturally associated with the college experience. But since
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not all high school grads end up going to college, should this be an area of study in high school? Pleasure to be
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joined right now by Lori Rosenoff, who is management professor and vice dean of entrepreneurship here at the Wharton
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School. Lori, great to talk to you again. How are you? >> Great, Dan. Happy to be here. Let's
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start off I guess with the importance of an entrepreneurial education in general.
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>> Well, entrepreneurial education is about all of the critical thinking that we
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know is becoming ever more important to develop in all students of all ages as we enter the age of AI. And so
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entrepreneurship is about creating questions out of unstructured situations, generating and testing hypotheses as to
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how those questions can be solved, and then having the people skills as well to implement those solutions. So those are
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skills that we should be teaching across the board to students. >> We're starting to see some school
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districts include this in their curriculum. So obviously they believe it is important. Uh I guess the question is
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can it be effectively taught to high school students? >> Yes and no. I I it can be effectively
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thought the process of developing an entrepreneurial mindset and finding problems to work on and and attempts to
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make that go forward that can be taught to anyone at any age. Where it can be challenging is that the most successful
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entrepreneurs tend to be people who've had a significant amount of career experience and understand a an industry
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vertical pretty effectively to develop real solutions. So what you're going to
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see with high schoolers is a much smaller set of possible businesses that they can develop. this is the best time
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to start learning and practicing uh before they even get to college and start working uh with more of the
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technologies that are developed in a university setting. >> What are the types of resources that
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schools will need to have in order to be able to bring forward an effective level
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of education around entrepreneurship? I think the most important thing is probably engaged teachers who are
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willing to put in the extra mile to really um uh serve as curators for students who are deeply interested. Uh
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some limited resources to make small micro grants to students is obviously a a great thing because it can give
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students who don't have resources enough capital to get some supplies or do some
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advertising, get the word out and the like. being able to take advantage of either alumni or parents uh at the
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school who have some sort of entrepreneurial experience, even if that's something as as basic as being
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self-employed and doing some sort of personal care services, that's still about starting a business. So, bringing
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that network in to help students start to see themselves is just fabulous. And of course, there's tons of stuff online
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as well, >> right? And and I would imagine there's an element of this that helps to empower
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students and to give them the opportunity and the thought process that they can go out and do something like
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this and start their own business down the road. >> It's kind of remarkable, Dan. Even in my
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own work with more established people further along, uh in my research for my book, I saw that about half of the
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people were from childhood saying, "I knew I would be an entrepreneur. I was
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reselling my Halloween candy or great Girl Scout cookies, paper boy routes, uh, etc. But then the other half come to
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it later. And I think in the same way in a high school setting, you're going to
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have some subset subset of students who are super excited about this idea and are just looking for more and more
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places where they can start to generate some business, some traction. Uh, and then you have others who might be a
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little bit more reticent about it. And that's where things like my book can show them some of these role models and
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help them understand that entrepreneurs are simply people who find ways to innovate and create some value from it.
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So th that brings up the interesting question of of the types of curriculum we have in schools these days and
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whether or not that this kind of opens the door to thinking about different types of education that as you kind of
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alluded to earlier with uh the onset of AI uh that we need to have as we move forward and we are teaching those next
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generation of of soon to be high school graduates. >> Yes. Uh the traditional business
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education class was typically economics in high school and and economics is important for people to learn supply and
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demand and some of the macroeconomic trends that affect businesses as well but it's not a substitute for practicing
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defining a problem and building solutions and implementing them. So the two of them can be really complimentary
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in giving students the experiential opportunities to play around and fail. Most businesses will fail uh
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particularly at this stage or they will be so minuscule in revenues so as not to
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be be a part of of the economy. Uh but but giving students that chance is incredibly important for their future
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development. It gets those muscles going as they start to see more and bigger opportunities. It's the same thing we do
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with the uh students at Venture Lab uh undergraduates as well as graduate students. Many of those ventures will
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not wind up making it to a a a formal business, but they're giving people the
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muscle to move further in that direction. >> From the education side of this, and you
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mentioned you want to have engaged teachers, but >> what else must the teachers have in
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order to be effective? Well, we do want the teachers to be able to communicate some fundamental business
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principles so that they can help students have some discipline about not only measuring whether they've reached
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some customers, but whether they're actually turning a profit or creating value in ways that are really
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meaningful. So, we need that set of skills. But then we want them taking advantage of all the different resources
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available. I I use the word curator. These teachers are curators in some sense to say, "Here are the series of
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online resources where people can watch videos and learn about some of these more curricular pieces, if you will.
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Here are all of the entities in the community that are actually providing some ways for young people to come
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together and and pitch in different competitions or get some micro grants and the like. And here are ways in which
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we can build activities within the school and within our community to get everyone learning from everyone else as
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well as from that instructor. >> Lori, great to talk to you as always. Thanks very much for your time. All the
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best. >> Absolutely, Dan. Great to see you. >> Thank you. Great to see you as well.
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Lori Rosenoff, management professor and vice dean of entrepreneurship here at the Wharton School.