Want an entrepreneurial culture? Get kids involved. It’s never too soon to start learning and students in year 10 are taught business as part of The New Zealand Curriculum. In years 12 and 13, students can participate in the Lion Foundation Young Enterprise Scheme (YES), where they set up and run a company that creates and sells real products. Notice a gap? Yep, in year 11, business doesn’t get a look-in. Could that be part of the reason that some kids and schools don’t get involved in YES?
2015 is the second year that BCC has been the facilitator of YES for the Manawatu -Whanganui region.
“After YES last year, we reflected on how to get more kids and schools involved,” says Dave Craig, BCC marketing manager.
“We wondered: if we can jazz them up a bit during year 11, would that reflect in more interest and enrolment in YES?”
To test that theory, in March BCC offered a ‘5 to 5’ business bootcamp to year 11 students at Palmerston North Girls’ and Boys’ High Schools.
About 65 students participated in the bootcamp, basically an accelerated version of Startup Weekend. Friend groups were split up and students were divided into mixed gender teams. The fun started with that old team-building favourite, the Marshmallow Challenge: build a tower in 18 minutes with only one marshmallow, 20 sticks of spaghetti, one metre of string and one metre of tape.
“Startup Weekend is about kicking off a new idea and growing it into a new business in 54 hours. For the 5 to 5 weekend, we only had 24 hours, so to give the teams a boost, we threw a bunch of ideas on the board. But the teams all came up with their own ideas, which was really great,” says Craig.
On Friday night, the teams worked on their value propositions, identified their customer base and consulted with mentors. On Saturday morning, BCC introduced the concepts of market validation and how to pitch an idea. Half of each team worked on the group pitch and the other half hit the streets and surveyed people about their idea.
“They asked people on the street basic market validation questions, such as ‘is this a problem you have and would you pay money to solve it?’ Doing this is really outside of most kids’ comfort zones but by doing it with friends, it becomes fun,” says Craig.
On Saturday afternoon, teams integrated what they learned on the streets and practiced their pitches to mentors. Feedback considered, the final pitches were made to the judging panel, other students and parents.
“I’d have to say that about half of the pitches were better than the ones we get at Startup Weekend,” says Craig.
“It was a great weekend and I’m really enthused about offering it again next year. This was a pilot and only schools were invited but next year, we plan to offer 5 to 5 to all the high schools in the area and add to the level of competition by picking the top two teams from each school and running a 5 to 5 showdown.”
This year, four new schools are participating in YES but Craig isn’t stopping there. “There are 17 high schools in the Manawatu-Whanganui region and we’ve got 12 enrolled in YES this year. We’d like to get them all.”
Will 5 to 5 be enough to spark the interest of more kids and the remaining five schools? Hard to know, but Craig says it was pretty obvious by watching the kids interact and the sound levels in the room that they enjoyed the weekend.
And if it’s any indication that the students want more of this kind of activity, consider this: the winning team has already entered their idea in Innovate.
