Entrepreneurship!
Fourteen-year-old Fraser Doherty, of Edinburgh, Scotland, certainly understands the meaning of Entrepreneurship and Innovation—he won first place in the Global Student Entrepreneurship Award competition at the 2008 Global Entrepreneurship Week. Fraser’s company, SuperJam, makes fruit jam from natural products, and sells it globally.
Frasier is a serial entrepreneur in that this is not his first venture into entrepreneurship. He has even tasted the sting of failure—his first enterprise failed because a fox ate his assets. But, like any true entrepreneur, Fraser came back with an idea for his next venture, and turned it into a success. One can only wonder what his next enterprise will be.
This story is in sharp contrast to one of my recent posts, Scandals, Innovations, and AIG, which presented the dismal picture of the high rate of school dropouts in the U.S. Instead of trying to train our students to get high scores on their SAT tests, we need to prepare more of them for entrepreneurship.
Fortunately, there is one place where aspiring young (and old) entrepreneurs can connect and begin to turn their dreams into reality—Global Entrepreneurship Week. Seventy-five countries will hold thousands of events during this week, where entrepreneurs of all ages meet to share and learn. The short video below presents a brief montage of typical events that are held around the world during this week.
(email subscribers, view on blog)
The next Global Entrepreneurship Week will be celebrated November 16-22, 2009. What can each of us do to make entrepreneurship a goal for more young people, instead of the world of the dropout?
“…in a rapidly changing world that demands new ideas faster than ever, young people must not only embrace their prevailing tendencies toward entrepreneurial thinking—they must be inspired to act on them.”
—Jonathan Ortmans
President, Public Forum Institute
My Book
Any business crisis can be managed before it becomes fatal . . . Be Your Own Turnaround Manager tells you how. Click here for more information.