STEAMpreneurship

Educators around the world are teaching STEAM2 (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Manufacturing and Math) for Young Entrepreneurs.

Through our experience and interactions with hundreds of educators globally, we have learned that there are key steps you can take to make a significant impact on youth entrepreneurship activities, and engaging students in STEAM programs.

One of the programs we run — Global Trade Mission — takes high school students and youth on a virtual global trade mission. They learn about STEAM from local resources, they learn about global culture, and then they work in teams to create and present a business idea to solve a world problem we impose on them. They learn to sell a product or service overseas and pitch their business to a group of investors.

While this sounds complex, the basics are quite simple. You can do some version of it in your own city or country. Of course, we would love to work with you on that, but for now here are the top six steps you could do immediately to ensure that local youth is involved and engaged in STEAMpreneurship:

1. Identify a STEAM-related problem the students need to solve. This could be, “We need to create an energy solution that will reduce household electricity usage,” or “We need to create an energy solution or robot that could help the disabled community serve food or clean tables.”
2. Bring in two local resources — entrepreneurs who run a company in the automation or energy field — in to explain to the students how things are done in their companies. This gives the students two different perspectives on the same topic.
3. Bring in a cultural representative to help the students understand the culture of the people in the country or community their product or service will serve. If they intend to sell to India or Asia, you would bring one or two representatives to speak about India, China, Indonesia, or Japan. If their product or service is for the disabled community, you might bring in someone from the Deaf community, or the Disabled Veterans community.
4. Bring in a group from the local business community to help the student teams you draft a 3–5 minute presentation and a one-page document explaining their idea or concept.
5. Create a panel that will listen to and judge the presentations. Local resources such as the SBA, SBDC, or other government agencies could help you articulate the messages or resources that could help entrepreneurs understand exporting. This is an opportunity to expose youth to the concept of utilizing resources they have, or finding those they may not have known before.
6. Celebrate after the pitch competition!

This is what happens in our Global Trade Missions, with one exception: we generally have youth and students from multiple regions. They work in teams composed of people they have never met before, and we expose them to these ideas. There is a lot of learning for them to gain!

BEFORE YOU GO:
We see our blogs as opportunities for dialogue. Please share your thoughts as comments.

1. What resources are in your network that could help you create a similar program? Just sit down and make a list.
2. What resources are you missing in order to make this mission complete?
3. What other practices have you used to engage youth in STEAMpreneurship?

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Faris Alami is Founder and CEO of International Strategic Management, Inc. (ISM). He works internationally, presenting Exploring Entrepreneurship Workshops and other entrepreneurial ecosystem — related ventures.