Americans between the ages of 16 and 35 make up a third of the U.S. population and with many entering the workforce, companies and schools are grappling with how to develop young entrepreneurs, industry insiders said during a Clinton Global Initiative America panel on Tuesday.
One out of four millennials are starting companies and while there is an increase in entrepreneurship programs at colleges and universities, the courses often don’t encourage risk taking and failure, said Andrew Lang, founder of Venture for America, a company that matches entrepreneurs with early-stage startups.
“Teaching entrepreneurship in the classroom is difficult because the stakes are still within a very controlled environment where you get a grade,” Yang said.
Most of the time, students are expected to become risk takers after being exposed to the classroom environment.
“It’s really disingenuous,” he said.
Nicole Glaros, partner at Techstars, a mentorship driven startup accelerator, said while entrepreneurship instructors in classrooms focus on how to raise venture capital, customer development and market analysis, that doesn’t make an entrepreneur.
It’s personality traits — not education — that drives entrepreneurship, she said.
“If you sit them down in a classroom and have them read a book, they are not going to learn how to be an entrepreneur,” she said. “When you set them out into the world and say ‘Go sell this product,’ they will learn. So I do believe you can learn it, but teaching it is something else.”
However, entrepreneurship traits can be fostered at a young age by allowing kids room to be creative and teaching them failing is OK.
“The creative ones that can think uniquely about a situation and take in various factors those are the ones that tend to win,” Glaros said.
Yang said it’s important to grow entrepreneurship in cities outside of hubs such as New York, Los Angeles or Chicago.
If young people are tested and being pushed, it will help them become successful, Yang said. “Any growth company needs a whole battalion of smart, dedicated people later on.”
Large corporations can attract and keep younger employees by fostering intrapreneurship — acting entrepreneurial inside an organization — among younger workers by allowing them to problem solve and giving them the resources to do it, Glaros said.
If they are stuck in a large corporation where they have no impact, they will leave quickly, she said.
“That’s a really powerful thing to give an entrepreneur that might not have the DNA to go out and risk everything to start a company, but they can have the same experience within an organization where it can be safer,” Glaros said.
Amy Edelen: aedelen@denverpost.com, 303-954-1440 or
