How Do I Teach Evidence-Based Entrepreneurship to High School Students?
Five years ago, I led a class modelled after the Lean LaunchPad, the evidence-based entrepreneurship course created by Steve Blank at Stanford. I implemented it for masters students.
I’m about to do the same for high school students. How should I plan and execute this?
Below are my initial thoughts after:
- Reviewing my lessons learned 5 years ago (particularly on mentoring, problems encountered, and early lessons learned)
- Studying The Lean LaunchPad Educator’s Guide (65MB PDF)
- Reading through some blog posts on running the Lean LaunchPad in a US high school: experience from Hawken School, part 2, Hawken’s implementation in middle school, on teaching other teachers.
If you are reading this there is a good likelihood that I reached out to you. And I did that because of your Lean LaunchPad experience. Before I share my own thoughts, could I ask what comes to mind when I ask these questions?
- What worked surprisingly well in your implementation of the Lean LaunchPad?
- What failed and why?
- Knowing what you know now, what knowledge would you share to your pre-Lean LaunchPad self?
I really hope to hear from you. My email is sugbu@corazo.org.
If you came here as someone planning to run a Lean LaunchPad as well, I’d be happy to discuss my experiences. Please reach out!
So, here are my thoughts on this. These are mainly things I would do different from the canonical implementation of the Lean LaunchPad.
To teach better the language of business models, have them work an existing business rather than start with a startup idea
I’ve seen this play out in several Startup Weekends. Having no work experience, the problems these kids see are very limited. Having them work on an existing business also allows them to:
- Learn from the entrepreneur they will have to interview
- Explain the business model canvas to that entrepreneur
- Validate with that entrepreneur if they have captured the business model correctly
In the book Business Model Generation, there is a series of questions to diagnose the strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats of a business. This would then guide improvement and innovation in the business model. The changes that the students propose will be the starting point in their testing of hypotheses.
This is similar to what Hawken School did.
Insist that the class be the last one scheduled in a day. This allows the students to go out of the building without eating up their hours after class.
This is not a concern for college students. These high school students though don’t have the flexibility of a college schedule. And some of them work up to 3am to finish projects. Not yet sure if it is a lack of discipline in scheduling or if the school is giving too much work outside class. In any case, I don’t want to give these kids more work than necessary outside class. It is totally different for college or masters students who opt to take this as an elective. Perhaps part of the mentoring could also be time management (eg, “show me your calendar for customer development interviews”).
Use Trello as a poor man’s substitute to Launchpad Central
I’ll be scheduling a call with a sales rep (they don’t post their pricing), but I’m guessing it won’t make financial sense, like a lot of software from the US. The salaries of teachers here are 1/6th of the US and tuition fees similarly have a huge disparity, making a lot of software sound absurdly expensive. For instance, Salesforce, one of the most popular CRMs in the US, is hardly used locally, since its subscription is higher than the salary of a local salesperson!
More mentor training
I did not emphasise this enough the last time.
Prepare with a professional high school teacher
I have never taught in high school. There is probably a greater requirement for planning the teaching approach.
- Go through the Educator’s Guide together
- Watch the Steve Blank’s Udacity Lecture’s together as well as the videos for teachers
- Recreate the curriculum for the school
- Do some risk management exercises
- To do list: page 50–51 of the Educator’s Guide:
Use quizzes to ensure they watch (and study) Steve Blank’s Lectures at Udacity
This worked the last time around.
Do a customer interview workshop
(Page 70 of the Educator’s Guide)
I’ll add more as I learn from other teachers and as the plan becomes more concrete.
