There is a start-up business opportunity that could commence in our region within a matter of weeks with global demand and job creation potential. It’s not the next Facebook or Microsoft, it is a quite simple concept, it just needs the right support to get it started.
The support needed is not just money, in-fact for the initial test run little working capital is needed to produce the product, the support needed is more psychological, being convinced that he should disrupt his life to give it a shot.
As mentioned last week the international start-up education program 3DS was held on the weekend. This was an opportunity for our youth to further activate and explore their entrepreneurial potential. Can you believe one secondary school student was threatened by his part-time employer if he attended thus not do his weekend shift he wouldn’t get shifts over the holidays. What a great long term vision for Rockhampton this employer has. Luckily there were some employers who are more community minded. The students who attended the full on weekend ranged from Grade 11 to post graduate university students. 4 ideas were ultimately pitched to a panel, each has merit either commercially or socially. Whether these ideas progress further to become business ventures, as some from previous 3DS events have, or not doesn’t matter, the important bit is these students have a greater appreciation of the collaboration involved in getting a start-up happening and with this appreciation maybe more inclined to work for one or indeed commence one.
The important part for me from the weekend was the absolute necessity to keep doing these events and encouraging more of our youth to be involved.
The education system needs entrepreneurial appreciation to be part of the curriculum from an early age as much as art and music is. Not every student will become an entrepreneur but just like not every student will become an artist an appreciation of the subject is needed as part of their personal and our community development.
Apparently the education system is aware of this but change takes a long time, so we must just keep chipping away. What a load of hogwash, if we expect and require our education system to be more relevant to the needs of our economy we must demand the same thing of them that they should be making our students aware of and appreciate, the power of disruption. Disruption is what the global economy is experiencing. It is affecting what jobs are available, what industries that will become obsolete, what industries will emerge and thus how our communities develop. None of us are immure to it. Governments serious about innovation and entrepreneurialism need to give schools the money for entrepreneurial programs and demand them to account for it. In a way throw them in the deep end and teach themselves how to swim. This is going to be a lot more effective than ‘chipping away’.
With classes in entrepreneurial appreciation taught from an early age perhaps the potential start-up that I mentioned at the beginning would already be up and running. Perhaps we also have more forward thinking, community minded employers realising the benefit of having their young employees attend programs like 3DS. And more importantly not have our greatest resource continually depart the region looking for better more exciting opportunities – our youth. Let’s cause some disruption of our own in this region and create a Youth Entrepreneurial Economic Zone.