What changes when students develop entrepreneurial skills at a young age? They learn that they can grow their brains, that their brains form new synapses and abilities as they learn new things.
Students develop a mindset that makes learning a mental strengthening and an expansion of their potential. They employ the “curiosity cycle,” building foundations of knowledge on which they can expand as they follow their curiosity. They learn what it takes to achieve mastery in any field.
This happens at a very young age. Little girls can develop an entrepreneurial mindset even before they know how to read. At VentureLabs, we engage 5-year-olds in expressing their views of the world and the frustrations that they experience in their young lives. Anyone who’s recently spent time with a 5-year-old will recognize how sharply observant she can be.
Girls of 5 are natural explorers. Every day is a new adventure of first-time experiences, discovering and pushing boundaries along the way. Girls are tempted to try new things, even at the risk of getting in trouble.
In our work, we’ve identified traits that make up an entrepreneurial mindset, traits that we incorporate into our free youth entrepreneurship curriculum and seek to encourage in our students.
TRAITS OF AN ENTREPRENEURIAL MINDSET
- Grit
- Growth Mindset
- Determination
- Curiosity
- Opportunity-seeking
- Problem-solving
- Creativity
- Hard-working
- Optimism
- Persuasiveness
- Passion
- Resourcefulness
- Confidence
- Flexibility with change
- Visionary
- Calculated risk taker
- No fear of trying and failing
I’d love to hear about your experiences with your daughters. How have you been able to instill in them any of these entrepreneurial-mindsets? Thank you for sharing! If you’re interested in using our curriculum to help girls flex their entrepreneurial muscles, you can learn more about our free resources at http://www.venturelab.org/curriculum.
