How Entrepreneurial Education Develops Problem-solving Skills

Entrepreneurship learning at school levels is always misinterpreted as learning of art and science of building businesses. In a job and career-centric mindset of parents and society, in general, business learning would always take a back seat. Firstly, parents want their children to prepare for high-paying jobs and careers rather than thinking of ‘risk-prone’ start-ups. Secondly, if at all they want their children to learn entrepreneurship, it’s at the finishing level, mostly at post-graduation. Thirdly, learning entrepreneurship at an early age is perceived to have a risk of children thinking of starting on their own ‘prematurely’.

Entrepreneurship learning and nurturing entrepreneurial mindset (EM) are two distinctly different pedagogies. The former tries to imbibe skills for starting on your own, while the latter focuses on developing a thinking framework that helps an individual to think like an entrepreneur in every career that heshe chooses, and also builds a perspective to look at life. 

Entrepreneurs are problem solvers. Hence, problem-solving is at the core of nurturing an entrepreneurial mindset. Problem-solving, one of the most crucial skills of the 21st century, is catching the attention of the school education ecosystem. Education boards, central & state governments, schools, private coaching, and tech start-ups are catching on to the frenzy of developing problem-solving abilities in children. So much so, there is a race to link every learning, program, and faculty to honing problem-solving skills among students. 

Then what uniqueness does the entrepreneurial mindset offer to be a better problem solver? Here are my five submissions in favour of my argument. 

Identifying the Problem

Most of our school education starts with giving a problem statement to students and seeking solutions. In every class, examination, and evaluation, we give a question paper and expect students to solve those ‘defined’ problems. But that’s half the story. We never let them focus on how to define a problem. In real life, no one defines a problem for us. We have to identify them. There is a famous quote from Sir Albert Einstein stating “ If someone gives me one hour to solve a problem, I would spend 55 minutes in defining a problem and 5 minutes in solving it.” Identifying a problem is an integral part of developing EM, because the solution, approach, and execution vary as one defines a problem. I strongly believe that the future change creators would emerge from youths having abilities to ‘identify’ problems better than ‘solving’ them. 

Empathy

One of the most important, but highly ignored skills in our current education system is empathy, where students need to be conditioned to relate to someone else’s problem, just as their own problems. The traditional problem-solving approachhas an over-emphasis on creative ideation, whereas EM puts students through the process of empathy to ‘understand’ what user wants much before they start thinking of any idea.  This not only helps them to better relate to the world but also develop social skills and social perspectives which is important in their personality development. 

Invoking latent skills

Focus on the identification of a problem helps to invoke three important faculties in a child, namely observation, listening, and questioning. These are latent in every human being, especially in early childhood. All children, before we start formal school education, learn through their observations of surroundings including people, places, and things. They learn through listening not only to people but the entire surroundings. They have a great sense of questioning without being fearful to challenge the obvious. Once they start formal schooling, we often handbooks to them for ready answers, put them across teachers/ coaching to grasp ‘keywords’ and suppress their courage of asking questions. And that makes their latent skills dormant. EM encourages students to observe and listen to the world to identify what problems they face and empathize with them. It pushes them to ask questions and challenges the status quo as a pre-cursor to creative thinking. Reviving these skills is extremely crucial for youth to identify opportunities coming their way rather than be passive passengers to do what is ‘perceived’ as a success by others around them. 

Limitless possibilities

Traditional problem solving makes children seek one ‘right’ solution to the problem. This unilateral thinking approach is counter-intuitive to creative thinking. Creativity flows beyond definitions of ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’. EM nudges children towards limitless possibilities of building solutions to one problem. It develops an ability to look at a problem through multiple perspectives and points of view to arrive at a solution. This calls for experimentation and the ability to learn from mistakes. This also helps them to cope with change and learn how they should contextualize their solutions with changing times. 

Abilities to create something new

Problem-solvers need to learn to build a solution that would serve the purpose of ‘why’ and for ‘whom’ it was created. EM looks at the value of a solution from the eyes of the user and not as a problem solver. This is a great mindset shift any problem solver must adopt. This calls for collaboration skills to understand how to bridge the gap by collaborating with others. Taking children through a simulation of an entrepreneurial life journey helps them to appreciate what it takes to implement the solution, prototyping solutions and learn to manage failures and get to the joy of creating a solution that actually solves the user’s problems.  This process of creation often helps children to identify their own passion & strengths and explore building solutions aligning with their passion.

Benefits of nurturing an entrepreneurial mindset among children at an early age out ways in many ways.  Research shows that early teens and tweens (8 - 18 years of age) are formative years for children in their lives as they start becoming independent and build their own beliefs, habits & thinking. Most life skills published by OECD as ‘Skills of 2030’ resonate with an entrepreneurial mindset. This generation, as they hit the workforce in their mid-20s, will be the main drivers of the Indian economy. Early introduction of such mindsets enhances the probability of students growing up by adapting to a fast-changing economy, identifying & solve real-life problems around them, building innovative ideas in any career that they choose, grabbing or originating opportunities that are aligned with their true potential and create value for themselves & for the society.    

Sushil Mungekar

Guest Author The author is the Founder & CEO, ENpower