Entrepreneurship is changing, and education needs to change with it.
Young entrepreneurs are increasingly using innovation and digital tools to respond to real-world challenges, rather than simply creating products to sell. UNDP research shows how young founders are using innovation and digital tools to respond to challenges in areas such as education, healthcare, inclusion, and local economic development, while Global Entrepreneurship Monitor reports that 84% of early-stage entrepreneurs consider social and/or environmental impact when making business decisions. In this model, the opportunity lies in identifying an unmet need and developing a solution that creates value for customers, communities or both.
At the same time, digital connectivity is making it possible for small business owners to reach customers, partners, mentors, and investors beyond their immediate communities. OECD research into the digital transformation of SMEs notes that online platforms are supporting innovation, customer reach, and enhanced access to both regional and global markets.
This changes what entrepreneurship education should aim to achieve. The emphasis needs to move from learningabout entrepreneurship to learning through it.
Teaching students how to write a business plan or calculate profit remains useful, but it is no longer enough. Schools should create opportunities for students to identify problems, test ideas, work through setbacks, understand customers, and refine solutions.
The experience of Centennial Schools student, 16-year-old Onalerona Tsiane, provides a useful example. She and her sister founded TeeSisters: a party balloon business that ultimately proved unprofitable. This failure did not end their entrepreneurial journey, however. It became part of the learning process through which they identified a different opportunity, and they now run a viable flowers and personalised gifting business.
Their experience also evolved beyond selling products. Through TS Institute of Young Entreprenuers, an initiative they created to teach young people basic entrepreneurial skills, the sisters identified youth unemployment as a problem they wanted to address. This year, they took that mission to the SAGE Global competition in Vietnam, reaching the global top nine and winning two Sustainable Development Goal awards.
The significance of this journey is not the competition result alone. It demonstrates how entrepreneurship can move from an individual business idea towards identifying a wider problem and developing a response to it.
Schools should therefore create learning environments where curiosity is rewarded, questions are investigated, and students have ownership of the process. Project-based learning can be particularly powerful because it requires students to research, make decisions, collaborate, solve problems, and take responsibility for an outcome.
Entrepreneurship education consequently has a broader purpose than creating future business owners. It should help students become people who can recognise opportunities, respond constructively to uncertainty and turn ideas into useful solutions.
Schools shouldn’t simply add entrepreneurship as a subject and leave it there. There is significant value in complementing classroom learning with mentorship and practical entrepreneurship programmes that give students the opportunity to apply what they learn. Centennial Schools’ annual entrepreneurship programme helps students gain real-world business experience by developing and managing sustainable ventures within the school’s supportive environment.
Ultimately, the goal is not to make every student an entrepreneur. It is to ensure that students leave school with the confidence, curiosity, and practical problem-solving abilities to create value, whether they ultimately build a business, join an organisation, or pursue a path that has not yet been imagined.
Written by Shaun Fuchs, Founder & CEO of Centennial Schools