Beyond the Shark Tank: How mentors can foster youth entrepreneurship
By Jean Rhodes
While shows like Shark Tank have popularized entrepreneurship in recent years, researchers have been curious about how to foster the next generation of Mark Zuckerbergs and Sara Blakelys. Enter the Young Entrepreneurs Study (YES), a research project led by prominenent developmental psychologists Richard Lerner and William Damon. This work on nurturing the business leaders of tomorrow, going beyond the drama of reality TV to examine the real factors that shape entrepreneurial success.
Entrepreneurship has been defined as “the process of creating something new with value by devoting the necessary time and effort, assuming the accompanying financial, psychic, personal and social risk, and receiving the resulting rewards” (Hisrich, Peters, & Shepherd, 2008; p. 8). As the authors note: “Entrepreneurship offers a viable and proven pathway to economic growth and personal fulfillment. However, the number of individuals engaged in entrepreneurial behaviors remains low. This discrepancy between entrepreneurial attitudes and action underscores the need for programs that foster the development of entrepreneurship in today’s youth.”
So, what do we know about youth entrepreneurship?
Research on youth entrepreneurship is still in its early stages, with most studies looking at stable personality characteristics as the core predictors. However, more recent perspectives conceptualize entrepreneurship as more of a dynamic process involving interactions between developing youth and their contexts (Geldhof et al., 2014). What’s unclear is how entrepreneurial capacities develop over time in young people. That was the driving question of the Young Entrepreneurs Study (YES) a longitudinal study designed to examine the development of entrepreneurship in late adolescents and young adults.
The YES project utilized a mixed-methods approach combining quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews. The quantitative sample included 3,461 college students who completed measures on entrepreneurial self-regulation, financial risk tolerance, innovation orientation, presence of entrepreneurial parents/mentors, and entrepreneurial intent. A subsample of 48 participants completed semi-structured qualitative interviews exploring their entrepreneurial experiences and goals. The researchers used a convergent mixed-methods design to triangulate findings.
Results:.
The key factors that were associated with youth entrepreneurship include
- self-regulation skills (esp. persisting through setbacks)
- selecting challenging novel goals
- using innovative problem-solving
- risk tolerance
- the presence of entrepreneurial role models
Major Implications for Mentoring Programs
Workforce development mentoring programs, like MentorPRO‘s collaborations with Step Up and the Council for Opportunities in Education) build on findings like these to help young people achieve their entrepreneurial dream. The findings of this study suggest that such programs should:
• Focus on developing youth self-regulation skills, particularly around novel goal selection and innovative problem-solving
• Provide opportunities for youth to practice calculated risk-taking in low-stakes environments
• Foster an innovation orientation through creative thinking activities and exposure to diverse ideas
• Connect youth with entrepreneurial role models and mentors, while recognizing this alone may not be sufficient.
• Take a holistic approach that considers both individual capacities and contextual factors in supporting youth entrepreneurship
• Utilize mixed-methods assessment to capture both broad trends and individual experiences in entrepreneurial development
Reference:
Geldhof, G. J., Malin, H., Johnson, S. K., Porter, T., Bronk, K. C., Weiner, M. B., Agans, J. P., Mueller, M. K., Hunt, D., Colby, A., Lerner, R. M., & Damon, W. Entrepreneurship in young adults: Initial findings from the Young Entrepreneurs Study. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 35(5), 410-421. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2014.07.003
