Lessons from the school tuck shop
Being taught how to run a business should be part of the curriculum
‘WHAT would you like to be when you grow up?” I doubt many children in South Africa would say: “An entrepreneur.” And not only because the word is difficult to spell.
South Africa has very low levels of entrepreneurship. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report showed that even though there has been a marginal improvement in entrepreneurial activity in the past decade or so, our level of entrepreneurial activity is only a quarter of that of other countries in subSaharan Africa.
The commonly cited theories for low entrepreneurship levels are fear of failure, low-quality education, a restrictive regulatory environment, and insufficient government programmes. I believe the root of the problem is that an entrepreneurial mindset is not something we generally encourage as a society.
I often ask entrepreneurs in South Africa to tell me why they followed such a path. Responses range from “Entrepreneurship was just normal in my family” to “It was always my plan to start this venture”.
They rarely say: “It was encouraged at school or at work.” I think our schools and established businesses have a bigger role to play in changing mindsets on entrepreneurship.
When I look back on my days in high school, one of the things that made the biggest difference was when my teachers asked me to volunteer to run the tuck shop during break time. This taught me to balance the books, manage stock, coordinate staff and deal with crises such as re-establishing the store after a couple of break-ins.
Being involved in entrepreneurship should not be something one child does during break, it should be part of the curriculum.
I enjoy visiting schools that are applying innovative approaches to education. I was struck by what I found at Pioneer Academies, a new network of affordable private schools in Johannesburg. Every child in the school is involved in some kind of entrepreneurial project that aims to solve a problem the children themselves have identified.
These projects are discussed in class daily. The children range from three-year-olds to teenagers. One group of six-year-olds in Grade 1 got so excited about creating a new magazine that they created a couple of prototypes, evaluated them against leading magazines and even interviewed a real editor.
“The quality of the end product was magnificent and the concept is viable enough to become a real magazine one day,” says Chinezi Chijioke, the CEO and founder of the schools. Before starting the schools, Chijioke studied the attributes of more than 20 international school systems that showed the biggest im- provements in their education. He found the most improved school systems were shifting away from preparing pupils for tests and for work. Instead, they were teaching pupils how to think, create and collaborate. These principles are now applied at Pioneer Academies.
If more schools started driving initiatives such as this, we would have a chance of entrenching an entrepreneurial mindset in the next generation of leaders.
Parents do not have to wait for the schools either; you can do this at home. Be the catalyst and give your child R100 — call it start-up capital.
A similar call to action can be made for established businesses, where most of us tend to go as soon as we complete formal education. Businesses can proactively become the training ground for future entrepreneurs.
Google is a good example of this. I visited its corporate headquarters in California in 2013 and was inspired by its work environment. Google encourages innovative thinking, collaboration and autonomy. Everyone is an inventor. Employees can spend 20% of their time working on any project related to their passion — that’s one work day a week. Gmail, Google Talk and Google News were invented through these projects.
This enables a 17-year-old company such as Google to continuously get fresh, cutting-edge ideas from employees. In return, the employees cultivate their own entrepreneurial drive.
Let’s learn something from Google’s playbook and become innovators in our own companies. This is especially relevant to people who are sitting in jobs they do not love but cannot leave because of financial constraints. They can make the most of the situation by putting their hands up to build or expand a new division. This gives them the opportunity to ignite the entrepreneurial mindset within.
The more we can focus on shifting our mindset on entrepreneurship, the more likely we are to succeed in redefining the future of this economy.
❛ Let’s learn from Google’s playbook and become innovators in our own companies
Sikhakhane advises and funds African entrepreneurs. She is an international retail expert, writer and motivational speaker, with an honours degree in business science from the University of Cape Town and an MBA from Stanford