In just three years –between 2011-2014 – 400,000 new businesses were created, with SMEs and start-up ventures adding 48% to private sector turnover. In fact, 99% of British businesses can now be classed as small or micro, showing the real depth of opportunity for entrepreneurs and those seeking an entrepreneurial environment.

The real question, however, is: are we equipped on a general level with the aptitude, mindset, and employability skills required by these enterprises? Are British school leavers and university graduates ready for the challenges and opportunities posed by small businesses and start-ups?

Enterprise Education Abroad

In the recent report, An Education System Fit for an Entrepreneur, The United Nations Conference for Trade and Development’s (UNCTAD) Chief of Entrepreneurship recounts that many developing countries are more engaged with enterprise than those with traditional approaches to education. This is despite UNCTAD concluding that it is necessary to “mainstream the development of entrepreneurship awareness and entrepreneurial behaviours starting from primary school level”.

Foremost amongst these champions of enterprise education are a number of Eastern European nations. The South East European Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (SEECEL) supports enterprise education at all stages of schooling, identifying education as “critical to the development of the entrepreneurial mind-set and behaviour, resulting not only in increasing numbers of small businesses but also greater creativity and productivity of the workforce in general” (A Charter for Entrepreneurial Learning: The Keystone for Growth and Jobs). This extensive competency based approach has been rolled out across eight countries, creating a curriculum which recognises enterprise as critical to personal, social, and economic development.

The Macedonian Model

One member of the SEECEL, Macedonia, is of particular interest.

Macedonia, to set the scene, is one of the former nations of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It has a population of 2.1 million (compared with Britain’s 65 million) and an average life expectancy of 75 (compared with 81 in the UK). GDP is $10 million, versus the UK’s $2.8 trillion.

And yet, Macedonia is arguably leading the way when it comes to enterprise education.

School children in Macedonia receive formal enterprise education from the ages of 13-18, following a structured programme which teaches skills including innovation and creativity, finance, management, and communication. Supported by the World Bank and the Macedonian Ministry for Education and Science, students progress from planning an event and social/community project, to developing a business and company, all whilst learning and testing the core competencies required by entrepreneurs. They are ably guided by specialist teachers who have undertaken training courses in enterprise.

The methodology matrix for enterprise education in primary and secondary schools in Macedonia

As enterprise education advocate, Professor Andy Penaluna, comments:

“When will English schools get the kind of support and guidance that primary and secondary schools in the Macedonian Republic have from their policy makers and the World Bank?”

How Britain Can Update Its Enterprise Education

Whilst some steps have been taken to improve enterprise education in British classrooms, it still often feels like something of a fad. Access to entrepreneurial learning tends to be pot luck and dependent on having a specialist, or at least willing (and in many cases pioneering), teacher. Resultantly, enterprise education is often only seen in middle-class centres of learning, putting up yet another barrier to entry.

With the example of Macedonia in mind, however, we at Crowdfund Campus think there is no excuse for entrepreneurship lessons to be sidelined as they are at present. Enterprise education should form a core part of the curriculum – not just within business studies courses or at business schools, but starting at primary school and carrying on throughout secondary and tertiary education. All pupils should have access to enterprise education that is formally timetabled and led by specialist teachers and business partners, in order to “inspire many more young people about entrepreneurship… [so they are] better equipped to achieve their goals, and to contribute to a more competitive and productive UK plc” (BITC).

If you’re interested in introducing enterprise education to your classroom and would like to trial our innovative Sandpit simulation and crowdfunding platform, please don’t hesitate to contact us today.

Indeed, there have been a number of reports in recent years that have tackled the subject. For example, in his document, The Relevance of Enterprise in Education, Lord Young lauds those teachers who are ‘already demonstrating imaginative and enterprising approaches to teaching and learning.’

The move from conventional teaching methodology to role-playing and even full-blown business games – or simulations – is therefore not a great leap: but what are the benefits of doing so? Well, we’re big fans of hands-on learning here at Crowdfund Campus – and believe that there are a plethora of reasons to introduce business games into the enterprise curriculum – but we don’t want to bombard you! With that in mind, here are our top three reasons to embrace the art of business gaming…

1. Teamwork

Multiplayer gaming has become increasingly popular over the last few years; most young gamers (a large proportion of whom are students) now tend to prefer an interactive environment in a competitive yet cooperative atmosphere. Business simulation games can foster the same sense of teamwork (with a healthy dose of friendly competition), as students form the management team for their virtual company and have to join forces to make their business succeed.

Depending on how sophisticated the platform is, the sense of universal connectivity that has become commonplace in the gaming world – with millions of players joining in from across the globe – can also be experienced in a business simulation; in-game messaging systems allow ‘players’ to connect and plan from across campus or even different countries. As businesses become more cosmopolitan and sprawling in feel, with remote working a common occurrence , this is an additional experience that e-learning can simulate – and which could prove most useful to the budding entrepreneur.

2. Rewards

Who doesn’t love the carrot at the end of the stick? The rewards that are offered within most business games can prove a great motivator to students – even if these are nothing more than a spot at the top of the leaderboard. A sense of competition – often a powerful driver for entrepreneurs – is fostered through the interactive and communicative nature of this kind of e-learning, and the retention of information, when tempted by such a stirring incentive, is a fantastic bonus.

Ultimately, the biggest reward a student will reap will be their enhanced skillset: business games can help a student develop problem-solving skills, grow their business acumen, evolve and trial their ideas, as well as fine-tuning their social and team-building skills.

3. A safe environment in which to take risks

As Ralph Heath, entrepreneur and author of Celebrating Failure: The Power of Taking Risks, Making Mistakes and Thinking Big, wrote:

Failure and defeat are life’s greatest teachers. […] Failure is the foundation upon which great companies are built. When we were at the height of youthful exuberance, we unearthed our mistakes in an experience we referred to as, “The horror story of the week.” Our mistakes were that frequent and horrific! And they were outstanding learning experiences.

Learning how to not only embrace failure, but also manage it effectively, is one of the most valuable (if not the most valuable) talents an entrepreneur can gain – but the chance to gain this skill in a non-threatening environment is not one that most will have. Business simulations give students the chance to test ideas fully and take risks without experiencing the potentially damaging consequences: all gain, no pain!

Here at Crowdfund Campus, we welcome the employment of such tactics with open arms. Though crowdfunding is not a ‘game’ (at least not in the strictest sense, though it can be a lot of fun!), our Sandpit educational tool gives students the opportunity to take risks and experience the consequences of such, whilst making a host of other decisions related to their enterprise. It is, therefore, one of the most realistic business simulations that we could imagine. Applications like ours, when used effectively, can be helpful in creating a rich – and experiential – learning environment for all budding entrepreneurs.

If you are a student or a teacher and would like to discuss how to involve Crowdfund Campus within your institution, please do not hesitate to contact us today.

But, just as you can’t wake up one morning and decide you want to be an Olympic gymnast with no prior training, can you really announce your intention to become an entrepreneur without having had formal enterprise education?

The increasing demand for entrepreneurship classes, and the booming market for self-help business books, suggests not. Indeed, Harvard Business School professor, Dr Noam Wasserman , believes that enterprise educators have a responsibility to analyse what works (and what doesn’t) and teach it – just as one would teach doctors, lawyers and accountants:

“Entrepreneurs are the ultimate general managers. They can benefit from much of the same knowledge that business students gain about marketing, finance and other topics, complemented by lessons that are specifically tailored to start-ups. And those lessons are getting better all the time.”

By contrast, business personality Gary Vaynerchuk is adamant that entrepreneurs are born, not made:

“I fully, fully 100,000%, with no hedge, do not believe that you can teach entrepreneurship… I think of entrepreneurship in a very rugged, very raw, much dirtier way.”

A question of semantics

To understand this debate fully, a clear distinction must be drawn between entrepreneurship and the entrepreneur.

Where entrepreneurship is the process of identifying and starting a business, an entrepreneur is the person who organises and operates it. Entrepreneurship requires assessing both risks and rewards, whilst being an entrepreneur means putting a company’s mission before your own ego. As MIT professor Robert H. Hacker remarks:

“Entrepreneurs are created on a dinner table. But not all entrepreneurs have the skills or tools to make their business work.”

Herein lies the value of enterprise education for proponents: not to ‘teach’ the personality traits necessary for success, but to impart the knowledge needed to ensure the entrepreneur is prepared to make the best decisions for their business – equipping the entrepreneur not with the talent, but the tools.

University of life

Critics like Vaynerchuk disagree. They believe that entrepreneurship is an innate quality – something you were born to do, not something you can be taught to do. You cannot learn passion, perseverance and innovation in a classroom; you cannot learn how to make judgement calls when, by its very nature, enterprise is not clear cut. Starting and running a business requires skills that can only be developed in the real world: “the aggregate experience of a life that is lived” (Victor W. Hwang, Silicon Valley venture capitalist).

Enterprise education: our verdict

Here at Crowdfund Campus, we don’t believe the question is whether you can teach entrepreneurship, but how to teach it well. Indeed, one of Hwang’s criticisms of enterprise education is that traditional entrepreneurship classes teach would-be business owners to avoid making mistakes at all costs. On this point, we stand with Hwang, agreeing that enterprise education should focus not on endless planning and error avoidance, but on learning to fail. Our Sandpit platform has been developed precisely to give students a safe environment in which to try, and fail, and try again – arguably the greatest gift a university enterprise course can offer.

Although being an entrepreneur per se may ultimately come down to personality (which cannot be taught, only learned), entrepreneurship is a skillset which can be imparted and improved over time. Having an entrepreneurial personality is no guarantee of success: you need the attitude plus the application – the right resources, the good habits, the knowledge and know-how, the supportive mentors and peer community – to truly get you and your business ahead.

If you would like to discuss the value of enterprise education directly, or explore our innovative crowdfunding platform in full, please don’t hesitate to contact us today.

Watch the video below.

Enjoy!

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJWSClD8s40

But why?

You have a project in mind, you create the campaign, you attract a crowd of backers and the payment processor (usually Stripe, Paypal or GoCardless) transfers the funds. So what service are these platforms providing for their fee? Is this too much to pay for a ‘place’ online for this to happen? And what are your other options if you want to raise funds through pre-selling?

Let me start by dispelling some myths about Reward crowdfunding:

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Myth 1

The platform supplies the crowd

One of the biggest misconceptions about crowdfunding is that, simply by putting your genius idea up on the internet, legions of bored netizens waiting on the crowdfunding site will fund you. This is not how crowdfunding works. You have to prepare your own crowd for funding and bring that crowd to the platform. There are an abundance of failed campaigns that never took off on these sites because these campaigns relied on the hosting platform to do the work for them, instead of going out themselves and asking for funds from their networks.

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Myth 2

You need a platform to crowdfund

The second falsehood surrounding this form of crowdfunding is the idea that you need a platform to host your campaign. Reward crowdfunding isn’t regulated in the same way as equity and P2P lending, both requiring expensive and time consuming HMRC authorisation. You can get your own ‘Out-the-box’ solution with something like Ignition Deck. That, by the way, is how we started.

It was a clunky, difficult thing to get working, and the support was awful, but it worked. Until these products improve as the market matures, I’d say you’re better off using an existing platform rather than having that hassle, especially if there is no tech expertise in the business. But the key question is why is there a market for ‘Out the Box’ software?

This is good evidence of Myth 1. You supply the crowd therefore it doesn’t really matter where your campaign is hosted. You could do as Brewdog did for Equity crowdfunding, Rhino Rugby bonds did with lending and the MYO gesture wrist band have done with reward crowdfunding; you could crowdfund on your own site.

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Myth 3

The percentage fee structure represents value added

The percentage fee structure works when someone is giving you access to a network. Take for instance, equity crowdfunding. An equity platform will have a crowd of investors perpetually on the look out for opportunities. The platform acts as the gatekeeper to that group. If you want to pitch to them, and you are successful, they’ll take a cut.

It works because it is their network, they are giving you access, and they will also be giving the investors a screening service, making sure they don’t see any projects that are wasting their time. In essence, they’re adding value to both campaign creators and investors, so the percentage fee model makes sense for equity crowdfunding.

With reward crowdfunding, however, you are being given access to no such network. In reality, you are bringing your network and your customers to the platform. The platform usually isn’t screening projects either, so they aren’t providing a service for the contributors. Where is the added value?

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Essentially this blog sets out to make one point. You are responsible for preparing and building your own crowd for crowdfunding.

It is for that reason, at Crowdfund Campus, we don’t believe in success fees/campaign fees and why we are pioneering with a different business model. One where the campaign creator keeps everything they earn (after payment processing fees).

Our model means we can spend more time with our campaign creators, giving them the skills and knowledge to run a successful crowdfunding campaign and build their own crowd. That is how we add value and that’s why 70% of campaigns have successfully hit their targets on our platform. If you are connected to one of our member institutions then start your campaign today and book your FREE online crowdfunding workshops at http://crowdfundcampus.com/workshops

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Don’t lose out to success fees on other platforms and get #FundedOnCampus

Follow the blog at https://crowdfundcampus.com/blog for great crowdfunding insight.

We’d love to hear from you, ask us anything via facebook or Twitter or e-mail us at support@crowdfundcampus.com