Random Ideas (March)

Start the year with a lemonade stand project: each group of students gets one can of powdered lemonade mix, some cups, and no more.   They have 48 hours to sell as much as they can, making the greatest profit as they can.

First, this will be a fun project to start the year.  It will energize the group.  More importantly, it will get them to see how hard selling can be.  This will be crucial for later on in the course, when they design projects that involve selling.  Doing this first project will help them anticipate that they will need to set out a lot of time for the selling (a problem this year).

Also, the project highlights the importance of a number of skills: planning, collaborating, working with a fixed resource, keeping track of profits, marketing, sales, competition.


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Some competencies that students need to have:

Sending professional emails
Writing in a way that's both engaging and professional
Trello--managing a project on a day-to-day basis
Learning how to create good slides
Learning how to use a spreadsheet
Learning how to set appropriate goals



Students need to be exposed to problems that the community faces (so that they can work to solve them)

Students need to be exposed to what innovative kids (and non-kids) are doing in the world so that they can see what might be possible.

Brookline challenges

For next year, we need to bring in speakers who can talk about problems and challenges in the Brookline community.

Here's a link to the community leaders I contacted two years ago for the public speaking senior project:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1P_jTu3PeBTvTEzwwNkVzqt79gi151WqveUGLtZM_BVw/edit#gid=0

$200 project

We need to find a way to do this project twice.  By the end of the first round, kids are just now learning a bunch of valuable lessons about how to work as a team, who to work with (and not work with), how to organize their time, and how to market.  If we did this a second time, they would have a chance to apply all of this right away and do better.

Perhaps for next year: plan to do 2 $200 projects during Q2 and shift the storefront project to Q3.

So:

Q1: entrepreneurship bootcamp
Q2: creating a business [include public speaking and require students to pitch to investors--must convince investors to allow them to use their money for specific business]
Q3: storefront project

[but what about non-profits/social entrepreneurship???  We need to have space for this]

Perhaps:

Q1: boot camp + $200 project #1
Q2: $200 project #2 + social entrepreneurship/non-profit work
Q3: Senior projects and start storefront (?)
Q4: finish all work

More January

Show and tell: start each day by having students present a recent story about innovation--subscribe to blogs that cover innovation and have them select.

This would work for public speaking practice and also to help them develop a sense of the world of innovation--new ideas.

November thoughts for next year

Seems like it would be worthwhile to start the course with a boot camp experience, a quick set of lessons that get kids some basic skills.  Chinosi does this with his lab, and we should talk to him about what he includes.

Skills to teach during Boot Camp:

1.  How to create a valid survey

2.  How to use PowerPoint/Google Presentation

3.  How to work with data

4.  Excel

5.  task management software (Trello)

6.  TELOS and BMC

January notes

1.  Opening project: groups get one can of lemonade mix and have to sell as much lemonade as they can.  This will get them thinking about the front end of entrepreneurship--the selling--which is what the groups for the $200 project didn't really think about.  This will also help them identify back end needs, and this is what we'll be teaching them in class.

2.  Have students solicit contacts and content for Krissie's Town-wide video content project.  Students need practice approaching adults and winning commitments.  This would give them practice with email, phone calls, thank you notes, contracts, pitching, etc.

3.  Ideas for C4E handbook:

email
professional writing expectations
thank you notes/business correspondence

excel/google sheets
basic accounting
making slides for presentations
public speaking
marketing

Forms: Pro Forma, SWOT, others

Trello


4.  Do more with case studies--use as a way to introduce business concepts--1x/week?