CREATING ENTERPRISING YOUNG PEOPLE - SUMMER CAMPS FOR FUTURE ENTREPRENEURS?

Last week saw the beginning of the summer holidays for thousands of children across Wales.

But with the workforce changing considerably over the last twenty years and both parents working, this six-week break to become a large financial burden on hard-pressed families.

In fact, a recent survey showed that parents will spend an average of £1200, to keep their youngsters entertained during the six week break. This not only includes the cost of day trips during the holidays but also includes additional childcare whilst parents are working. In fact, this amount would be higher if nearly two thirds of parents did not turn to grandparents or friends for help.

And whilst the papers are full of “free things to do with your kids” articles, the inevitability is that most families will end up paying for activities over the next few weeks.

Sensing a commercial opportunity, various summer camp type activities have sprung up over the last few years in the UK. Following the US model, where 10 million children attend such camps annually, they usually focus on outdoor and sporting activities.

However, there may be another summer trend emerging from America that may be of interest to not only parents, but also to policymakers.

“Entrepreneur-camps” are specifically geared towards getting young people interested in starting a new venture and there are a range of different approaches in ensuring that they acquire the skills and motivation to test their business ideas.

For example, programmes such as SuperBizCamp follow a traditional enterprise educational model where students experience real-world business activities through buying and selling events, role-playing sales, and sessions with entrepreneurial experts.

In addition, they have the opportunity to participate in a buying event at a local supplier and prepare a product to sell at a local venue.

There are also more specialised camps, such as Camp BizSmart, that focus on both product design and business planning to help prepare students to become “the creators of the world’s next great products”.

It gets students aged between 11 and 15 years of age to work in teams to solve real life business problems from innovative companies such as Google, Microsoft and Cisco.

As a result, not only do they learn vital business skills such as marketing analysis, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the competition and compiling a financial spreadsheet, they also gain wider experience in other areas such ad leadership, public speaking, design thinking, and collaborative teamwork.

Therefore, whilst these entrepreneur camps are becoming increasingly popular in the USA, there are very few running in the UK and, as far as I can ascertain, none in Wales.

This is despite recent data showing that there is increased interest by young people in becoming their own boss.

For example, the recent Wales Omnibus Survey showed that 55 per cent of young people under 25 now have aspirations to work for themselves, a rise from 42 per cent in 2004.

With youth unemployment continuing to be a major headache for politicians, surely this idea of an intensive period of activity could be an option in getting young people fired up for starting their own business?

Indeed, with the Welsh Government already committed to embedding an entrepreneurial culture through their Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy, there could be an opportunity for Wales to begin the ball rolling on this type of initiative to ensure that our young people are given an opportunity to realise their entrepreneurial potential.

And I am sure that many parents in Wales would welcome the opportunity to give their children something worthwhile to do during the summer holidays especially if it could potentially help them to become the next Richard Branson or Anita Roddick.

A CHILDREN'S CREATIVITY CENTRE FOR WALES?

As you read this, I will have arrived back in Wales from a week of intensive visits to the USA.

It began in Silicon Valley with meetings at Microsoft, Electronic Arts, the Irish Innovation Centre, as well as conversations with a couple of Welsh-run technology companies in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We then flew to Missouri in the middle of the country to meet up with the Kauffman Foundation, the World’s largest charity devoted to entrepreneurship and finished with a series of meetings at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on the East Coast of America.

It was a hard slog, especially in crossing various time zones during the week but was well worth it, especially in terms of partnerships with both academia and business in areas such as educational technology and enterprise development.

However, one of the most eye-opening experiences we had was nothing directly to do with the business community but, nevertheless, has the real potential to make an enormous difference to the development of an innovative economy.

On May 6th, we made a visit to the Children’s Creativity Museum, a hands on multimedia arts and technology centre in San Francisco. Established in 1998, its mission is to nurture creativity, collaboration and communication to inspire new ideas and innovative solutions.

It does this through transforming the way children between the ages of 3 and 12 learn, encouraging them to imagine, create and share through a variety of interactive activities that helps to instil a love of learning and building creative confidence at a young age. These range from a design studio, where kids learn how to manipulate photos, illustrations, text, and symbols using photoshop software, to an Animation Studio where children build characters out of wire and clay, choose scenery, and then film their own stop-motion animation movie that they can then share with friends and family.

It also has an Innovation Lab to foster design thinking skills from a young age and encourages kids to think creatively, develop problem-solving skills, and nurture a prototyping mindset through what is known as a “Mystery Box Challenge”. This is similar to the scene from the Tom Hanks film Apollo 13, where NASA scientists in Houston have to save the astronauts only with what is on board the Apollo capsule stranded in space. In this case, kids are given a box full of different objects and then challenged to create various new ideas which can range from a ladder for a fish to inventing a space suit for a shark!

The other way that the museum makes a real difference is by engaging with the local creative and business communities. Not only does it have artists in residence who work with children to develop and showcase exhibits, it also brings in technology companies from the area to share and test new concepts with children. It was a fantastic experience, more so because of the hundreds of children actually taking part in the various activities in the museum and clearly enjoying and learning from their participation.

With many organisations now realising that the knowledge and competences needed to compete in a 21st century workplace includes "soft" skills such as creativity and innovation, critical thinking, communication and collaboration, it would seem that the Museum has found a real role to help develop the workforce of the future at an age where they haven’t even started thinking about their first job. The question for me is whether we could set up something similar in Wales? We already have the groundbreaking Techniquest to help children develop a better awareness of science and engineering but could we also do the same for encouraging creativity? The Museum in San Francisco would love to help and collaborate but I think we could also be more engaged with organisations in Wales to make this happen.

For example, how could the Heritage Minister, through the Arts Council, ensure that this is supported by the Welsh Government. Could those in charge of BBC Wales consider how they could use their vast expertise and facilities to support such a concept?

What about technology companies such as Sony, who could contribute their digital video knowledge to the centre? Individual knowledge-based firms could also help out, especially those in the independent TV sector such as Tinopolis, Green Bay and Boomerang. Dinamo TV, which makes the popular Rastamouse series, is a leader in their field of animation whilst Bangor-based Gaia Technologies has 3-D educational software that is amongst the best in the World.

So there may be an opportunity here to develop a Children’s Creativity Centre in Wales that not only builds on the original concept but adds a distinctive Welsh flavour by showcasing our fantastic creative industries sector to help develop the workforce of the future.

Certainly, if creativity and innovation are what will differentiate successful economies in the future, then we need to start developing those skills in our young children at the earliest age possible.

THE KAYA FESTIVAL

In February, I met a quiet and unassuming young man, Thabani Nyoni, who explained his vision for a new world music festival. 

Zimbabwean born Nyoni has lived in London since the age of five and I was immediately struck by his idea that creativity and diversity can help the Welsh economy.

Nyoni is one of the founders of the Kaya Festival taking place in the Faenol estate from the 1st to the 3rd of June. Bryn Terfel's Faenol festival no longer exists but that doesn’t deter this music entrepreneur in the slightest. He chose the venue for his new venture after attending the Radio 1 Big Weekend in 2010. 

Now with backing from Welsh Government, Gwynedd Council and the Arts Council, his vision has become reality.

This week, Ron Jones, founder of Wales's largest television company Tinopolis, wrote a salient article in his capacity as chairman of the Welsh Government creative sector advisory panel. He said that “Around the world, governments are realising the creative industries are amongst the leading sectors driving economic growth… our challenge is to ensure that no talent gets wasted, that no ideas are unexplored and no company is unable to take advantage of market opportunities.”

And thankfully, in this instance, the Welsh Government and other partners are collaborating to ensure Nyoni’s talent and ideas are not wasted. But it’s not simply the creative and economic benefits of a new music festival in Wales that interest me as the economic evidence regarding the local impact of music festivals is also overwhelming.

In 2009, a Welsh Music Foundation report looked at the now hugely successful Green Man Festival (which takes place on the Glan Usk estate in Powys) and found that it attracted 18,000 visitors, 98% of which visited solely to attend the festival and 77% came from outside Wales. Green Man now generates £3.5 million in direct additional expenditure in the region and £4.5 million from additional tourism expenditure.

It is interesting to note that when Green Man started, back in 2003, it only attracted 500 people. The Kaya Festival has already surpassed that figure in its first year. Big things start from small beginnings. The same study also claims softer benefits to the region through increased exposure from editorial coverage and the overall enhancement to brand Wales’ by being a ‘cool place’ to visit.

There are other examples of both cultural and economic impact to Wales, ranging from the Wakestock Festival on the Llyn Peninsula, attracting 25,000 people, to the much smaller but hugely influential Do Lectures, taking place again in Pembrokeshire this week. It is Nyoni's belief that Kaya offers something different to the local and UK festival crowd by also promoting creative skills and job opportunities. Whilst larger, more impersonal festivals are being hit by the economic climate, there is still a place for smaller festivals that offer a unique experience.

And it’s that aspect of Kaya festival which really excited me. Not content with establishing a new and commercially risky world music festival in North Wales, the organisers are also determined to develop the talents of local young people.

They’ve secured a personal performance and Q&A session from MC star Tinchy Stryder to help encourage local young people to take their first steps in the music business. Coleg Menai, Careers Wales and other local training providers will, through the festival, offer apprenticeships, mentoring and on-site training in all aspects of running a commercial music festival.

With youth unemployment hitting record highs, we must find better ways to engage and encourage young people. Kaya is a perfect opportunity to do so and North Wales must take advantage of such a great opportunity to promote local talent and develop more new creative entrepreneurs ourselves.

ENCOURAGING ENTREPRENEURSHIP AMONG YOUNG PEOPLE

For a man who is not shy in courting publicity, it is not surprising to see Sir Richard Branson in the business press again this week.

Yet his audacious purchase of Northern Rock, soon to be merged with Virgin Money, may have overshadowed another more important development namely the publication of a report sponsored by Virgin Media entitled “Control Shift: the Rise of Young Entrepreneurs”.

Through the Control Shift campaign, hundreds of young entrepreneurs have been consulted by Branson’s team on what can be done to develop and encourage a new generation of businesspeople in this country.

By challenging current thinking, they have developed a set of proposals that are a wake-up call to all politicians and policymakers who want to reinvigorate the economy.

For too long, entrepreneurship has been seen as a last resort policy by many to economic development and unemployment. Yet there is overwhelming evidence that start-ups are the job creators of the economy and whilst entrepreneurs need courage, conviction and commitment, they also need investment and, more importantly, support.

So what do young people themselves believe could be done to help develop a more entrepreneurial climate amongst their peers?

First of all, they propose that the way that entrepreneurship is taught in schools should be transformed to ensure that self-employment is promoted as a viable career option for students. This can be done through increased exposure to real life businesses and utilising local businesspeople as mentors.

Secondly, a greater culture of collaboration should be encouraged in enterprise support for young people so that information is not split amongst different organisations, thus creating confusion and duplication for those wishing to start a business. Instead the public, private and voluntary sectors need to work more closely together so that potential entrepreneurs can be supported effectively and efficiently.

Thirdly, big business should be encouraged to support new start-ups by adjusting their processes and making smarter use of their assets, such as better procurement, using staff as business mentors and opening up office space for new firms.

Fourthly, society should look at the way it invests in young people. Whilst it is relatively easy for an 18 year old to get a student loan to go to University, it is almost impossible to get a loan to start a business. Government could change this by ensuring that the student loan company makes start-up loans available to young people on the same terms as student loans.

Finally, young people should be encouraged to do it for themselves. Whilst most of the news is about the rising unemployment and the lack of job opportunities, there is a requirement for everyone to encourage young people to take full advantage to explore and exploit the opportunities in the market.

At a time when unemployment amongst 16-24 year olds has passed the one million mark in the UK, it is critical to support those young people who want to start up a business and contribute to the economic wealth of this nation.

With the right advice and support, they could develop the next big thing and many of the superstar companies of the last decade were developed not by experienced managers but by young people. Sergei Brin and Larry Page were both in their mid twenties when they established Google and Mark Zuckerberg was only nineteen when he launched Facebook in his dorm at Harvard University. 

Even Branson himself started off his entrepreneurial career in his teens by establishing a student magazine whilst at school.

However, whilst the vast majority of young people have a strong entrepreneurial spirit and display incredible drive and enthusiasm, they still need support on their business journey. If government, as well as large firms, would do more to help nurture young entrepreneurs and maximise their potential, then the UK can emerge from this austere era into one of opportunity, enterprise and growth.