Exploring Entrepreneurship: Are You a Potential Entrepreneur?

Entrepreneurs play an important role in our economy and society. Youth should have the opportunity to learn about entrepreneurship and be able to assess their own interest in being an entrepreneur. To help understand entrepreneurship they can learn how entrepreneurs find opportunities, generate ideas, and assess their opportunities and ideas to find the best one they can. They can explore examples of successful entrepreneurs – and the key reasons for their successes – and also explore examples of failed ventures why they failed. They should see how entrepreneurial people can start social ventures or start and lead new ventures within governments, or within a corporation. If possible, they should have an opportunity to try their hand at entrepreneurship through creating a venture plan and possibly even launching a small entrepreneurial venture – business or otherwise. Having an opportunity to learn about entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship significantly increases the chance of a young person considering their entrepreneurial interest and possibly choosing entrepreneurship as a career.

Please Note: Teaching Units provided are for support and consideration by teachers and are not prescriptive.

Learning Map and Supports for Instruction

The “Learning Map” identifies teaching opportunities in Alberta’s curriculum for each topic and you will find them as part of the Support Teaching Materials provided here. Teachers can, of course, integrate the target areas of financial knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviours anywhere they can find a fit. The Supports for Instruction provide videos, animations, and links to other resources to support teachers in their efforts to improve the financial literacy of their students.

Entrepreneurs and Enterprising People - Division IV: Gr. 10-12

Knowledge

  • What’s involved in being an entrepreneur and starting a new venture

  • Enterprising skills and abilities and how they can be applied to all endeavours

  • Ways to explore personal interest in entrepreneurship

  • How to explore and identify opportunities for entrepreneurship – i.e. needs, wants and problems that can be addressed

  • How to compare and evaluate entrepreneurial opportunities

  • How to generate ideas for possible new ventures

  • Key steps in setting up an enterprise

  • Key components of a business or venture plan

  • The risk associated with being an entrepreneur and the difference between employment income and earning money as an entrepreneur (profit)

Skills

  • Consider their own interest in entrepreneurship

  • Develop enterprising skills to apply to any kind of endeavour

  • Assess their personal entrepreneurial interest and potential

  • Identify and assess opportunities for enterprising initiative in their community

  • Create and assess some ideas generated for an opportunity

  • Develop a plan for an enterprising initiative to address an opportunity in their school or community

Attitudes/Behaviours

  • Apply enterprising skills to a wide range of endeavours

  • Identify and explore opportunities as they perceive them – in school, at home, in their community

  • Follow news and events that might lead to opportunities and affect their actions and decisions

  • Develop an effective plan to setup a business or other kind of venture if they make the decision to become an entrepreneur

  • Consider opportunities to start initiatives that could help others or improve or sustain the environment

  • Consider their own interest in entrepreneurship as a career option