MBAs: Start them Young
November 1st, 2007 by 
Administrator
(1 votes, average: 3 out of 5)
Loading ...I do a lot of speaking about business and entrepreneurship, and one of the more often things I am asked is when do you start teaching your kids entrepreneurship?
I have another answer. It seems that in China, there are now more than 3000 kids from age 3 to 6 that is enrolled in “early” MBA. Shanghai’s FasTracKids Academy advocates teaching management skills and life-goal training sessions nitead of nursery rhymes or finger painting.
for instance, the kids were purportedly asked to create a business plan to manage a computer-animated sheep farm and told to ask how to make money.
In the race to win, more schools are cramming the kids with ‘more’ lessons. I just recently went through my kids mathematics. At age 7, he is now asked to do double figure multiplication, something I myself did not have to go through until age 11.
del.icio.us Digg it reddit StumbleUpon
Posted in Entrepreneurship, FrontPage, on China/Asia | 
November 5th, 2007 at 8:52 pm
I live in the Philippines where most Chinese are rich. And to think that when their forefathers arrived in this country from the formerly poor China, they were just poor peasants.
One thing I observed with Chinese family businesses (most Chinese businesses here are family businesses) is that their kids are involved in the family business very early on even when they are still schooling–being cashiers or warehouseman or clerk or waiter, etc.
This early training gives them the entrepreneurial mindset that serves them success when they grow up.
Ismael D. Tabije
http://www.BestManagementArticles.com
http://entrepreneurship.bestmanagementarticles.com/
November 7th, 2007 at 6:21 am
Great topic, here is an article that award winning author who teaches kids about entrepreneurship wrote
Calling American Parents: Rise Up & Meet the Challenge of Rising China
By Jennifer Bouani http://www.boujepublishing.com
Everywhere we turn, we hear about the rise of China and the likely prediction that its shadow will soon eclipse the American Dream. I don’t know about you in regards to your kids, but I’m VERY concerned about my daughter’s future. It’s that deep concern that drove me to write a children’s book to encourage kids to think like entrepreneurs.
I just recently read Reed Hundt’s In China’s Shadow: The Crisis of American Entrepreneurship where he warns Americans that creating a culture of entrepreneurship is the only hope for America’s economy. He says:
The only adequate response to rising Asia lies in the cultural reform that will vastly increase entrepreneurship. Leaders need to encourage broader (more markets) and deeper (more entrepreneurs) new initiatives without knowing what specific results will follow. They need to focus on architectural changes that support the culture of entrepreneurship. Then American society will see the creation of start-up technological companies in more numbers and in more markets—because increases in scale (bigger efforts) and scope ( more fields of endeavor) of entrepreneurship are required to meet the challenge of rising China. Entrepreneurial firms will stimulate, aggregate, and replicate the unpredictable creativity that lies in everyone. Acting formally or informally together, individuals will make new goods, services, markets, and jobs that are no more imaginable today than eBay or Amazon was before it started. While the Chinese ruling elite try to copy the American economy of the past, American citizens should change their economy, and export their “new new things” to China. –p. 58
He goes on to say,
[Entrepreneurship, American Style] is also the only viable choice for the American economy, because it already comprises too many markets, and each has too much complexity, for a top-down, centralized authority to implement a detailed plan for job creation. –p.58-59
His call to action:
American policy should be to intensify and amplify a culture of entrepreneurship to create and capture value in the future in ways scarcely imaginable in the present.
The government cannot order people to start new firms. No technology can send them through a production line. No leader can describe the thousands of new firms needed by Americans. The culture, however, can produce a great upsurge of entrepreneurship, as occurred in the 1990s.
It is not enough for just our business & political leaders to figure out ways to create a culture of entrepreneurship to face rising China. We need to also look to the parents & teachers raising and educating the next generation of American leaders if we are truly to succeed at creating a culture of entrepreneurship and surpassing our Asian competition. The children are our future. It is our only hope.
References:
*
Bio of Reed Hundt
*
Hundt’s Book: In China’s Shadow
*
Hundt’s Website: http://www.reedhundt.com/
November 7th, 2007 at 6:21 am
Great topic, here is an article that award winning author who teaches kids about entrepreneurship wrote
Calling American Parents: Rise Up & Meet the Challenge of Rising China
By Jennifer Bouani
Everywhere we turn, we hear about the rise of China and the likely prediction that its shadow will soon eclipse the American Dream. I don’t know about you in regards to your kids, but I’m VERY concerned about my daughter’s future. It’s that deep concern that drove me to write a children’s book to encourage kids to think like entrepreneurs.
I just recently read Reed Hundt’s In China’s Shadow: The Crisis of American Entrepreneurship where he warns Americans that creating a culture of entrepreneurship is the only hope for America’s economy. He says:
The only adequate response to rising Asia lies in the cultural reform that will vastly increase entrepreneurship. Leaders need to encourage broader (more markets) and deeper (more entrepreneurs) new initiatives without knowing what specific results will follow. They need to focus on architectural changes that support the culture of entrepreneurship. Then American society will see the creation of start-up technological companies in more numbers and in more markets—because increases in scale (bigger efforts) and scope ( more fields of endeavor) of entrepreneurship are required to meet the challenge of rising China. Entrepreneurial firms will stimulate, aggregate, and replicate the unpredictable creativity that lies in everyone. Acting formally or informally together, individuals will make new goods, services, markets, and jobs that are no more imaginable today than eBay or Amazon was before it started. While the Chinese ruling elite try to copy the American economy of the past, American citizens should change their economy, and export their “new new things” to China. –p. 58
He goes on to say,
[Entrepreneurship, American Style] is also the only viable choice for the American economy, because it already comprises too many markets, and each has too much complexity, for a top-down, centralized authority to implement a detailed plan for job creation. –p.58-59
His call to action:
American policy should be to intensify and amplify a culture of entrepreneurship to create and capture value in the future in ways scarcely imaginable in the present.
The government cannot order people to start new firms. No technology can send them through a production line. No leader can describe the thousands of new firms needed by Americans. The culture, however, can produce a great upsurge of entrepreneurship, as occurred in the 1990s.
It is not enough for just our business & political leaders to figure out ways to create a culture of entrepreneurship to face rising China. We need to also look to the parents & teachers raising and educating the next generation of American leaders if we are truly to succeed at creating a culture of entrepreneurship and surpassing our Asian competition. The children are our future. It is our only hope.
References:
*
Bio of Reed Hundt
*
Hundt’s Book: In China’s Shadow
*
Hundt’s Website: http://www.reedhundt.com/
http://www.boujepublishing.com
November 7th, 2007 at 6:58 am
Gee thanks!
that ’s a long one….. many chinese want to be entrepreneurs because they believe that it is the only way to make their lives better — if you get a job, it is most likely not something which you can earn enough.
Americans are luckier is that they can, and get good paying jobs. But yes, the culture of entrepreneurship should be nurtured.