The State of Hawai‘i Workforce Development Council commissioned Bizgenics to create a new innovation and entrepreneurship curriculum model for implementation at Youth Services Centers around the State. A pilot at YSC Dole Cannery, Honolulu successfully ran March-June, 2021.
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New BizzyB Innovation & Entrepreneurship Curriculum
The new curriculum was designed and delivered as a BizzyB story-based design thinking model. Four 1-month innovation and entrepreneurial experiences included: 1. Lemonade Market; 2. T-Shirt Market; 3. Sticker Market, and; 4. Friendship Jewelry Market. The curriculum was delivered in print and is available at Amazon. Curriculum was also mirrored on the BizzyB.com platform for remote use.
Each track featured leadership, ideation, business planning, pitch development, financial forecasting and more. Student Workbooks and Teacher’s Guides provided starting core knowledge, mastery quizzes, instructions and all forms necessary to implement a design through funding through market day experience. Each experience began with team-building and leadership, turned to core knowledge development to prime the pump of innovation, then on with innovation using the Fab Five™ Story-Based Design Thinking. Teams with completed concepts (a 1-page business plan and a 1-page financial forecast) visited a bank to get a loan then could purchase supplies at a Supply Depot in order to create products and sales environments. A market day culminated each experience and teams paid back loans plus 10% interest. Teams making a profit were award mastery pins.
4-Month Pilot Class at YSC, Honolulu
The YSC program serves at-risk youth from foster, low-income, abused and other challenging backgrounds. A key to each experience design was programming only in-class assignments as students face deep challenges in non-class time. Interestingly, the program saw increasing engagement with more and more students coming to class each week. Further, many students worked off site even though not required to. Next up: supporting other YSC programs in Hawai‘i and beyond to use the new BizzyB experiences.