Entrepreneurship is an important way to expand a gifted student’s understanding of what is possible for themselves and those around them. Starting a business is an open-ended process that emphasizes real-life problem-solving. It allows young individuals to adopt a structured approach to generating ideas and bringing products to market. Additionally, entrepreneurial projects inspire students to be creative and apply their problem-solving skills effectively, setting up a paradigm they can use later in life.
“Entrepreneurial… education is critical for students to develop new and needed skills” (Alshebami et al., 2020).
When introducing entrepreneurial units to a class, to improve outcomes an instructor should focus on creativity paired with an awareness of the psychological tendencies of gifted students (Kariv et al., 2024). In fact, through a qualitative study of nearly 130 students in an intermediate school in Saudi Arabia, “… the findings reveal the existence of a positive effect of psychological adaptation on all dimensions of problem-solving skills” (Al Dreyweish et al., 2024).
Administrators and professionals should consider gifted students’ specific psychological needs and cognitive goals. This will “improve their psychological adaptability and help them solve problems that they may encounter in their daily lives” (Al Dreyweish et al., 2024).
When students demonstrate “psychological adaptation” by reacting effectively and productively in the context of a competitive entrepreneurial project, they demonstrate an improved ability to define and solve problems.
By focusing on the data, the researchers highlight the importance of pairing psychological supports to gifted students to enhance productivity an creativity, although they do not get into the specifics of how to implement those with children. They do note that administrators should provide awareness programs for gifted students, their families, and teachers, addressing emotional issues that gifted students may face and how to deal with them (Al Dreyweish et al., 2024). (See Gifted and Anxious? for further discussion.)
Entrepreneurial skills and problem solving abilities will not improve with an isolated focus on the academic and business skills necessary to succeed in the unit. Instead, a balanced consideration of a student’s exogenous and endogenous (internal and external) factors will garner the greatest success (Kariv et al., 2024). To that point, exogenous refers to outer factors such as the teaching method and the entrepreneurial program for the students. Endogenous factors could include a student’s inner tendencies towards entrepreneurial risk-taking or conservatism, or their difficulties making decisions. A gifted teacher’s support of a young entrepreneur’s creativity and financial acumen paired with their informed awareness of a student’s psychosocial tendencies towards, for example, perfectionism or anxiety, can allow an exciting entrepreneurial project to serve as a safe space for students to grow.
Resources for Entrepreneurial Projects
Entrepreneurial Learning Initiative (includes the Ice House Project)
KidEntrepreneurship – Free Curriculum, ages 5-7. 8-12, 13-18, in English, Spanish, and Portuguese
Lemonade Day – Help organize a local lemonade stand to give back to the community with the guidance of a national non-profit.
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Sources
Al Dreyweish, A., Aljafari, R., Alrashidi, S.N. Unveiling the relationship between psychological adaptation and problem-solving skills in gifted intermediate school students: A Saudi Arabian perspective, Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity, March 2024, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joitmc.2024.100253
Alshebami, Ali Saleh, Abdullah Hamoud Ali Seraj, and Elham Alzain. “Lecturers’ creativity and students’ entrepreneurial intention in Saudi Arabia.” Vision (2022). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09722629221099596
Kariv, D., Giglio, C., & Corvello, V. (2025). Fostering Entrepreneurial intentions: exploring the interplay of education and endogenous factors. International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, 21(1), 17-. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11365-024-01020-1
Ozen, C., Owaishiz, A., Dabic, M., & Daim, T. (2023). Exploring entrepreneurship in the academic environment. Technology in Society, 72, 102168. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160791X22003098
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