Overview

An entrepreneur is an individual who assumes the risk of starting a new business or introduces a new good or service to the marketplace in the hope of earning a profit. Entrepreneurs take on the main risk and responsibility for planning, organizing, and operating a business. In fact, the word entrepreneur derives from the French word meaning "to undertake."

Entrepreneurs use a variety of resources (human, natural, and capital) in order to create a new good or service. By developing their ideas, they help solve an existing problem. Entrepreneurial ideas for change generally help society by providing a better way to accomplish a task.

The following activities will help teach these concepts to the budding entrepreneurs in your class. As a result, students will think about themselves as entrepreneurs of the future.

Teaching Activity

Introduction
Begin the lesson by asking students the following questions:

• Do you like to come up with new ideas or inventions?
• Do you like a challenge?
• Do you think about how to make things better?
• Are you willing to look at a failure and try to make it a successful adventure?
• Do you have ideas about using a variety of resources in different ways?
• Do you like to use many different approaches in the hopes of developing new solutions to problems?

Tell students who answered yes, "You could become entrepreneurs!"

Objectives Students learn the definitions of and relationships between entrepreneur, goods, and human, natural, and capital resources. Students learn the historical significance of the Industrial Revolution. Students learn when an inventor is also an entrepreneur. Students will be able to identify entrepreneurs in their community. Time Required 2 weeks Materials Handout 1 -- Vocabulary Terms Resource Cards Handout 2 -- Inventor and Entrepreneur? Variety of books, magazines, and textbooks about inventors Computer (if possible) Poster board and markers The Kid Who Invented the Popsicle and Other Surprising Stories About Inventions, by Don L. Wulffson, Cobblehill Books, 1997

Vocabulary Activity
Distribute Handout 1, Vocabulary Terms, to your class. Then discuss the terms as a group to make sure students understand their meanings.

Once the class grasps these terms, distribute one Resource Card to each student. Instruct students to classify their resource as either human, natural, or capital. Have students read their answers aloud to the class and discuss as a group.

Social Studies Activity — Entrepreneurship in the Industrial Revolution
While studying the Industrial Revolution, break the class into groups and assign an inventor for each to research. Ask students to complete Handout 2, Inventor and Entrepreneur?, and create a poster on their inventor.

As a group explores an inventor and the resources he used, students should discuss what makes an inventor also an entrepreneur. Students should discover that entrepreneurs develop ideas based on the need for better goods and services. Provide books, magazines, and textbook materials, as well as access to a computer if possible. Allow plenty of time for research so students can become familiar with their inventor. After students have completed the exercises, ask them to present their poster to the class and discuss what they have learned. Ask students in each group whether their inventor was an entrepreneur and why.

Terms for Resource Cards
farmers	timber
factories	health
crops	dams
cab drivers	trees
roads	teachers
land	equipment
strength	minerals
machinery	workers
fish	trucks
education	water
tools	accountants
oil	buildings

Reading Activity — Inventors and Entrepreneurs
Read several short selections from The Kid Who Invented the Popsicle and Other Surprising Stories About Inventions, by Don L. Wulffson, to the class. This book contains an alphabetical listing of 114 inventions, including badminton, chewing gum, dominoes, Kleenex, motion pictures, potato chips, root beer, stethoscopes, toothbrushes, wire coat hangers, and much more. After each selection, consider these questions with the class:

• What invention did this passage tell about?
• Who was the inventor?
• Was the inventor an entrepreneur? Why or why not?

Student responses to the questions allow the teacher to assess student understanding of entrepreneurship. Certain passages from the book simply explain the origin of the product. In order to decide whether the passage describes entrepreneurship, students must also know whether the product was marketed and sold for a profit. Other passages refer to an inventor and to another person who took the idea and the risk to produce the product, thereby providing the entrepreneurship. These examples help clarify the concepts for students.

Interviewing Entrepreneurs
To further explore entrepreneurship, ask students to interview an entrepreneur or someone who knows one. Parents should be informed as to how the class has defined entrepreneur. Ask parents to help students generate a list of entrepreneurs in their community.

Suggested Inventors
Samuel Slater	Eli Whitney
Madam C.J. Walker	Robert Fulton
Samuel F.B. Morse	Elijah McCoy
Peter Cooper	Thomas Jefferson
Elias Howe	Isaac Merritt Singer