Could the Next Steve Jobs Come From Philly?
When I was six, I had narrowed my career options down to two: I was going to be either a Major League baseball player or a professional football player. My baseball dreams were inspired by my love of all-star New York Mets right-hander Tom Seaver, who, you’ll note, shared my first name. My football dreams were inspired by my love of generally forgettable Baltimore Colts halfback Tom Matte, who—you may see a pattern here—also shared my first name. Depending on which season we were in, I spent a fair amount of time in either my Mets uniform or my Colts uniform (helmet included).
As I got older, my career aspirations grew a little more practical. There was my architect phase, brought on by my love of Legos. My lawyer phase, inspired by my dad, who was an attorney and had a really cool briefcase. And, finally, my journalist phase, when I realized that even if I couldn’t be Tom Seaver or Tom Matte, I could still write about them. What’s significant here, though, is that nowhere along the line did it dawn on me—nor did anyone ever suggest—that I might start my own company or otherwise be involved in business.
Today? Well, in forward-thinking families and institutions all over the place, the push is on to let even little kids tap into their inner entrepreneurs, to show them the excitement of innovation and business—to create, in short, the next generation of Steve Jobses and Biz Stones. You can see the beginnings of this movement all around our city and region. Last summer, for example, suburban stalwart Lavner Camps offered—right alongside basketball camp—“Entrepreneurship Camp,” a chance for 11-to-15-year-olds to hone their business chops (including, according to the website, ideation and financial forecasting). This fall, a program called Young Entrepreneurs Academy landed at Bryn Mawr College, with middle- and high-schoolers learning “to make a job not just take a job.” (A flier pushing it popped up on the bulletin board at my neighborhood Starbucks.) Maybe most significantly, the prestigious private school Springside Chestnut Hill Academy last year launched—with a $5 million gift from Urban Oufitters CEO Richard Hayne, who chairs the school’s board of trustees—the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, an entire curriculum geared toward innovation and entrepreneurial thinking.
“American children’s creativity is going down,” explains Priscilla Sands, president of SCH Academy. “I think, in part, we’re not teaching creativity. Our idea is to force kids to think creatively and solve problems.”
Now, this seeming push to mass-produce baby Zuckerbergs might be a passing fad, the 2013 equivalent of trying to teach kids the metric system in the mid-1970s. But if you look deeply, you get the sense that a fundamental shift is at work. In the past few years, we’ve seen the way Jobs and Zuckerberg et al. have disrupted technology, business and our lifestyles. Their most profound influence, though, might only now be starting to emerge: the way they’ve disrupted how we want our kids to look at the world.
