Youth entrepreneurship is one of the most emerging fields in entrepreneurship. The global youth population increased from one billion to 1.3 billion between 1999 and 2019, while the youth in the labour force decreased. In this article, we are discussing
Youth Entrepreneurship
Youth are great human assets, especially as a youth entrepreneurs. They are the future leaders and hope for the advancement of the global economy. There are more barriers to youth empowerment in this twenty-first century. The world needs to overcome these barriers through various initiatives and programmes to enhance youth entrepreneurship. Let’s discuss youth entrepreneurship by identifying youth, entrepreneurship and its characteristics.
Barriers to Entrepreneurship – Click here
Definition for Youth
Definition for youth: – The word, youth means the period between childhood and adulthood (maturity). But it can also direct to one’s peak, in terms of healthiness or the period of life known as being a youthful adult. Youth is also described as the appearance, freshness, vigour, spirit, etc., characteristics of one, who is young.
There is no universally consented international definition of the youth age group. For statistical intent, the United Nations defines youth as those individuals between the ages of 15 and 24 years. This statistically oriented definition of youth, in turn, entails that children are considered individuals under the age of 14.
Today, there are 1.2 billion young individuals aged between 15 to 24 years. It is about 16% of the global population. By 2030 the number of youth is projected to have risen by 7%, to almost 1.3 billion. Youth is the future of the world economy. Increasing their capabilities and guiding them towards the right direction are some of the tasks we need to consider.
Definition for Entrepreneurship
Definition of entrepreneurship: – Entrepreneurship is the concept of giving a solution to a problem while creating new value for society. Entrepreneurship moves the world forward by breaking the status- quo. Entrepreneurship is a multi‐dimensional concept that contains owning a small business, being innovative, acting as a leader, or starting up a new enterprise. It includes finding opportunities to drive the market toward equilibrium or causing disequilibrium through innovative destruction. Entrepreneurship is also described as the entrepreneurial mindset of a people. It does not have any age limit, section or anything. You can be an entrepreneur in any section. For example, you can be a technopreneur, agripreneur, social entrepreneur, political entrepreneur or anything related to your field. On the other hand today we can identify young entrepreneurs as well as mature entrepreneurs.
Definition & Overview of Youth Entrepreneurship
Definition & overview of youth entrepreneurship: – Youth entrepreneurship is the entrepreneurial activity by youths to create and innovate to build something of recognized value around perceived opportunities. This activity is the process of creating value through the creation of an organization and also the process of starting and or growing a new profit-making business. This includes the process of finding a new product or service.
Youth entrepreneurship is characterised as a tool to provide the growth of employment, the involvement of young people in economic activities, and their socialization and self-realization. The development of this direction allows utilising the creative prospect of the younger generation in the interests of the creative development of the nation.
Technopreneur Characteristics – Click here
Creating employment for the growing youth population has been a recent debate in developing countries. According to the United Nations, 2020 worldwide, 30% of young women and 13% of young men are not engaged in employment, education, or training, and the rate is higher than 35% in nineteen countries. Estimates suggest over 95% of all young workers are part of the informal economy in developing countries.
That’s why Young entrepreneurship is the future of the economy in terms of increasing employment and creating economic value. While reducing joblessness levels and contributing to economic growth Youth entrepreneurship helps to reduce crime, poverty, drug addiction, and income inequality. For those reasons, countries pay more attention to encouraging and support for youths’ to start their enterprises.
4ps of Innovations – Click here
As traditional job-for-life career paths become insufficient, youth entrepreneurship provides an extra way of incorporating youth into today’s changing labour markets and securing their economic independence. The best thing is youth entrepreneurs create jobs for their generation as well. For some young individuals around the world, self-employment provides income, self-reliance and a dynamic way for growth and the development of human capital. In addition, young entrepreneurs are more responsive to new economic opportunities and trends through solving global problems.
As the government is not fully capable to find opportunities for young people to work in public sector organizations, the young citizens have to find an alternative solution in the labour market to work independently. Intensive growth of youth entrepreneurship, particularly its innovative type, is a key determinant of the modernization of the national economy and investment and innovation multiplication of its growth. Youth entrepreneurship is more flexible and sensitive to transformations in the external environment, which contributes to the execution of the innovative prospect of the economy, the commercialization of innovations and the introduction of innovative technologies.
The high rate of entrepreneurial enchantment amongst younger people, makes young entrepreneurship appealing to policymakers. The uniqueness of youth entrepreneurship as a special element of the business sector is due to the specific age and personal characteristics of young people, their social status and behavioural models as well as the high mobility, activity and adaptability of this social group.
However, entrepreneurship is not a panacea. It is not for everyone. It is for those young people who wish to enter self-employment or start a career as an entrepreneur. But these young individuals face obstacles to starting and running a successful business. Some barriers prevent aspiring entrepreneurs, including the youth, from starting a business.
Lack of finance to start a business, lack of entrepreneurial skills, lack of knowledge, lack of family support, lack of institutional support, economic instability and government policy changes are some barriers that youth entrepreneurship faced today. Youths need to build some special skills to become successful entrepreneurs. Creativity, Risk-taking, Predicting the future, Network building and effective decision-making are some of them. Entrepreneurship education and career experience help young people to build those characteristics. To enhance those skills in youth entrepreneur’s government need to build specific institutions. Finally, youth are the future of countries economy. All have a specific task to uplift youth entrepreneurship.
Examples of Youth Entrepreneurship Business
Facebook was initiated by Mark Zuckerberg when he was only 19 years old. After a few years of its launch, Facebook became one of the most used social media platforms across the world. Today, it is the number one social media platform and continues to grow with thousands of employees.
WordPress
In the year 2005, Matthew Mullenweg founded the company “Automattic” which later proved instrumental in the creation of WordPress. Matthew created this he was even before the age of twenty. WordPress is one of the leading web content management systems in the world right now. Most creative writers use this platform for blogging.
Mozilla Firefox
His name is Blake Ross. You might not know him by his name, but you surely know him by his product, Mozilla Firefox. Firefox was founded when Blake was only 19 years old. This is another example of a youth entrepreneurship business.
Media Catch
Joshua Dziabiak is an American entrepreneur born in the year 1987. He is the Founder of Media Catch. Joshua made his first million at age of 18 by selling his first business Media Catch. He later becomes cofounder of companies ShowClix and the Zebra.
Super Jam
Fraser Doherty Used his skill of making Jam that he learned from his grandmother. Fraser started selling his self-made Jam to the Waitrose stores when he was a teenager. When he was 14 he became a millionaire. Now his company Super Jam has a net worth of 2 million dollars.
Conclusion
In this article, we discussed how to define youth and entrepreneurship. Then we discussed what Youth entrepreneurship is and its characteristics, importance and how to enhance youth entrepreneurship in the current context by overcoming its barriers. Finally, we showcased some examples of youth entrepreneurship businesses by discussing their success.
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