Update/Context: Since its original release in 2018, "Genie Out of the Bottle" remains highly relevant, reflecting ongoing shifts in workforce expectations and educational approaches. As traditional factory jobs evolve and the demand for creative problem-solving skills rises, youth increasingly gravitate towards meaningful, engaging work. This article explores how experiential learning in maker spaces is reshaping young people's views on careers, pushing manufacturers to rethink outdated models. The insights shared continue to resonate as we address the future of manufacturing and workforce development.

After attending the 2018 USA Fab Lab Network Symposium recently, I was happy to see nearly all USA Fab Labs and Maker Spaces are engaging youth from K - 12 grades in the "maker movement." Wisconsin is working on a substantial movement to build a Fab Lab in each K - 12 school district. The good news is that these kids, empowered by the self-efficacy increases of learning by making, will be much better equipped to enter a world where traditional ways of doing business, including manufacturing, are being turned upside down. Manufacturers and communities betting their future economies on repetitive manufacturing jobs will discover increasing difficulty in finding workers willing to do that kind of work. Today's world is much different than that of our grand and great-grand parents that went to work in factories in the early 20^th century. The genie is coming out of the bottle for today's kids with every Maker Space experience as they learn to become creative problem solvers wanting to do meaningful work in their lives. They are not going to be satisfied with traditional manufacturing jobs, doing repetitive, non-meaningful work every day. 

Not So Easy Back Then (1905 working for Henry Ford) 

In the early 20^th century, making a living and providing for a family wasn't so easy. As the country continued to recover from the devastation of the Civil War, a factory job, such as those Henry Ford offered, although repetitive, paid enough to provide for families and many were satisfied doing that kind of work. 

The Repetitive Work Factory Model Worked for 60 - 80 Years 

Despite the Great Depression of the 1930's and the advent of labor unions to improve working conditions, the repetitive work factory model remained intact. The educational model was changed to provide workers for the factories and the nation's business schools taught people how to be managers in the large corporations. Vocational and work-force training programs were developed to teach people how to do the repetitive work and a fast and efficient manner. 

Internet Advent and Fall of the Wall Changed All 

In the 1980's and 1990's the Internet and the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union gave people around the globe a hunger to produce products for the vast American market and they were (and are) willing to work in repetitive jobs for much less money than their American counterparts. Somewhere along the line, we decided the answer was for everyone to have a college degree to a point that today, half of college graduates can't find the work they believed would result from their degree. 

Work Force Training Remains Even As Youth Lose Interest in Manufacturing 

Today, some say "Everyone doesn't need college. We need to bring back vocational training programs for those not smart enough to get a college degree." OK, they don't quite say it that way but that's the message that comes across to the students that don't do well in the one method used in our educational models for the last 100 years. Most students today are not interested in manufacturing jobs, as they perceive them as dirty and repetitive, regardless of whether they go to college or not. Meanwhile, experiential learning, the learning of Maker Spaces, tells us most students that don't do well in traditional academia, are really very smart; they just learn in different ways. 

Closing the Gap 

How do we close the gap between the work that's needed and the work that youth is willing to do? It's the work in our factories that needs to change. Automation, robotics and lean manufacturing methods will change the work while making companies more competitive. The work will involve a variety of skills and require the critical thinking and problem solving skills that result from the experiential learning possible in a Maker Space environment. The genie is out of the bottle and we'll likely not see a generation anytime soon willing to do the repetitive factory work of the past. 

Listening to the national media, one would think that the major urban areas like Silicon Valley in California and Boston have cornered the market on new innovations. Although population is certainly higher in many areas, there are innovators all over rural America. We just don’t hear as much about them. The Kansas Small Business Development Centers (KSBDC) would like to change that and, in our region, we’re going to help spread the word to celebrate and foster rural innovation. We at Fab Lab ICC are co-hosting an event called the Rural and Independent Innovators Conference on May 20 and 21 at ICC West. More on that at the end of this column. 

A brief look at Google patent search shows that in this corner of Southeast Kansas, Montgomery County, patents were prolific in the period from about 1900 through the mid 1920’s. In all the years since then, there have been patents, but not at the break-neck pace of that first period. More about the reasons for that in a future column. 

A partial list of those patents suggests a wide diversity of problems being solved. The last two are much later and I wish I had the resilient tire on my current riding mower. Here is a partial list of some of items in Google’s patent search for Montgomery County Kansas. Pump rig or jack, pressure valve, refrigerator, washing machine, fruit picker, ship construction, display rack, resilient tire, pencil holder, wire fence machine, arm rest for Jeep vehicle, live animal trap. 

We now realize that a patent alone is no indicator of future market success. Except in the cases of the last two items on the list, we don’t know much about the commercial viability of the earlier items. Yet, just the volume over a few years in the early 20^th century says something about the rural innovator’s ability to invent solutions to current day problems. In the case of the Jeep arm rest, thousands were sold in a day when arm rests were not standard equipment. Inventor Doug Misch went on to invent and market dozens of after-market Jeep accessories over the next 40 years. He has since sold the company, Misch’s 4 x 5 Products, and continues innovating in other ways while also helping Fab Lab ICC members develop their innovations for possible release to the marketplace. The live trap was invented by Independence resident Dana Watson. In his case, being proprietor of the successful Watson Vending company, he sold a license for his trap to the corporation that owns Victor traps. His invention is marketed and sold world-wide. 

Innovators are alive and well in rural American, many of them own and operate our family farms and small businesses. We should be doing all we can to “bring them out” and help them in any way we can to develop their products and bring them to the marketplace. That is the purpose of the Rural and Independent Innovators Conference (RIIC) initiated by KSBDC last January in Manhattan, Kansas. Lab manager Tim Hayes and I participated in this two-day event, sitting on panels to discuss how Fab Lab ICC can help with the prototyping and development of new products. The vision of KSBDC is to host regional RIICs around the state throughout the year with an overall statewide conference once each year. We at the Lab are pleased to be co-hosting the first of these regional RIICs on May 20 and 21 at ICC West. We hope to attract “closet” innovators that have had ideas on their heads for years, current innovators in various stages of coming to market and experienced innovators to tell the stories of their journeys to market. We also want to attract the practitioners that can help the innovators’ efforts; business coaches, technical consultants, patent advisors and financial people. There will be lots of networking and the “closet” innovators will see that the experienced innovators are just like them but made a decision to come out of the closet at some point in the past. 

Update/Context: Customer satisfaction is of universal importance across all sectors, including government and nonprofit organizations. Using a struggling restaurant as a metaphor illustrates how focusing solely on attracting new customers without addressing underlying quality and service issues leads to failure. Government agencies, like businesses, must treat constituents as customers, providing value through thoughtful service and innovative solutions. By adopting an entrepreneurial mindset and prioritizing customer satisfaction, even city governments can foster stronger, more prosperous communities.

The owners of a restaurant in a community far, far away, decides they need more customers. Business has been dwindling. They think it’s due to the economy or to increased competition. In reality the food quality and service levels have declined, and many customers have not been satisfied with the value they receive at this restaurant. The owners decide they need better marketing to get more people in the door. The fallacy of this strategy is that increased marketing will expose more people to the less than stellar food and service and the business will not grow. 

We all should be about satisfying customers, whether or not we work in or own for-profit businesses or are part of not-for-profit institutions and even government agencies. One way or another, someone is paying the bill for us to continue operations and we should be making sure our customers, constituents or taxpayers are satisfied with the value they receive from our services. I’m going to use city governments as an example, but the principals apply to all units of government, local, state and federal. They all should be treating constituent businesses and individuals as customers not subjects to be governed. This is not about one particular community. I’ve observed this lack of customer service in the Kansas communities in which I’ve lived, large and small as well as a large city in Washington state. 

We hire city managers that have had no training in customer service nor entrepreneurial thinking. Most I’ve known about have never owned a business of their own, struggling to make payroll each period while doing their best to satisfy their customers and keep them coming back. It’s not really the city manager’s fault. The training and culture of city government is to, well, govern. Keep the citizens in line. Make sure the ordinances are followed and the bills are paid. 

This lack of customer service training is not unique to government education and training. Most all professional training and education in all the major fields such as medicine, law, accounting and insurance is all about the technical aspects with little or no attention to customer satisfaction. 

Cities and counties sponsor all kinds of efforts to bring new people and businesses to their communities. But, like the restaurant’s increased marketing campaign, if cities are not customer friendly the word will be out, and new people and businesses won’t come and the ones that are already there will not be satisfied customers. 

Example. A business buys a larger building to expand and proceeds to re-establish an interior wall that was removed by the previous owner. The fire chief, who happens to be a customer, sees this project and the business owner soon receives a call from the city attorney demanding that the business owner file a building permit. It’s one thing to debate whether or not a building permit should be required in this case, but really, is it good customer service to pay the city attorney $250 per hour to call the owner and scare him into getting the building permit? I could fill this column, in multiple parts, with similar stories but I’ll let this one suffice for right now. 

The number one objective in a city’s economic development and recruiting effort should be to change the culture within all of city government to one of treating constituents like customers and not as subjects. It’s not that the cities don’t have a job to do in making sure ordinances are enforced. After all, the reason we agree to the ordinances in the first place is that we don’t want our neighbors to be allowed to have something like a full-blown chicken operation next door. Rather, it’s in the way the rules are enforced. 

How do we change the culture in city government? We can train everyone in how to think like an entrepreneur. The really successful entrepreneurs see their role as providing solutions to customer problems in the best and most innovative way possible, creating satisfied customers. 

No doubt running a city is a balancing act using scarce tax-payer resources in the most efficient way possible to provide the city services necessary for a healthy and prosperous community. If the constituents felt like satisfied customers instead of subjects, their communities would grow and there would be much less grumbling about taxes paid for city services. 

Update/Context: In the fast-paced world of business and entrepreneurship, there’s often pressure to move quickly—getting to market before competitors, securing funding, and scaling as soon as possible. However, as I reflected in this 2019 article, speed isn’t always the best strategy. Over the years, I’ve seen many entrepreneurs learn (sometimes the hard way) that taking time to refine their idea, test assumptions, and adjust to customer feedback leads to a stronger, more sustainable business. This lesson remains just as relevant today, reinforcing the value of patience, adaptability, and strategic growth over sheer speed.

I was on a panel at a conference recently entitled “You Have an Innovative Idea, Now What? Should You Pursue It?” Part of the discussion turned to how quickly or aggressively you should pursue the idea toward getting it to the marketplace. 

The first thought is that quicker is better. After all, we have to beat the competition, right? It seems it would be best to have plenty of capital to launch the idea very quickly without delay. In the business coaching and economic development business, we all have a joke about the potential client that says, “I have this great idea. All I need to do is borrow [$insert large sum of money here] to launch the full business model. I haven’t made a sale yet, but sales will come almost immediately after I open. How soon could I have a check with the loan proceeds?” There are at least two reasons why this scenario rarely plays out. 

First, it’s almost never a good idea to launch a full business model directly from the idea stage. The original idea for a product or service is almost never the final version that customers want to buy. Changes to the original product or service idea are almost always required. If someone spends all their resources launching the original idea, there are no resources left over to make the changes requested by the customer. 

Second, things happening too fast don’t give us a chance to think those things through. Constrained, or slower resources make us really think things through and in some cases make us think of innovative ways to accomplish more with fewer resources. 

In another topic, the moderator asked us panelists to share one of our big mistakes. That’s tough to do in front of an audience, but the other panelists had bigger, or at least more expensive, mistakes than mine, so that helped. My mistake had to do with things happening too quickly and without enough constraint on resources. 

I was a young adult in the photography business in Garden City, Kansas. This was circa 1980 BD (before digital.) I was booking many portrait and wedding sessions and decided I was paying out too much money to the photo processor. In the period BD, to make photographs you used a light sensitive material in the camera called “film.” After chemical processing, the film yielded a reverse-color image of the subject. We called them “negatives.” The negative was used to make an exposure on light sensitive paper, which again after processing yielded another reverse-color image, turning it back to a “positive” image of the scene. When the chemical processing was just right, at precise temperatures, the images turned out to be an accurate representation of the colors in the original scene. Any out-of-control parts of the process and the colors came out wrong, requiring rework. It sounds extremely complicated and it was. Somehow, I convinced myself that I was smart enough to buy some equipment and do the film and paper processing myself and do it with less expense than I was paying the professional processing house. 

My chief investor, my mother, didn’t ask too many questions. She trusted, wrongly, that I knew what I was doing. So, the financing came quick and I set out to buy the equipment. Of course, there was no used equipment to be had. It all had to be purchased at a new price. The suppliers said “Oh, you won’t be able to find a machine like that used. They never become available. Here’s your price quote on a new machine.” 

In a nutshell, over the next two years, with much money down the drain in the form of rework and wages, I learned that the professional processing house was not the bad value I had thought. So, I sold all the equipment I had purchased two-years before. At this point, there were used machines like mine everywhere. So many on the market for sale I did not come out well at all when I sold. 

That was my own personal, hard lesson in what sometimes happens when you try to rush things too much. Today, even in "retirement," I get frustrated at how long it takes to implement something, both in my part time business and with home projects, but generally the delays have led to better results as I think things through while trying to implement. 

There are undoubtedly several high schools in Southeast Kansas using some kind of entrepreneurship curriculum.  The best programs concentrate as much or more on the way entrepreneurs solve problems than the technical aspects of running a business.  While we’re not familiar with all the various high school entrepreneurship programs, we are familiar with one of the best of the best.   Formerly known as Youth Entrepreneurs of Kansas, YE has now become just Youth Entrepreneurs.  Based in Wichita since 1991, YE has grown to provide curriculum and support for about 40 high schools in Kansas and another 16 in border states.  Currently launching the high school program in several markets across the Unites States, YE is poised for growth. 

YE offers week-long entrepreneurship camps as an introduction to their program about helping high school students to learn about “business, markets, and solving problems for profit”.  We have the (day) camp available at Fab Lab ICC next week, Monday – Friday from 8:30am to 1:30pm.  We’re adding time in the Fab Lab at the beginning of each day.  The facilitators (one from Wichita and one—fresh out of YE facilitator training) will start the YE part of the program at 10:30 each day.  We’ll feed these students lunch for a camp fee of $39.  The registration link is posted on our Facebook page “Fab Lab ICC”. 

The great thing is that we’re all involved in “business, markets and solving problems for profit” whether we work for someone else or we go out on our own.  The YE program is not just about business, but about the business of solving problems, whether in a professional or personal context.  Hence, it’s a very good way to introduce and develop life skills in our young people.  Some people would call it a curriculum to inspire the elusive “soft skills” we always complain to be lacking in our young people. 

Until this fall, there were no high schools in Southeast Kansas offering YE.  All 40 active high school programs were in the other quadrants of Kansas.  This fall Independence, Field Kindley (Coffeyville), Elk Valley (Longton) and Fredonia high schools will initiate YE into their schedules as a regular elective course.  We are happy to have been of some assistance in the implementation of Independence and Field Kindley.  Elk Valley and Fredonia have come into the light on their own accord. 

Two years ago, we hosted about 25 YE students from around the state on the ICC campus for a tour of Fab Lab ICC and some of our other innovative programs.  During the visit, we all noticed that these students were different than the average high school student.  Alert, positive, curious and self-confident is how most of us described them.  It was at that point that we stepped up our efforts to be a catalyst for initiating YE in our area high schools.  It is very satisfying to see us establish a foot-hold for YE in Southeast Kansas. 

Entrepreneurship training and the design of entrepreneurship programs is not easy, especially for the benefit of existing small business owners struggling to grapple with all aspects of running their businesses. Few have time, money or inclination to get business degrees. Training has to cut to the chase, be affordable and not take a long time. 

Early Business Programs Were Not About Starting Businesses 

In the 20^th century up until the 1980’s there wasn’t much thought given to entrepreneurship and small business start-ups. The prevailing thoughts, in between stock market crashes, wars and depressions was that big business and government would care for us, providing jobs and pensions for a comfortable retirement. Generally, the education system was changed to develop workers for manufacturing and industry. This included business programs in higher education that had everything to do with training to become a mid-level manager in a corporation and nothing to do with how to start and run a small business. The ongoing mantra of big business, and these business education programs was “profit is the number one goal.” That largely remains today, and we still see plenty of instances of greed and corruption in big business due to the excessive emphasis on profit. Plenty of the “entrepreneurship” programs at 4-year schools are just repurposed mid-management business curriculum with a few “entrepreneurial” aspects mixed in. 

Top Business Goal Is Not Profit 

Thanks to Gary Schoeniger founder of the Ice House Entrepreneurship program, in 2011 I changed my whole way of thinking about entrepreneurship education. Primarily I learned that the number one goal of business should be to provide unique and innovative solutions to the marketplace, letting profits take care of themselves through business management techniques as customers gladly pay for solutions to their problems. 

In 2006, ICC president Terry Hetrick recognized that traditional business curriculum did not provide a good training solution for existing small business owners. He and the administrators at the time created a vision for a new training program they named the “Successful Entrepreneur Program” (SEP) and then hired me, a non-academic with small business experience, to develop it. From the beginning, we offered a two-year, non-transfer, degree program in small business management for entrepreneurs. I developed most of the curriculum myself as I never met a business textbook that I liked. In the two-year program, I covered most of the major topics; marketing, value creation, sales techniques, practical legal issues, financial management for owners, and developing a niche in the marketplace. In the first four years of SEP, I had maybe 12 – 16 people go through the program. To this day, several have done well in business and have told me what they learned in the program was helpful. There were two problems; 1. Hardly any small business owners care about getting a degree, and 2. A two-year program is perceived as taking too long, making recruiting difficult. 

After discovering Ice House in 2011, I shifted away from the two-year program and offered just one class beginning in the fall of 2012, Entrepreneurial Mindset featuring the Ice House Entrepreneurship program. The objective of Ice House is exclusively to change peoples’ thinking to realize that to have a successful business, the emphasis has to change from profit as a primary motive to providing great market solutions. It turns out that this change in thinking is good for everyone, whether employer, employee and in business, personal or academic lives. Today, more than 100 people have had their mindset changed by this class and it is still offered twice each year. 

Providing a Small Business Management Training Solution 

The Mindset class is very good at changing mindset and helping people become better problem solvers and even validate whether or not a solution they want to provide is going to be useful. What has been missing since 2012 is the actual business management training covering the topics I’ve mentioned earlier. Developing an abbreviated version of the original 2-year program has been on my list for 8-years, but the development activities of Fab Lab ICC starting in 2013 have prevented much progress. Now, the Center for Entrepreneurship at Wichita State University (WSU) has provided a solution and Montgomery County E-Community is bringing small business management training, called “Growing Rural Business” GRB to our county this fall starting September 10. 

The folks at WSU have been facilitating this series around Kansas for a couple of years. The content is different and non-academic. Reviews from participants is always positive. Network Kansas is making a substantial investment in our local E-Community organization to make this training possible at a very reasonable registration cost for small business owners. 

With Entrepreneurial Mindset and Ice House covering the front end of a business start-up idea through product launch, the GRB training series provides much needed training in the specific management needs of small business owners. 

I think I've underestimated the potential of entrepreneurship (now, I call it entrepreneurial mindset) since 2006 when I learned how to spell the word after accepting the position of facilitator/business coach of the Successful Entrepreneur Program at Independence Community College. 

For many people, the term "entrepreneurship" implies business ownership or business "start-up". Certainly, that is true sometimes, but entrepreneurship can be interpreted as a way of thinking of new ways to solve problems for others, many times with limited resources.  Successful entrepreneurship includes continuous innovation as successful entrepreneurs knowing they always have to be looking for the next greatest way to serve their customers or coworkers.  Innovation sometimes means new inventions and/or new technology but many times it means a new twist on an existing idea. 

Today I'm starting to realize that a goal of developing the "Mindset" among everyone in a region has a great potential—indeed, the only hope--to provide economic prosperity and overall satisfaction with life. 

The overarching objective the Entrepreneurial Mindset class, featuring the Ice House Entrepreneurship curriculum is to learn how successful entrepreneurs recognize problems as opportunities and figure out creative ways to solve them. Pretty much, no matter what any of us do with our lives, we are involved in solving problems for others, or at least we should be.  This can be as a self-employed business person, or as an employee in someone else's company or organization.  Entrepreneurial Mindset should go far beyond that; our social, civic and government programs should seek to solve problems for others with Entrepreneurial Mindset. 

The eight life's lessons in the Ice House curriculum provide the central themes of the "Mindset".  They are timeless and really have more to do with a way of looking at life and interacting with others than they do with specifically starting or running a business.   

 So, while we do talk about business start-ups in this class, what we really emphasize is how to learn to become better problem solvers.  Entrepreneurs can be at work both within other companies and organizations as well as within their own businesses.  Employees that understand the "Mindset" will do a much better job at taking care of customers whether they are external to the company or internal customers within the same organization. 

As more and more companies strive to be more innovative in our current entrepreneurial economy, look for more and more employees to come to the "Entrepreneurial Mindset" class and sitting down beside those with a goal to open their own businesses.  All are looking for a new mindset to better view problems as opportunities and find innovative solutions. 

Update/Context: I originally wrote the following just before the 2020 election. We’ve had nearly four years with emphasis on equal outcomes, instead of equal opportunity and I’m not sure our situation is much better.

Over the last few years, I’ve watched people struggle with poverty (and self-worth) not only around the world and across this nation, but also in our own back yard. Governments and politicians have tried to help, but generally get it wrong. The answer is not to make everyone the same, but rather to make sure opportunities are available to everyone. I’ve come to realize that entrepreneurship and/or entrepreneurial thinking are the essential ingredients in individuals. Governments and politicians should be concerned, and involved, with removing barriers to opportunity.

In the Entrepreneurial Mindset class, we meet Rodney Walker. Rodney grew up in thirteen different foster homes on the south side of Chicago in the 2000’s. When he was younger, he thought there were those on the prosperous side of life, and those not on the prosperous side of life. He was in the latter group. In high school, meeting a good mentor and getting involved in the entrepreneurship program is what changed his thinking to realize that he had the opportunity to make his own way and move to the prosperous side of life.

I originally wrote the following just before the 2020 election. We’ve had nearly four years with emphasis on equal outcomes, instead of equal opportunity and I’m not sure our situation is much better.

We Need Opportunity Not Ice Cream

The story has been around for years. A teacher somewhere in America, generally somewhere between 5^th and 7^th grade helps her students conduct an election for class president. Class members came up with two nominees, taking turns stating their plans and vision for the class if elected. Candidate #1 laid out specific ideas about ways to improve the class and would work very hard to make the ideas come to life. Candidate #2 said “If you vote for me, I will give you ice cream.” Discussion followed about who would pay for the ice cream. Would parents or the school pay for it? Candidate #2 couldn’t say for sure who would pay but the class didn’t care, they wanted free ice cream. Candidate #2 won the election.

Free Ice Cream if Elected

In every election I can remember there are candidates that promise free ice cream if elected. The notion seems to be more prevalent with every passing election. Some challenges with free ice cream are that it doesn’t always get to everyone, the overall cost is way more than if people just bought their own ice cream and much of it is wasted. The main problem is that, while many people desire the free ice cream, it’s not really healthy and does nothing to promote the physical and emotional well-being of the recipients.

Humans Made to Work

Human beings, as well as most of the animal kingdom, are made to be self-sufficient, “making a living” by working. In earlier eras, choices were limited to hunting (game), gathering (fruits, vegetables and grains) and building shelter from the elements. For those of us with Judeo-Christian religious backgrounds, we believe this started when Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden and told they would now have to work hard to make a living. Over time, commerce evolved into marketplaces where people could choose from a wide variety of ways to make a living besides hunting and gathering. We get to choose our way of becoming self-sufficient, productive members of society, serving others as employees or entrepreneurs in exchange for a means to have a fulfilling life with enough money to have food to eat and a roof over our heads.

Kids Want Opportunity

The need to work to be productive is innate. When we take that away by giving free ice cream, we do a disservice. We saw this in the Lab (or at least we did before the pandemic) all the time. Kids want to learn and do for themselves. Many have been programmed to be dependent on teachers or parents for answers, but when we give them an opportunity to learn, grow and work on their own, we see a transformation take place. If everyone, not only in America, but around the world was given equal opportunity to learn, grow and work on their own, the world would be a very different place.

Opportunity, not free ice cream, is what we need to make America work better. America was founded as a land of opportunity where people could escape tyranny and make their own way in a new world. It needs to be equal opportunity for all, not free ice cream for all. All of us, the politicians, educators, government officials, everyone in society have a responsibility to do everything we can to provide equal opportunity to everyone; a hand up, not a handout.

Update/Context Introduction: As industries evolve, technical expertise alone is no longer enough to ensure long-term success in the workforce. Employers increasingly seek individuals who can think critically, solve problems, and adapt to new challenges. Recognizing this need, Life Skills Academy (LSA) will introduce the Applied Entrepreneurial Mindset (AEM) program in Fall 2025. This initiative builds on more than a decade of experience with the Entrepreneurial Mindset class, now expanding to include hands-on, project-based learning across multiple technical and fabrication disciplines.

The AEM program is designed to equip participants—not just with technical skills, but with the confidence and problem-solving abilities that make them more competitive in today’s job market. Local employers emphasize the value of hiring individuals who bring both mindset and versatility to the workplace, increasing engagement and adaptability across different roles.

This approach aligns with national conversations on workforce development, reinforcing that technical training must go beyond job-specific skills to cultivate a proactive, engaged workforce.

Technical Programs Need to Offer More Than the Technical Specifics 

It turns out, others are making the same discovery. The Entrepreneurial Learning Initiative (ELI) is the company that developed the "Ice House Entrepreneurship Program" I've used since August of 2012 to instill this kind of thinking in our Entrepreneurial Mindset classes. I was honored in October of 2017 to share a break-out presentation with Bree Langemo, then ELI president, about how our workforce development programs should include training to instill this kind of thinking, along with the technical training in the particular disciplines.  The presentation took place during the annual conference of the National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship (NACCE). The audience consisted of work force educators from community colleges around the country and was focused on making work force programs more competitive. This really was not only about helping schools distinguish their work force programs from one another, but also about making the students more competitive as they enter the work force. My part of the presentation had to do with how a project-based maker experience could add to more engaging work forces. 

Engaged, Not Engaged and Actively Disengaged 

Bree presented a startling statistic from the Gallup people about the state of current engagement of the work force. Only 13% of the employees in the work force are actively engaged in their work, involved and enthusiastic, and taking positive action toward the missions of their organizations. Sixty-three percent are not engaged. They lack passion for their job and tend to look at the job as punching a time clock in exchange for a paycheck. Twenty-four percent are disengaged, unhappy and disconnected, bringing negativity to the workplace and jeopardizing team performance. Think about this for a minute. It means that if you had 20 employees in a rowboat, three are enthusiastically rowing in a forward direction; twelve are not really doing anything except maybe slapping their oars in the water while five are actually rowing backwards. This is what employers are faced with in trying to be competitive in their markets.

Applied Entrepreneurial Mindset Offers Mindset and Versatility 

We believe strongly in this idea and are developing a program we call "Applied Entrepreneurial Mindset (AEM.)" It will involve the Entrepreneurial Mindset class to instill problem solving skills and self-confidence.  The program also includes a "buffet" of projects involving introductions to several technical and fabrication disciplines. Local employers have told us they like the idea of having someone show up for work with a problem-solving attitude and a variety of knowledge and skills. The employers say this makes them more competitive by having employees that are versatile and able to work in different areas of the company while interested and engaged in the company mission. AEM will be available in the fall of this year, 2025.

Participants in our work force programs as well as nearly any of our more traditional academic programs would benefit from having an entrepreneurial mindset and introduction to a wide variety of digital and hands-on making experiences. The combination of these disciplines tend to make people much better problems solvers, more curious and much more engaged when they enter the marketplace, either as small business owners serving customers or workers enthusiastically engaged in a competitive business. 

 

Update/Context:

I first wrote about Empathetic Design in 2018, and it was a core principle at Fab Lab ICC for the time I was the director—even displayed on our wall as a banner outlining its five steps. Closely tied to the entrepreneurial mindset, Empathetic Design helps us create meaningful innovations by deeply understanding the needs of others. As we launch Life Skills Academy, it will be another essential tool in our toolbox, shaping how we approach learning and problem-solving.

 Empathetic Design is a powerful method for driving innovation and improvement across business, career, education, and personal growth. In the article, we highlight David Kelley, founder of the design firm Ideo and Stanford’s d.school. In 2013, he and his brother Tom co-authored Creative Confidence, a book that remains as relevant today as ever—offering timeless insights into creativity, innovation, and human-centered design. If you haven’t read it, it’s well worth your time.

There seem to be several definitions and methodologies for "empathetic design." When I was at Fab Lab ICC, we used a model developed by the dSchool (Design School) at Stanford University. The dSchool was founded by a former engineer named David Kelley. David grew up in small Barberton, Ohio and while working as a Boeing engineer, decided he didn't really like the kind of work he was doing. He became friends with Steve Jobs and left Boeing to start a design company called Ideo. It was Ideo that developed the first computer mouse. As Ideo flourished, David ended up with an opportunity to teach at Stanford and eventually came the opportunity to create the dSchool. At the dSchool, design teams are made up of graduate students from all kinds of backgrounds and disciplines. The diversity leads to great innovation since everyone on the teams thinks differently. 

Over the years, they've come up with a 5-step design process to find new and innovative ways to solve problems. New and innovative ways to solve problems is what we will strive to instill in everyone involved with Life Skills Academy. 

Empathize 

The first step is to observe people going about various aspects in life and the problems they face. It could be someone struggling with a device that doesn't work right, a young mother at an airport struggling with all the stuff needed to travel with young children or people in a third-world country struggling to find fresh water. 

Ideo once designed a new ice cream dipper. They observed people using existing dippers and tried to empathize with the challenges they observed. One thing they noticed was the nearly everyone licked the dipper when serving was finished. Even though our mothers would be horrified, that was the observation so one of the design criteria as to make sure there were no sharp edges or pinch points on any new device. 

Define 

After considerable observation, the team works to define what problem they will solve. Sometimes the problem is discreet and straightforward to define, other times it's more complicated. Defining the problems people face when dipping ice cream is straightforward. Defining the problems people face when going to a medical appointments can be a little more complex. 

Ideate 

Some people would call this brainstorming, but after defining the problem to be solved, the problem solver or team goes about coming up with "new and innovative" ways to solve the problem. The ability to come up with new solutions is like a muscle. The ability is weak and challenging at first, but the more we practice, the better we get. As we saw with people come to the Fab Lab in camps, classes and member visits, we watched their problem-solving abilities grow with each project. We know we'll see similar growth as we work with people of all ages in the Life Skills Academy.

Prototype 

After one or a few possible solutions are created in "Ideation" the prototype helps demonstrate the solution in a low cost way. After all, at the point after Ideation, we don't really know which of the solutions, if any, work. For tangible products, the prototype starts out "low-fidelity," rough but produced quickly and at a low cost. For intangible solutions, like services or concepts the prototypes can be artifacts that help share the ideas. 

Test 

Once the prototype(s) are completed, not perfected, it's time to show them to the people having the problem and test them as much as possible. During the testing stage we listen carefully to the observations and reactions of those with the problem to gain insight into improvements and changes that can be made. 

Step and Repeat 

After the test phase, the process is repeated; sometimes back to the Empathize stage or one of the others. This can go on from one to several times until there is a minimum viable product (MVP.) The MVP is robust enough that early adopters, those with the problem that are willing to try, even if not perfect. In the case of a commercial solution, this means the early adopters are willing to pay for the MVP. 

None of us are very good at predicting what new products or solutions are going to be used and accepted in the marketplace. We get good feedback from what people say and the opinions they give, but the true test is when people "buy" the MVP, either through the exchange of money or the implementation of a new process.