Science Center as an Ecosystem Hub

This is the third and (at least for now) final part of my science center blog post trilogy. Previous posts were about interactivity and  project-based learning.

In my first post I emphasized interactivity and how that separates science museums from traditional ones. Museum goers not only passively look at exhibits. Instead, they become active subjects by operating the exhibits.

Maker movement brings the interactivity phenomenon even further. Rather than allowing the visitors to interact with ready-made exhibits, why not give them components, modules, and tools to tamper with? They can then build their own exhibits for themselves and other visitors to enjoy.

Maker culture is connected with robotics startups. Hardware components are becoming cheaper and more powerful, creating new opportunities for all kinds of gadget creators. For example, who would’ve thought ten or even five years ago that you could buy a computer with $35? This is nevertheless the case currently with Raspberry Pi. My point? A science center can partner with startups to provide broader offering than it could alone.

In modern business the mantra goes that you should focus on your core strength and do the rest via partnering. This applies to science centers, too. Decades ago centers built their own factories and operated in a somewhat self-contained fashion. These days it is possible to leave the large scale manufacturing to subcontractors, and concentrate on innovating and maybe building the first prototypes.

To sum up: science centers are including other players in their ecosystem. They let visitors to interact with their exhibits and this can be boosted with allowing them to make, tweak, and tune the exhibits. They can partner with technology startups to expand offering and create mutual value. Finally, they can streamline their processes via subcontracting.

Flickr image CC credits: USFWS – Pacific Region

Entrepreneurialism to Schools?

My employer Sanoma is currently doing a good job with what we call “Accelerator programs”. The essence of these programs is to teach lean startup methodologies to corporate people via concrete idea development and validation process. Intrapreneurship, that’s what it is about.

So far we’ve completed two programs and the third one is currently on. Last year I enrolled to the first program, Mobile Accelerator, and really liked it. For the second one, Content Accelerator, I took part as an evaluator of learning-related ideas. Now we have Commerce Accelerator going on and I am coaching student participants.

For the first two programs we had people from within Sanoma only, but now we are inviting also higher ed students to join. I think this is great! Entrepreneurialism has started to make its way big time to Finnish higher education institutions and it is awesome if we can support this trend.

What about K-12, then? As we know, children have the window open to learn new things effortlessly. If entrepreneurialism, intrapreneurialism, startup-culture, and lean methods are so important, why don’t we teach them earlier? It shouldn’t come as a surprise to us that entrepreneurial thinking is alien to people if they were always taught to be risk-averse when growing up.

Albemarle County School District in Virginia, USA, is addressing this. They have started with the maker approach which is probably a good choice. Building stuff is concrete and gets children interested and motivated. It also expands student-centered education beyond the traditional “creative” arts subjects to “harder” ones like STEM.

Once the children have designed and built their own things, they can go on and validate how they work, think about how to get their friends to use them (marketing), and return to the drawing board to make them better.

What do you think, should startup thinking (and doing!) be taught to children?