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MAJOR CONCEPTS
 what
makes countries rich over time
young
entrepreneurs
business
and finance
patents
and copyrights
Market-oriented economies continually reinvent themselves. New supplies
create new demands, which in turn create even newer supplies as new
inventions appear and eventually yield to even newer ones. This workshop
explores through lectures, demonstrations and other exercises how
innovation and entrepreneurship can flourish in and enliven a free
market economy such as ours.
This workshop explores entrepreneurial activity, what it is, who
does it and what conditions are necessary to make it flourish. Students
explore what makes some countries rich and others less so and why
it is not always necessary that a nation's natural resources determine
whether that country will be rich or not. Finally, we explore the
tradeoff of copyrights and patents, in which ideas are protected
from competition in order to create incentives for innovation. We
examine recent case histories such as Napster that test that tradeoff.
Jay Grenawalt, from
George Washington High School in Denver, leads off the workshop
with an activity that dramatically illustrates the keys to economic
growth.
This segment is followed by practical lessons in entrepreneurship
with Mark Melkonian,
a teacher at the High School of Economics and Finance in New York
City.
Ted Hartsoe, from Choate
Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Connecticut, relates entrepreneurship
to the broader economy.
Finally, from the High School of Economics and Finance in New York
City, Ghandi Moussa discusses
with his students the incentives for innovation created by patents
and copyrights and uses the Napster case as an example.
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"I think it's important for
the kids to realize that entrepreneurship is an essential
ingredient in a capitalist system. But it's not necessarily
the best career goal for everybody. Starting your own
business can be very rewarding but there are also disadvantages
that they should be aware of. But in a capitalist system
like we have in the United States, economic growth has
been stimulated by the entrepreneurial initiative of
so many people. And that's something that they ought
to consider.
They don't hear too much
about that in their history classroom or in their English
or math or whatever. They're hearing about other possible
careers without necessarily thinking that much about
starting their own business. So I just want to plant
that seed… so when they come up with an idea for something
they think, 'I can do this myself. And maybe these are
some of the things that I can start thinking about in
order to get that business going.'"
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