In today’s fast-moving, innovation-oriented business landscape, entrepreneurship is essential to becoming successful. Throughout history, entrepreneurs have been at the forefront of innovation, creating everything from the wheel to artificial hearts. Learning the concepts of business and the risks associated with it lay the groundwork for students to prosper and open up a world of opportunity. However, a poll conducted in the Wildcat Tribune shows just 26% of Dougherty Valley students consider entrepreneurship a viable career and 31% don’t even know what it is.

Seniors, Nupur Joshi and Nikita Nawani, are working to change the flawed perception of entrepreneurship as an ineffective career path one workshop at a time. The two burgeoning entrepreneurs have created Sparking Innovation, a program aimed at providing students with the skillsets needed to start their own businesses. The project started off small, meeting with the PTSA in October to discuss courses of action. Now, the team presents to middle and high school students, fostering a new generation of entrepreneurial spirit.

After achieving modest success, the future of “Sparking Innovation” revolves around plans of expanding in the community and even collaborating with Knodemy.

Knodemy is a Bay Area based company most recognized as the parent company of Codecademy, which has taught thousands of students how to code. Quoting their mission statement, “Knodemy provides a highly interactive platform for students to connect with top instructors, experts and tutors, in a personalized and interactive virtual environment with focus on Math & Technology”.

The instruction is centered around turning ideas into sellable products. Students get the chance to learn about their target market, product differentiation, marketing, and finance. The initial outlines proved to be very informative. We asked several attendees of the first seminar on their thoughts. Jasmine Hundal, a freshmen says, “This seminar deepened my interest and helped me realize how great an effect entrepreneurship has on society. It was a very interactive seminar and I enjoyed learning new things.” However, others expressed that while the topic was interesting, they had hoped for more interactive activities than just taking notes.

“We hope to continue to engage with the community past the [DECA] states conference and set up more regular and widespread workshops outside of just this area.” Joshi declares.