Evaluating Youth Engagement in Social Entrepreneurship and Research Team Experiences

SDG8: Decent work and economic growth; SDG4: Quality Education; SDG5: Gender Equality, by empowering female youth

Image courtesy of Techstars Sustainability Startup Weekend and Silicon Coast

The process of creating a new social enterprise, like other ventures, is a dynamic process fraught with repeated cycles of progress and setbacks. Starting any new business is an emotional rollercoaster- founders exert considerable effort with uncertain outcomes and limited information to make decisions. Previous research has focused on emotions, such as passion and grit when founders develop their ventures or have explored grief after business failure. Limited research looks at the interdependent relationship between motivation and emotion. Yet, the emotions founders experience when creating a new venture influence their social enterprise’s development and outcomes. For example, when getting negative feedback, some founders might give up, while others look to what they can do to respond and make changes. Also, founders learn how to work as a team under uncertain, pressurised conditions, which can be stressful and is often a reason why new ventures fail. This project developed a deeper appreciation of the emotions experienced during the new venture creation process.

This project aimed to develop youth engagement through experiential social entrepreneurship and research capacity development by actively involving youth in setting research priorities, as such the project has three aims:

1. Investigate how new social enterprise ventures progress their ventures examining the role of persistence, effort, and emotional regulation as they prepare and develop a social enterprise.

2. Evaluate the youth involved in the YES Research programs career aspirations after their involvement with the program

3. Disseminate the findings and impact of the YES Research Program for all 12 projects through resource creation and empowerment strategies.

The interviews confirmed that participants experienced the process as an emotional rollercoaster. Many had little prior knowledge of the social enterprise process, but were motivated to join the startup event, as they saw it as an opportunity to turn ideas into commercial outcomes. Venture teams who were better prepared for the weekend and could use existing industry contacts to test the ideas and concepts they developed, were able to achieve milestones with less stress than teams who were less well-prepared. Most teams found it challenging to develop a business model within the compressed time period of the weekend. Having clear milestones made it easier for teams to progress. In reality many startup founders have less structured and undefined milestones, therefore it would be beneficial for them to engage in a structured startup experience. Participants emphasised the importance of being part of a supportive team and that team members should play complementary roles. Venture teams that ‘lost’ team members due to them dropping out experienced disappointment and report feeling disillusioned and needing to refocus on the existing team members to continue on with their startups. The implications of the findings are that startup founders should have the ability to access resources and networks to prepare themselves for the startup journey and following a structured process will milestones is likely to improve outcomes.

Three youth research team members were part of this project.