Cultural revolution

Signs point towards more consciousness in business in 2013

3. Leaving the Job Search in Search of Entrepreneurial Solutions

More and more high school students and young people are pursuing entrepreneurial ventures and ignoring the traditional job search, embedding responsibility along the way. From how they set up the business to how they employ, sell, create and market. They are not starting their careers with a sense of skepticism and instead taking the challenges head on with a clear understanding of sustainability and how they can impact our future.

This trend is the one I am very excited about.

I know that this surge was partially affected by the recession but what was born out of desperate times is now becoming a path of choice. On every continent, from Africa to Europe, Asia and South America, entrepreneurship is becoming part of high school curricula and businesses are becoming sponsors of social enterprise incubators.

As I work with economic development in places like the Finger Lakes regions of New York, I see economic development councils working with schools to enrich their small business offerings and to fund incubators within the schools. Then there is social media, like YouTube, which continues to stream thousands of entrepreneurial courses, many created by youth for youth. I expect to see a flood of new businesses in coming years, but more evidently, a new business culture that values young people exercising personal agency. And it is being advocated far and wide by media.

Taking the sum of these trends together, I am excited about 2013.

With responsibility becoming a question in all our actions and decisions, systems improvement goes beyond the walls of philanthropic ventures to business missions and the rise of a new and expanding generation of entrepreneurs.

What do you see that fits these patterns? Or contradicts them?

Carol Sanford is the author of The Responsible Business and a prolific advisor on CSR and sustainability.

This article was first published at CSRwire.com.

Photos courtesy of anaalvesphoto and picture4it.