To them the technology is no more intimidating than a toaster. Many elementary and high schools are adding entrepreneurship to the curriculum, says Erik Pages, policy director for the National Commission on Entrepreneurship in Washington. Kindergarten pupils are picking up business skills trading baseball cards and Beanie Babies. Teens are going away to business boot camps instead of summer camps. But the Internet is the great equalizer.
Kids can just log on and hatch business plans.
In the next five years, 1.2 million, or 6 percent, of teens will have started an Internet business by the time they graduate from high school, according to Computer Economics Inc., a research firm in Carlsbad. And, based on his conversations with teen entrepreneurs, Michael Erbschloe, vice president of research, estimates as much as 1 percent of elementary school kids has contemplated starting an Internet business. In the end, it really doesn't matter if kids end up starting a viable business. It's just important that they see they can do this. Few of these budding Internet entrepreneurs are as young as the fourth- graders from Moraga.