Jobs need to grow from bottom-up with the youths themselves in the driver’s seat. Making it possible for young people to be futurepreneurs will enable them to create their own jobs.

Youths everywhere are queuing up in unemployment lines. Jobs-for-life are part of history and big companies increasingly use freelance workers and include robots on the staff list. It is time to tackle the youth unemployment crisis in the spirit of opportunities for youth to design their own work. Avenues for fostering young entrepreneurs are potentially through incubators in established companies as well as through support from innovative funding mechanisms.

Incubators Inside Businesses

Entrepreneurs are leading job-creation globally. Conventional thinking sees entrepreneurship as an alternative path to incorporate into the conventional corporate world. Bringing the two worlds together is an opportunity to create jobs, new organizations and new ideas.

Companies are uniquely positioned to support young entrepreneurs. For businesses that must devote most energy to day-to-day operations and quarterly earnings, internal incubators offer insights into new emerging ideas.

The current pace of change constantly threatens established businesses; incubators are becoming more and more important to create growth opportunities. Having an internal incubator is like an insurance policy – if the market moves, the companies are ready to change directions or grow new business quickly. Incubators inside large companies for youth to sow and grow ideas in a structured environment offer an alternative tool for fostering entrepreneurship from publically funded incubator initiatives.

Participation in a corporate incubator enables young entrepreneurs to leverage the parent company’s resources to scale their business. In rural areas, agribusiness incubators are showing promising potential for job creation for youth.

Opportunity for Investors

Without an established credit history, assets, and business experience required by traditional investment models, young entrepreneurs face challenges securing the necessary funding to accomplish their goals. Particular investment funds are offering triple-bottom-line investment opportunities that generate financial, social, and environmental returns for young entrepreneurs.

Investing in young entrepreneurs is also an opportunity for investors who are becoming increasingly unsatisfied with their current investment portfolio. Innovative finance mechanisms, such as inter-generational social futurepreneurial funds, are also an avenue for fostering more young entrepreneurs. These may be community-based with local competitions for the best start-up ideas winning access to finance.

Community projects like construction of roads and bridges, industrial parks, commercial buildings, and sewer and water projects can create jobs, but studies show that incubators have been more successful in terms of the number of jobs created. Whether these jobs are of a higher quality is, however, more difficult to say. Incubators allow companies to follow new ideas at close hand while planting the seeds for the next generation of futurepreneurs to grow.

Futurepreneurship empowers youth to take charge of their employment situation, and with the support of more experienced entrepreneurs youths are not on a lonely ride. This opportunity addresses the rising trend of jobless growth by supporting youth in bringing their creative ideas and dreams to life.

Survey Findings

It is a very popular market opportunity in South East Asia and Australia, whereas in the other regions this opportunity receives a more moderate rating in terms of its benefits to society. While being well-received by the medium HDI countries, the Very High HDI countries are less optimistic.

All business sectors are likely to pursue this opportunity according to our 2015 survey. For most of the business sectors, futurepreneurship is seen to have significant effect. The financial and governmental sectors in particular are supportive of this market opportunity. It points to a good foundation upon which to build partnership between these two sectors to get young people into work through the road of entrepreneurship.

Except for the South American region, this opportunity is perceived to have the support of politicians.

This market was surveyed globally in 2015 by more than 5500 leaders from both the public and private sectors. The survey was conducted in collaboration with the research company YouGov. The survey results were originally published in the Global Opportunity Report 2016.

Global Goals addressed