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High school program takes 'business class' to national level

Michael Miles is living his "Field of Dreams" - if you build it, they will come - by helping budding entrepreneurs build their dreams.

Miles is a co-founder of INCubatoredu, a not-for-profit education program that partners schools and communities to teach high school students the fundamentals to start up and run a business. Schools that use the INCubatoredu program partner teachers with 17 community volunteers who share their business expertise with students. The program also puts students in teams to develop a business idea and work in an incubator setting to turn it into a working business model.

The program started at Barrington High School in 2013, and this fall will be in 65 schools across eight states.

Miles - an entrepreneur himself - notes the program took on a life of its own after debuting in Barrington.

"Our original thought was just to have it in Barrington," he said. "We never thought to do anything more than that."

It began with Miles approaching then District 220 Superintendent Tom Leonard with an idea of giving students the opportunity to start their own business.

"Our premise is if you're really passionate about it, it's no longer school work," he said. "You're in love with it. And when you're in love with the topic, a business or an idea, you learn at a whole different level."

He said Leonard was enthusiastic about the idea and was a major factor in getting it started at BHS. Within the first month of the program's launch, other school districts contacted the school with interest in the program. A key moment came later that year when Leonard asked Miles to help him present the program to a national conference of school superintendents, after a keynote speaker dropped out at the last minute.

"The interest level from the peer group was off the charts," he said. "That's when we began to create a not-for-profit, hired people and made a scalable, sustainable business model."

INCubatoredu's secret sauce is in the partnership between school and community, Miles said. In addition to having a teacher in class, the program recruits 17 volunteers from the community, who spend classroom time with the students during the school year.

"They are not mentors," he said. "They are just practitioners that happen to have an area of specialization; it could be financial modeling, marketing or competitive analysis, digital and social media, or something else.

"Now the student experience is very rich and exciting because it's new every day," he added.

The second part of the program puts students into teams to develop a business idea. They are paired with mentor - again, a volunteer from the community - who works with an individual team to help the students progress. The teams eventually present their plans to a board of directors, who evaluate the projects, provide feedback and help the students in testing or starting the business.

Even the physical learning space is transformed from a traditional classroom into a business incubator.

"They are collaborating with others and collaborating with their mentors, and the learning space is very conducive to that," Miles said.

The not-for-profit group provides consistency among the schools by setting the curriculum, recruiting the local mentors and volunteers, and assuring everyone involved with the program is aware of the expectations. Schools pay a membership fee to INCubatoredu, but Miles notes the schools get that money through fundraising outside of taxpayer-funded budgets,

If INCubatoredu's revenues exceed expenses, Miles said the additional money is used to invest in businesses started by students in the program.

Miles said the group has set a goal to be in 500 schools in 50 months, something he is confident they can achieve given the overwhelming response.

"It's all about getting young people career ready," he said. "This is not a business class. It happens to fall under that category, but this is a career readiness class that happens to focus on entrepreneurship."

Students participating in Barrington High School's INCubatoredu program listen to a mentor as they discuss their business project. Photos courtesy INCubatoredu
Barrington High School students present their business idea to a board of directors at the school's INCubatoredu program. Photos courtesy INCubatoredu
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