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Tag: Intrapreneurs

  • How AI Is Turning Hugh School Students Into Entrepreneurs | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    This is the third installment in the “1,000 Days of AI” series. I’ve had a front-row seat to K-12 education’s transformation — working with school systems worldwide as an AI education consultant to develop school district AI strategies and watching something remarkable unfold. The change didn’t come from curriculum committees or federal mandates, but from students who, as always, refused to wait for permission.

    While educators debated whether ChatGPT constituted cheating, 17-year-old high schooler Zach Yadegari built an AI app generating $1.12 million in monthly revenue. He began coding at age seven, initially creating a gaming website to bypass his elementary school’s firewalls. By 16, he’d already sold his first company for $100,000.

    Related: How AI Is Transforming Education Forever — and What It Means for the Next Generation of Thinkers

    The stark reality: AI has already changed everything

    Within 1,000 days, ChatGPT has fundamentally challenged traditional K-12 education. According to ACT research, 70% of high school students used AI tools in 2023-24, up from 58% the previous year. Pew Research confirms ChatGPT usage for schoolwork doubled from 2023 to 2024. But these statistics miss the real story: Students aren’t just using AI to complete assignments — they’re using it to build businesses, forcing schools to rapidly develop AI policies that balance innovation with responsible AI use in education.

    The traditional model assumed knowledge was scarce and teachers were gatekeepers. AI shattered both assumptions overnight. Every student now has access to infinite tutoring, instant expertise and tools that turn ideas into products in hours, not years. The question isn’t whether students should learn entrepreneurship — they already are.

    From high school hallways to revenue streams

    The most successful young entrepreneurs started as intrapreneurs within the school system itself. High school students across the country are transforming their AI skills into real businesses. Students nationwide are selling AI-generated study guides to classmates for $50-$500 monthly.

    The irony isn’t lost on me: What adults call cheating, these students call market research. What teachers label shortcuts, investors recognize as minimum viable products. In my work helping districts with developing AI policy for schools, I’ve seen how these entrepreneurial students actually exemplify AI education best practices — they’re solving real problems with real tools.

    The intrapreneurs inside our schools

    Not all innovation happens outside school walls. Student intrapreneurs are creating AI tutoring programs for struggling peers, building attendance apps for their schools and developing mental health chatbots for counselors. They see school problems as product opportunities, transforming education while living it.

    Teachers are becoming intrapreneurs, too. Forward-thinking educators use AI to create personalized learning paths, automate grading to spend more time with students and build tools that spread district-wide. These educator-intrapreneurs bridge institutional requirements and student innovation, creating space for experimentation within existing structures while contributing to AI curriculum development for K-12.

    Related: Why We Shouldn’t Fear AI in Education (and How to Use It Effectively)

    The federal framework meets grassroots reality

    In April 2025, President Trump signed “Advancing Artificial Intelligence Education for American Youth,” establishing the White House Task Force on AI Education. The executive order creates the Presidential AI Challenge to “encourage and highlight student and educator achievements in AI” across multiple age categories. This isn’t just another science fair — it’s federal recognition that K-12 students are already AI practitioners, validating the school district AI strategies that forward-thinking administrators have been developing.

    Crucially, the Presidential AI Challenge calls for students to “use AI to address community challenges,” validating what student entrepreneurs have been doing all along. The framework emphasizes that AI education must “spark curiosity and creativity,” but students aren’t preparing to participate — they’re already leading. This federal backing provides the cover innovative schools need to transform detention into incubation and homework into hackathons, establishing new AI education best practices along the way.

    3 practical steps for schools right now

    1. Implement “innovation hours” aligned with the Presidential AI Challenge:

    Dedicate weekly time for students to work on AI projects addressing real community problems. Let students form ventures, not just groups. Let them pursue customers, not just grades. Schools implementing this now will have students ready when the Presidential AI Challenge launches. This approach to AI curriculum development for K-12 turns theory into practice.

    2. Transform detention into incubation:

    Every student “caught” using AI creatively should be redirected, not punished. Create an “AI Innovation Council” where rule-benders become rule-makers. Have them develop your school’s AI policy and teach AI literacy to younger students. The White House Task Force calls for student-educator collaboration — make your “problem students” your problem solvers. This is responsible AI use in education at its best.

    3. Create intrapreneurship pathways:

    Establish formal recognition for students improving school operations through AI. Give course credit for building tools the school actually uses. Partner with local businesses for real-world projects. Every pizza shop and dental office needs AI help. Your students can provide it while earning money and credits. These pathways should be central to any school district AI strategy.

    The next 1,000 days: Bigger challenges, bigger opportunities

    The first 1,000 days proved that students could use AI. The next 1,000 days will prove they can lead with it. As AI becomes more powerful, the gap between students with access and support versus those without will widen exponentially. A student with ChatGPT, supportive teachers and entrepreneurial parents will build companies. A student with restricted access and punitive policies will fall behind — not by years, but by generations.

    The mental health implications are staggering. When 14-year-olds can build million-dollar businesses, what happens to those who can’t? When AI can do homework in seconds, how do we measure learning? These aren’t distant philosophical questions; they’re immediate challenges requiring thoughtful approaches to developing AI policy for schools.

    The next 1,000 days will see AI-native students enter the workforce. I can’t wait to see how they reshape entire industries. The concept of “entry-level” will dissolve when teenagers arrive with more AI experience than senior executives.

    Related: What The UAE’s AI Education Revolution Could Mean for the Future of Classroom Activities: Insights from a Young Entrepreneur

    The entrepreneurial imperative

    Schools that thrive won’t be those with the best AI policies or detection tools. They’ll be those cultivating intrapreneurs — students and teachers who transform systems from within. Every student who builds a tool to help classmates is an intrapreneur. Every teacher experimenting with AI to improve outcomes is an intrapreneur. Every administrator creating space for innovation enables intrapreneurship.

    After 1,000 days of ChatGPT in K-12 education, one truth emerges: Students who embraced AI as a tool for creation rather than completion are building the future economy. They’re intrapreneurs transforming schools from within and entrepreneurs building alternatives from without.

    The next 1,000 days will be exponentially more complex. AI will become more powerful, accessible and essential. Students who start building now will have compounded advantages. For educators, parents and policymakers seeking guidance from an AI keynote speaker for education or looking to establish AI education best practices, the path forward is clear: Embrace intrapreneurship, enable entrepreneurship, and expect transformation. The federal government has provided the framework through the Presidential AI Challenge. Now it’s time for local action.

    The kids aren’t just alright — they’re already ahead. The question for the next 1,000 days isn’t whether students will use AI to transform education and the economy. They will. The question is whether we’ll help them build something better or watch them build around us.

    Coming next in the “1,000 Days of AI” series: Legal’s AI transformation — where precedent meets algorithms, and why your next lawyer might be an AI that passed the bar exam on its first try.

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    Alex Goryachev

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  • How Leaders Can Raise Motivated, Proactive Intrapreneurs

    How Leaders Can Raise Motivated, Proactive Intrapreneurs

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    At my first job, while I was impressed by the advanced equipment and technology, I was rather disappointed by the need for more openness to new ideas. My manager rejected all the new ideas I proposed for our projects. The pain of ideas getting killed resonated with a couple of other friends. So, we decided to start our own company where we could put our ideas into action.

    Of course, not all our ideas were successful, but that’s the risk of entrepreneurship, and we are happy that we had the chance to try them. Today, our organization is a strong team of over 300 people who are encouraged and motivated to experiment and share ideas. Moreover, the intrapreneurs within these 300 people have grown professionally and fueled the company’s overall growth.

    The opportunities to ideate, test and scale products by our intrapreneurs have allowed our organization to launch vital new products and services. In addition, our labs’ products have allowed us to serve clients and help them intuitively, accurately and efficiently make critical decisions.

    That’s the power of intrapreneurship — everyone wins when employees receive the freedom and support to innovate and create.

    Related: 6 Steps for Turning Your Employees into Intrapreneurs

    The startup dreams

    The fancy word — “startup.” Starting up is never easy.

    Many employees at every organization once dreamed of starting their own company. However, upon looking at the responsibilities on their shoulders, such employees decide against taking such a risk. But with the right mentorship and support system, they can carve out a laudable path of entrepreneurship as intrapreneurs.

    American business software company, Intuit, encourages its employees to create prototypes to test their hypotheses. Their “unit of one” approach for testing and scaling ideas promotes constant innovation. Essentially, Intuit ensures that employees test their hypothesis with just one customer, ideally someone best served by it. For example, suppose the target persona finds the MVP useful and recommends it. In that case, the hypothesis can scale to a larger cohort to observe a bigger dataset.

    In a piece by Harvard Business Review on intrapreneurship at Intuit, this approach was cited as an example that helped the business launch “Shop Owner,” a mobile application, in Bengaluru, India.

    Repeat interactions with everyday customers — rural-area store clerks — allowed one Intuit employee to recognize that each sale was kept in the shop owner’s “memory” due to a lack of on-site computers or cash registers with integrated accounting features.

    The answer? Since the target audience predominantly used smartphones, the team built a simple application that bundled point-of-sale accounting, inventory management and printed receipts.

    The prototype was created, tested and approved for scaling — within seven days!

    Related: Big Companies That Embrace Intrapreneurship Will Thrive

    Raising intrapreneurs

    Triumphant outcomes are routinely tagged as “overnight success,” whether from innovation or intrapreneurship programs. Yet, the truth could not be further away from this adopted belief.

    Building a healthy culture that celebrates intrapreneurship requires a mix of systems, tools and hard work. I believe that the ball starts rolling right from the leadership. Organizations can take cues from several studies, research papers and working models on better cultivating a culture of intrapreneurship.

    Neil Fogarty, an instructor of Entrepreneurship in the Dept. of Management & Organization in the Smeal College of Business at PSU, offers a framework for creating a supportive environment for raising entrepreneurs. Leaders may say, “I get it, but,” Fogarty replies, “Here is how you can go about it.”

    The framework helps switch employee thinking from a cost-center perspective to one of personal profit-center. As a result, leaders can help raise motivated, proactive intrapreneurs and also understand how to tackle budgetary constraints, propensity to take risks and other crucial commitments.

    It’s worth taking a deep dive into this framework; meanwhile, here is how we go about intrapreneurship at our company.

    Related: You Have a Great Idea, But You Work for Someone Else. What Do You Do With It?

    How do we raise intrapreneurs?

    In my two decades of work experience, I have participated in countless discussions — brainstorming sessions, OKR feedback, policy debates, product quality reviews, etc.

    Most of us love listening to what we would like to hear; however, we encourage the daring minority — intrapreneurs — to challenge the status quo.

    In my experience, it is crucial to establish a structure where people can fearlessly submit their ideas and suggestions. Moreover, it is essential to provide them with the right ecosystem to execute those ideas. Of course, not every idea would be successful, but the “biggest risk is not taking any risk,” as Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, says.

    Here are three prominent practices we follow to encourage intrapreneurship culture:

    The OKRs:

    The sales targets are not just set for the sales team. The operations team needs to walk hand-in-hand in the following ways:

    • Identifying the gaps at the client end to open more business opportunities

    • Suggesting market gaps where the company can position itself strategically to bring more business

    • Expanding teams by strategic and thoughtful hiring

    • Creating systems and processes for efficient and productive work

    • Honing people skills to effectively manage teams

    This way, the VPs, managers and team leads run small companies as a part of the big company. In addition, we give intrapreneurs hands-on mentorship in the form of an in-house program called “altMBA.”

    In-house MBA programs:

    Creating leaders at every level of the organization chart — especially those who staunchly believe in innovation — requires workplace training.

    While traditional classroom settings can offer many theoretical insights, practical altMBA workshops have helped employees provide efficient feedback, become better communicators, apply “first principles thinking” and learn how to ask better questions.

    Make-a-thons:

    At our organization, we conduct an annual hackathon called “make-a-thon.” This event helps us create and support a culture of intrapreneurship within the organization.

    “Make-a-thon” takes place over two days, where people create teams to build a minimal viable product (MVP). Then, at the close of the event, teams pitch their prototype.

    What’s the requirement? A problem that bothers someone every day at work. Slow administrative approvals? Friction while accessing files from a database? It can be anything! The results have surprised us every time.

    Over the years, we have tweaked this system’s design and found specific characteristics that help bring standout results.

    We found that cross-pollination (making cross-departmental teams) exposes everyone to unexplored, alternate viewpoints. Next, we insist on executing ideas in short turnaround times rather than coming up with groundbreaking ideas. Finally, we foster a lean theory of execution — no idea is “big” or “small.”

    Apple’s former Chief Design Officer, Jony Ive, once remarked about Steve Jobs: “I think he better than anyone understood that while ideas ultimately can be so powerful, they begin as fragile, barely formed thoughts, so easily just squished.”

    In conclusion, to avoid losing promising ideas and nurture intrapreneurs, here are a few actionable steps one can take:

    • Encourage and reward risk-taking and innovation

    • Provide resources and support for employees to develop and implement new ideas

    • Create a flat, open organizational structure that fosters communication and collaboration

    • Offer training and development opportunities to enhance employee skills and knowledge

    • Empower employees to take ownership of their work and decision-making

    • Implement a system for idea generation and feedback

    • Recognize and celebrate successes, both big and small

    • Lead by example, demonstrating a passion for innovation and a willingness to take risks

    • Foster a culture of transparency, trust and accountability

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    Deepak Syal

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