Watch for additional articles over the next month on our new series about franchising.

It’s said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If that’s true, then Jeff Johnson and the rest of the Franchise Research Institution help facilitate the metaphorical fan clubs for dozens of successful businesses. If you’re looking to jump into the business world wants the security of treading a tried and proven trail instead of blazing your own, Johnson is your man.

“If you’re a great innovator, franchising may not be for you — we need great duplicators, folks that want to get into business and duplicate what works,” Johnson said. “You need to be a duplicator of the brand, you answer to the parent company. If you get a McDonald’s franchise, for example, you don’t get to start serving hotdogs and popcorn.”

Founded by Johnson in 2002, the Franchise Research Institute studies the concept of franchising from all angles, assessing weaknesses and making note of strengths. Johnson is uniquely suited to the task. After working as a multi-unit franchisee and area developer for more than 17 years, the franchise Johnson helped grow from 200 to 750 units combusted after going public. Fortunately, some good came from the loss. Johnson discovered he’d acquired a sort of reverse engineering acumen that only comes from seeing a franchise’s structural foundation laid bare – a knowledge of what it takes to keep a franchise anchored and solid.

Jeff Johnson, founder Franchise Research Institute

The FRI’s top priority today is promoting strong franchise relationships by maintaining a line of communication between franchisee and franchisor. Its primary means of doing this is its FranSurvey service, a field-tested Internet survey infrastructure that allows franchisors to hear their franchisees’ concerns and provide the best possible guidance to see them through.

Given his extensive background on the topic, Johnson had plenty to say to those hoping to become part of a franchise. Individuals looking to get into the franchise game should be aware, Johnson noted, of the trend toward smaller franchises cropping up in greater numbers during the current economic duress.

“The most popular (franchise opportunities) right now are the smaller investments, the ones people can run from their homes instead of investing in buying land or finding long-term space,” Johnson said. “That doesn’t mean the more expensive franchises aren’t good deals; that doesn’t mean they’re not being done. It’s just harder overall for people find ways to finance them.”

Regardless of start-up costs, however, Johnson said potential franchisees should first narrow their search by gauging two key factors of each franchise: franchisee satisfaction and franchisee success.

“What to look for in a franchise, that’s a simple question with a complicated answer, (and) part of the reason the institute was founded,” Johnson said. “But look for satisfaction and success. If you see that the existing franchises work well for the people that run them – and that they’re happy running them — there’s a greater chance they’ll work for you.”

But Christopher Kingsley, CEO of Roundscapes, hopes to take digital depictions of life in a different direction.

“I want to make the real world digital,” he said, “and I want to make the digital world more real.”

For half a decade, Kingsley’s company (formally ROUNDUS) has been doing just that. Though it started out by shooting spherical panorama’s of Lincoln’s cityscape, Roundscapes has since narrowed its focus. Now, Kingsley said, the goal is to capture the entire experience of visiting a location, rather than simply replicating the physical space.

“We’re trying to avoid being conscious of the limitations of a two dimensional space,” he elaborated, referring to the company’s web site work. “We ask ourselves questions like, ‘What sounds can I record on-site that convey the ambiance?’ and ‘How do I best shoot a panoramic (photograph)that I can place video elements into?’”

Other methods of bringing spaces to life include embedding contextual games, puzzles and riddles into the virtual experience, or inserting camouflaged videos that appear mere background elements until clicked, such as a person in the backdrop who steps out of the frame and addresses the user.

Like many other entrepreneurs, Kingsley’s vision emerged from humble beginnings. After feeling dissatisfaction with his lot in life as a private banking intern for Morgan Stanley’s Philadelphia branch, he returned to Lincoln to pursue photography.

“I always wanted to do something cooler than banking,” he said. “What I really wanted to be doing with my time was contributing, building a tool people can use.”

Inspired by A9 BlockView (Amazon’s — now defunct — early attempt at photographing streets around the country, a sort of precursor to Google Street View), Google Earth and video games such as Myst that focus on exploration and discovery within vast virtual worlds, Kingsley wrote a business plan called “Virtual City” with the aim of producing spherical photographs to showcase an entire small town.

In 2006, he met and collaborated with Long Island native Zachary Abresch, producing spherical photographs of locations around Lincoln.

“We worked from my couch, basically, passing a laptop back and forth,” Kingsley recalled. “Because stitching and rendering a photo requires several steps that can’t be queued up, I’d bring my laptop with me wherever I went, even if it was rude.”

“At a party or in the middle of conversation I’d be like ‘Sorry, one second! Just have to stitch this image.”

Through grants by some of Lincoln’s larger entities, including Valentino’s and Union Bank, Kinglsey and his ever expanding photography team were able to capture hundreds of locations around the city at no cost to the respective owners. Today, the company’s web site features panoramic shots of nearly 600 spots.

“What was great is that we didn’t have to approach a local business with the attitude ‘Hey! We want money from you,’ but rather ‘Hey! Can we help you get on the Internet?’” Kingsley said.

Eventually, the company’s work caught the eye of Bill Kubly, owner of LANDSCAPES UNLIMITED. Kubly asked Kingsley to apply the company’s spherical photograph aesthetic to golf courses, and Roundscapes was born. After Kubly made an angel investment in the company, Kingsely and company set out on their latest mission.

While Kingsley’s company has indeed come a long way since its inception, it can almost be argued its trajectory (much like the photographs that made it famous) has been 360 degrees. Though Roundscapes now devotes its energy to a smaller subset of clients, the spherical panoramas — as well as the community based around them — remain an integral part of the company’s culture.

“We can’t spend enough time on ROUNDUS to crank out the content like we used to, so we shifted gears and build an engine where people can upload their own spherical photography,” Kingsley said. “Now, we have a user base around the world, with a few hundred pretty dedicated content creators in 21 countries and 115 cities.”

Today, Kingsley said the company is mostly concerned with producing what he called “a new level of interactive experiences.” The client roster for these digital forays includes bigger companies, such as Cargill and Cessna.

And this shift in momentum means plenty of exciting developments are just around the corner. Over the course of the next year, Kingsley said the company plans on growing its workforce by a full 50 percent, and also hopes to undertake more national contracts.

“We’re also experimenting with some exciting new interactive video technologies,” he said. “Those are going to be a big part of our new work in the coming year.”

“Management experience in a startup a lot of times is lacking, as is industry experience,” said Joseph Knecht, managing director of Interactive Information Research Development. “It can really help to surround yourself with people who share common interests, common goals, common challenges. With all those variables in play, that community environment helps cultivate a culture of success.”

Started by two UNL professors in 1997, i2rd grew quickly over the next several years. Eventually, the company moved to the Tech Park in 2001, the same year Knecht came on board. Although i2rd graduated from the Tech Park in 2005, Knect said the experience accrued over those four years has repeatedly proven itself invaluable.

“There was no boundary on work hours, so we were pretty much there all hours of the night, 7 days a week,” he said. “Through casual talk with the other business owners, we helped each other build our companies with shared experience and know-how.”

In addition to providing office space where these frequent meetings of the minds took place, the Tech Park also brought in experts to answer the more nuanced questions of its residents. Topics ranged from HR quandaries to marketing woes, but Knect said the Tech-Park-procured specialists were able to elaborate and explain the most minute details of running a business.

Knect also praised the Park’s creation of an atmosphere where failure is transformed into a learning experience.

“I think a major challenge for a lot of startups and entrepreneurs is that there are a lot of great ideas, but people aren’t sure how and to whom to market them,” he said. “The park allows you to experiment and try out multiple ways of doing business. The environment allows you to succeed and fail, with the hope of finding something that really works. i2rd learned how technology, the web and business all come together.”

Those four years of education are already paying high returns. In 2006, i2rd was named the Fastest Growing Business by the Lincoln Chamber of Commerce. And the firm has launched two more startups in that time: Lincoln-based advertising service provider Vipa Solutions and Provider Trust — an online connection tool for health care professionals — located in Nashville, Tennessee.

“One of the most important things we learned is to never accept how you are, keep trying to build — a stagnant organization is an organization that is dying,” Knect said. “And incubators help facilitate that change. I’m not saying it’s a home run, you go to an incubator and you’re done, but it gives you a much better change of being successful, going through that process with all those like-minded individuals.”

Though two decades seems like quite a ways off, the development of the technologies needed to sate mankind’s growing appetite must begin long before then. In order to achieve this end, Neogen is bringing as many talented entrepreneurs and corporations as it can to the table. One of those companies is Lincoln-based genomics (the examination of animals for traits with economic or aesthetic advantages) firm GeneSeek.

“Food safety is part of food security, and genomic tools can be used to select animals and plants that contribute to better food production,” said Abe Oommen, GeneSeek’s former CEO and co-founder, as well as NeoGen’s current general manager.  ”This is the interest Neogen had in GeneSeek.”

Neogen acquired the agricultural biotechnology service provider in April, but GeneSeek has been around since 1998. During its infancy, it was able to grow and prosper thanks to laboratory space provided by the University of Nebraska Lincoln Technology Park.

“It is hard for a startup company to build lab space,” Oommen said. “This is the big contribution of the Tech Park: a niche for technology based companies.”

It was this Technology Park lab space that helped GeneSeek firmly plant its feet on the cutting edge of technology, allowing the high-tech corporation to provide the best possible products and services to its customers. During its time at the Tech Park, GeneSeek diversified its service portfolio to include SNP profiling, marker assisted selection (MAS), disease diagnostics and identity management.

Single nucleotide polymorphism profiling is the practice of predicting disease and trait predisposition based on readouts from specialized computer chips. On a similar highly technical note, marker assisted selection entails scrutinizing advanced genetics information to make informed breeding decisions. GeneSeek also offers Real-Time pathogen detection and confirmation in a wide variety of animals.

By using these technologies and more, GeneSeek offers its customers the ability to accelerate the process of natural selection. Through selective breeding, livestock producers are able to phase out undesirable traits — such as proclivity toward certain illnesses — while keeping beneficial attributes (such as outstanding meat quality) within their animals’ collective gene pool.

As GeneSeek continued to expand, it caught the eye of Neogen. Like a captivity-hatched chick, GeenSeek was looking to move beyond its incubator and continue growing. The partnership with Neogen seemed a perfect fit.

In short, the merger was all part of GeneSeek’s greater plan.

“Always have a vision for what your company should be, and work toward that goal,” said Oommen when asked for advice to dispense to startups seeking incubation. “And don’t do anything that you don’t know very well – start a company that depends on your skills and abilities.”

Taking into account the intense focus and dedication required to get a startup off the ground, entrepreneurs occasionally get “business tunnel vision,” focusing too heavily on the business logistics of their ventures. While it’s obvious a healthy amount of business sense is required to run a successful company, it’s not all that is needed.

Promoting a positive corporate culture can provide fledgling businesses with a bevy of oblique advantages, from providing a moral hook that attracts talented employees to offering incalculable exposure through word-of-mouth praise.  One of the simplest ways for startups to avail themselves of these benefits is by participating in social entrepreneurship, which enables businesses to give back to the communities that helped create them; social entrepreneurs donate a share of their profits, equity and time to philanthropic foundations and causes.

“it’s important to define your corporate culture, and your company’s commitment to philanthropy is part of that,” said Lateef Johnson, whose experience with social entrepreneurship began with SalesForce.com out in San Francisco, but now hopes to apply the same model to his Lincoln startup Deckerton. “You want that to be communicated and replicated throughout your company, and the best way is to make it a priority from the very beginning. Startups have a unique opportunity to define their culture very early in terms of their commitment to the community.”

SaleForce.com adheres to a straightforward strategy called the 1/1/1 model. That is, the company has pledged to donate 1 percent of its employees’ time to volunteer at charitable organizations, 1 percent of its product to non-profits and 1 percent of its equity toward philanthropic causes. The company also launched a web site called The Power of Us with the goal of educating and inspiring new entrepreneurs to follow in the corporation’s charitable footsteps.

That 1 percent of employee’s time netted an average of six days worth of charity work per person, which provided SaleForce.com with plenty of positive promotion.  The charity work became an incentive for recent college graduates to seek employment at the company.

“As a (SaleForce.com) recruiter, I experienced a lot of those benefits firsthand,” Johnson said. “Young people coming out of college were really excited about the company. Yeah, we were growing quickly and those sorts of things, but what really enthused those kids was our commitment to philanthropy. My being able to say with all honesty that employees were able to use company time for taking trips to give food to the poor or to clean up beaches really appealed to them.”

Here in Lincoln, Johnson is upping the ante with his own twist on the SaleForce.com philanthropic paradigm, a self-explanatory improvement he calls the 2/2/2 model. Currently, 2 percent of his company’s outstanding shares have been set aside for a Deckerton Foundation. Once those shares increase in value, Johnson hopes to put them toward helping Lincoln children.

“The best advice I can give to startups interested in engaging in corporate philanthropy  is to collaborate,” he said, encouraging entrepreneurs to check out The Power of Us web site. “One thing about people who are interested in philanthropy or non-profits is that they love to work together. They want to share their stories, or help you or talk about their model; they’re really interested in sharing their experience.”

And oftentimes, working toward the greater good can be a business model in and of itself. Mission Bean Coffee, a non-profit launched in 2008 as an extension of and source of financing for People’s City Mission, has been incredibly successful, mostly due to the vibrant connection the company generates between purchasing coffee and helping the less fortunate.

“We change the meaning of consumption, turn it into an experience that has spiritual value added,” said Pastor Tom Barber, People City Mission’s executive director. “But the fact remains we’re solving social problems through entrepreneurship, and the dynamics of that are the same as running a business. We’re using the exact same business principles — there’s no difference in the process. The end result is different, but I consider myself as much of an entrepreneur as any business owner out there.”

“It’s difficult for any startup, but even more so for anything social media related, especially with sites like Facebook in the picture,” said Wade Sikkink, chief marketing officer for Collaborative Health Solutions, a health-care information service that launched its own social media portal, Medizzle, on May 19. “You’ve got to have a reason for people to come to you that they don’t have at another place. The question we get a lot is, ‘Why wouldn’t I just form a Facebook Group, or a Yahoo! Group or a Google Group?’”

For Medizzle, that reason is the site’s host of social networking tools aimed at sufferers of chronic illness. One such gadget is an algorithmic matching tool that sorts users by their illness, the sickness’s risk factor… even individual symptoms. People and groups are sorted by relevance and then rated according to compatibility with the user on a scale of one to five stars.

“We have the ability to provide tools that aren’t as important to a general audience, but there’s value in talking to someone who has not only other same illness, but also the same symptoms,” said Sikkink, who works out of the multi-city company’s Lincoln office. ”Our tools let people find exactly who they want to find, down to the symptom, whereas with other sites, you’ve just got scour profiles and message boards.”

Medizzle also boasts an extensive illness database, a comprehensive list of more than 750 illnesses and corresponding symptoms. The site also offers unparalleled privacy controls, including state-of-the-art encryption and a unique take on inputting user information.

“Unlike other sites, all we require is an email address and a unique user name,” Sikkink said. “Once you’re in, you decide what information you want to add. Of course, the more info you give us, the better our matching tool does.”

Since the social media portal’s launch a couple months ago, Sikkink has been hard at work promoting Medizzle and Collaborative Health Solutions. He and the other members of CHS attended May’s TechCrunch Disrupt event in New York City. Although the startup event didn’t have much to do with the medical field, Sikkink still considered the overall experience invaluable.

“We demoed our product non-stop,” he said. “At events like (TechCrunch), you give your pitch about a hundred times a day; you get your five-minute pitch down to a science. I’d encourage any startup to get out to these events, because it gives you that exposure, gives you that practice.”

CHS also signed Fibromyalgia and Fatigue Centers, an umbrella company composed of more than 15 clinics nationwide dedicated to treating Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, on as an advertiser and partner. But for the most part, Sikkink has promoted Medizzle through word-of-mouth. The service now has several hundred users, with numbers steadily climbing following an initial spike coinciding with the product’s launch.

“We’re off to a pretty good start, given our level of non-advertising,” Sikkink said. “We’re going to have to continue to find other interesting things to draw people in. It’s growing on its own now, things are happening, but it’s just a process that takes some time to slowly build up.”

Throughout their 25 years as small business owners, Mike and Sharon Schilling have whittled entrepreneurship down to a science.

Since starting a farm supply company back in 1985, they’ve also created a seed supplier, a fertilizer plant and numerous other businesses, parlaying each previous venture into the next. In 2002, the couple’s entrepreneurship culminated in growing grapes at a nine-acre vineyard near Pawnee City. And, given that successful entrepreneurship is inextricably bound to innovation, it’s unsurprising that the couple’s latest venture — a combination winery/microbrewery — is the first of its kind in the nation.

“Back when we applied for our license in 2005, they told us we were the first company to apply for both a winery and a brewery license,” said Sharon Schilling, co-owner of SchillingBridge Winery and Microbrewery. “We realized the economic impact a winery has on a small town and the dollars that come into a community because of one, and Mike wanted to start a microbrewery as well.”

In addition to satisfying their own goals and ambitions, the Schillings hope their latest venture helps breath new life into the Pawnee City area. Now in its fifth year, the winery/microbrewery presents a compelling vision of the future young people can have in a rural area, both through the jobs it provides and the community growth it encourages.

“It seems like a lot of you people can’t wait to get out of small towns and go off to experience the rest of the world, but I think there are kids who want to stay in their hometown because they love small town living,” Sharon said. “We’re just providing an opportunity for those people to remain in small towns.”

“We don’t necessarily want to do all the job creation, but rather inspire other entrepreneurs to get out here and do what Mike and I did 25 years ago: come back to their hometown, start a business and create their own jobs,” she added.

In addition to once again experiencing that legendary small town hospitality, entrepreneurs returning to their former homes find themselves blessed by another essential perk: familiarity. Having lived in that small town once before, according to Sharon, puts one more in tune with the needs and opportunities of that community.

“That’s what I feel like a lot of people don’t understand: If you want to start a business, go to a small town,” Sharon said. “It’s so much easier. And look to your hometown first. Generally, you’ll better know what to expect, and overall, you’re going to get a much better response to your business.”

But even then, a small town set-up isn’t a guaranteed formula for instant success. Like any other business venture, location and a home-turf advantage are no substitute for copious amounts of good, honest work.

“The definition of entrepreneur is a risk-taker, though you can reduce some of that risk by going to a small town with a great idea, taking it further and trying to provide some jobs,” Sharon said. “But even in a small town, as an entrepreneur, you’re going to be working 8, 10, 12-hour days, 5 or 6 days a week; really working.

“My husband and I go home every day and joke ‘We’re so glad we’re making this look so easy.’ Like anything worth doing, it takes long hours and hard work.”

It’s no secret that entrepreneurs — well known for working unconventional hours on side projects, often while holding down full-time jobs — fit squarely into that time-strapped demographic. It’s the very nature of those day-devouring schedules that spurred the creation of NxBizSuccess, an online portal that automatically brings entrepreneurs the information they need, often before they know they need it.

“The purpose of NxBizSuccess is to get real-time business information to entrepreneurs when they need it and where they want it — a lot of times, startups need this information yesterday,” said Tonia Franklin, NxBizSuccess web project manager and regional coordinator for NebraskaEDGE. “This portal serves as a way for individuals to go online and receive the information they’re looking for in an interactive way.”

Connected to 9 different social media outlets and boosting an impressive stash of 125 educational videos (ranging in content from small business profiles to how-to interviews with resource providers), NxBizSuccess certainly has plenty of information to dish out. But the crown jewel of the portal’s infrastructure is by and large its prestigious entrepreneur podcast.

Automatically uploaded to users’ iTunes accounts, NxBizSuccess’s instructive podcasts have enjoyed prominence as Top 25 downloads on iTunes U. iTunes U is a subsidiary of iTunes dedicated to educational content, attracting uploads from universities the world over, including the likes of Yale, Harvard and Oxford. Since the portal went public in November 2009, eager entrepreneurs have downloaded over 1200 CDs worth of NxBizSuccess podcast data.

Tonia Franklin, NxBizSuccess web project manager and regional coordinator for NebraskaEDGE

“The economy today is mobile — people are liking this attitude of having everything within their handheld devices,” Franklin said. “Entrepreneurs are very busy people. A lot of Nebraskans hold multiple jobs at once, so obviously time is an issue.”

The entire project was built from the ground up with entrepreneurs in mind. Originally conceived as a way for rural entrepreneurs to educate themselves while waiting for a NebraskaEDGE course to be offered in their area, NxBizSuccess was brought into existence by a grant from the Nebraska Enterprise Fund following an increase in state financing of projects related to microenterprise expansion.

In addition to its videos and podcasts, NxBizSuccess also posts entrepreneurial-themed scholarly articles and keeps a running, statewide list of all available training courses. The portal also recently added a new mechanism that allows organizations such as chambers to have their own private forums.

“This is a way for us to encourage entrepreneurial growth across the state of Nebraska, especially while entrepreneurs are waiting for that EDGE course to come to their community,” Franklin said. “It’s a social platform for entrepreneurs in general to come online, get info and also communicate with other members who are out there and really learn from each other.”

NebraskaEDGE aims to create a long lasting learning environment for the state’s up-and-coming small business owners. Since 1995, the program’s been teaching the NxLeveL entrepreneurship course to rural communities in a unique fashion: the course’s instructors don’t come to the communities where they teach so much as they come from them. Trained by NebraskaEDGE associates and certified by representatives from NxLeveL, business leaders from around Nebraska have presented the 12-week, 45-hour course to some 2,500 entrepreneurs during the program’s 15-year run.

“NebraskaEDGE is not the (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) going out and offering this training — we utilize the resources and leaders these communities already have, so as businesses grow, those networks within the community grow as well,” said Marilyn Schlake, associate director of NebraskaEDGE. “We like to see individuals who are seriously thinking about starting a business and have an idea of what they want to do mixed in with experienced business owners who’ve been there, done that and have some battle scars.”

Different instructors teaching each course means a variety of skill sets come to the table, which gives NebraskaEDGE the opportunity to better tailor individual curricula to meet each community’s needs.

“When the experienced business leaders can share their experience with the new entrepreneurs, it helps build that network within the community,” Schlake added. “It also helps those business owners get re-energized, that sensation of seeing new entrepreneurs excited and thinking ‘Oh, I remember that feeling!’”

As most entrepreneurs already demonstrate a natural propensity for outside-the-box thinking, Schlake said the program strives to disseminate as much practical information as possible. NebraskaEDGE walks individuals through all facets of business ownership, starting with business plan formation and plugging along through marketing, advertising strategies and finances. That last item is one new entrepreneurs need to scrutinize the closest, she added.

“We hit the financials really, really hard, so even if they don’t end up being the accountants for their businesses, when they hire and talk with an accountant, they’ll know what all the numbers thrown their way mean,” Schlake said. “As a new startup, the projections you have are almost always going to be off-base, so come back and tweak those often.”

NebraskaEDGE has two upcoming courses scheduled: an August course in Holdredge catering to Phelps and Kearney Counties, and a September course held in Red Cloud that will serve Webster and Nuckolls Counties. For anyone unable to attend either course, NebraskaEDGE offers its entrepreneurial curriculum online as well.

In addition, to teaching entrepreneurial basics, NebraskaEDGE also imbues entrepreneurs with other vital skills, such as knowing who and when to ask for help, and the even important attribute of attention to detail.

“Do your homework: see what opportunities are available, contact experts and mentors who can give you useful feedback,” Schlake said. “Oftentimes with a startup enterprise, you don’t have a lot of facts to go on for your local area. We can find statewide, nationwide data, but in smaller, local regions, it’s hard to find a customer base and numbers you can run. Be diligent and be realistic.”

“Quite frankly, with the economy we’re in right now, if kids don’t have entrepreneurial skills and we don’t focus on entrepreneurial businesses acumen, we’re going to fall desperately far behind other countries,” said Christensen, an entrepreneurship and career education specialist with the NDE, as well as a self-described “passionate advocate for entrepreneurship education.” “We’ve been seen as a beacon of entrepreneurship throughout the world, but if we don’t continue to impart that knowledge and make students realize that entrepreneurship is a career option, then other nations could pull ahead.”

Entrepreneurship in Nebraska: Conditions, Attitudes, and Actions by Eric C. Thompson and William B. Walstad

Most Nebraskans agree with Christensen. Accordingly to a series of 2005-2006 Gallup polls (which later became the basis for a 2008 book on Nebraska’s entrepreneurial climate), four-fifths of Nebraskans feel it’s important for schools to offer entrepreneurship education.

And Christensen believes that education should begin as early as elementary school.

“Entrepreneurial concepts can be infused at any time, from kindergarten on — it’s a lifelong process,” he said. “Elementary school kids already go on field trips to observe traditional jobs: fire stations, police stations, grocery stores. But we’d like to emphasize that communities are also filled with entrepreneurs. We need to make young people aware that entrepreneurs are everywhere.”

Ideally, that formal education would segue into a middle school exploration of entrepreneurship as a viable career path, followed by teaching kids practical entrepreneurship skills during their high school years.

In Cody, Nebraska, for example, that high school level of entrepreneurship education comes with a hands-on twist. The 132-person town has been without a grocery store for nearly a decade, but a recently acquired federal grant has given community leaders the means to re-service a convenience store, transforming it from gas station to grocery outlet.

Conceived as a non-profit, the new grocery store will be staffed by high school students, providing them with invaluable skills and giving the entire community an alternative to driving 35 miles to reach the nearest supermarket. Further down the road, said Christensen, the store will become an incubator for students seeking to start their own small businesses.

Even though most Nebraskans appear to be on board with increasing the level of entrepreneurship education in the state’s schools, and even though Cody’s innovative venture shows how such pedagogical measures can benefit both students and the towns they live in, working new courses into an existing curriculum is no easy task.

“It’s really tough to add classes, because the necessary academic courses are already taking up a large portion of the students’ schedules,” Christensen said. “Fortunately, the bigger the school district, the more options you have in terms of available teachers and slots to offer entrepreneurship courses.”

However, the eventual widespread adoption of entrepreneurship classes will be well worth the struggle. Among other previously stated benefits, students who see the possibilities entrepreneurship confers are more likely to stay in Nebraska, or to return to the state after completing their education, Christensen said.

“Students really need to look at the what their strengths and their talents are, and then think about how that can lead them into a business they’d be excited about,” he added. “A lot of times young people are going to go off and get an education elsewhere, but part of entrepreneurship education is showing them the opportunities that might exist if they return to Nebraska with the skills and knowledge they’ve obtained.”