Innovative Game-Based Teaching of Entrepreneurship for Secondary Education: The Little Business Leader

This paper by JianYuan Chen and QiSheng Han presents a game-based pedagogical framework for teaching entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and technological competencies to secondary school students. Inspired by the reality show The Apprentice, the "Little Business Leader" program uses simulation-based company creation, a simulated investment competition, and a formal summit where students present business plans. The framework is grounded in Bloom's taxonomy, Self-Regulated Learning theory, and Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory, and is explicitly aligned with Cambridge A-Level Business (9609) and Global Perspectives & Research (9239) syllabus content.

The program is organized into three sessions. The first guides students through founding a startup, including naming, choosing an industry, and designing branding and product mockups with AI tools as assistants. The second introduces venture capital, private equity, and IPO concepts through a one-week simulated trading competition followed by a portfolio review. The third stages a formal "Simulated Summit" in which students in business attire pitch their ideas and receive simulated offer letters from firms such as Google and Tesla, along with a token-based investment vote.

The authors evaluated the program with 24 students from a Korean university group over a two-week immersion. Using PLS-SEM analysis on questionnaire responses, they report that confidence enrichment had the strongest estimated effect on students' perceived self-progression (coefficient 0.315), though the authors acknowledge the sample is small. Qualitative feedback from the cohort, summarized from student compositions, reported gains in confidence (17 of 24 students), critical thinking (6), English speaking skills (9), and business literacy (1). The authors contend the approach is underrecognized and propose extensions such as simulated currencies and a simulated United Nations.