Developing entrepreneurs the future needs through systematic application of problem-based learning

There are many overwhelming problems facing the planet today - water shortages, climate change, overpopulation, and depletion of the oceans - to name but a few. And there is also no question that human economic activity is largely to blame for these problems. Yet at the same time, there is an implicit realization that how humans provide for their economic needs must change, and do so rapidly. Certain individuals, such as Muhammad Yunus, the famous micro-finance pioneer, have demonstrated that new systems of economies are possible, and can address both economic and environmental problems on a broad scale, in relatively short time periods. But can educators facilitate the creation of more individuals like Muhammad Yunus? Part of the solution may be educating the next generation of entrepreneurs to attack these problems directly. Yet the reality is that many of these problems are systemic, and intractable except on the micro-scale to access by students within the limited time they are in the educational system. While many propose additional content-specific coursework as the solution, the larger results in society (just teaching a factual course on climate change, for example) do not show that this is a compelling use of resources in generating the human potential needed to take on these larger problems. A different method, whereby students´ larger metacognitive skills, involving increased sense and responsibility for larger temporal and spatial scales, is needed. In this paper, the author looks at entrepreneurship education from an active learning, empathetic development perspective. By examining the changes in societally emergent entrepreneurial activity through the ages, with a focus on the last 200 years, one can see an increasing trend in both elevation of respect and concern for the individual, as well as a dramatic increase in duplex communication up and down power levels in companies, as well as flattening of organizational structures. Understanding these rel- tively new relational structures, and targeting them in the development of active learning environments, offers hope that educators can construct active learning curricula that can create this next wave of entrepreneurs with larger, necessary metacognitive scope. This paper offers a road map to the necessary ingredients for construction of these environments, in the hopes that it will guide other educators toward creating the next business and engineering class the future of humanity so desperately needs.