EnCube Labs: Incubating Entrepreneurs

"The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations" is a phrase used by President George W Bush to describe the cycle of low expectations, low investments, and low performance and the role it plays in widening the achievement gap between the races. 

How do we break this cycle?

We, at EnCube Labs, believe that the Zero2Entrepreneur framework based on eight years of research

at MIT and the Asia Business School, holds the key. The programs aligned to the framework use a combination of maker kits/concepts, mentors, and problem-solving techniques to awaken and nurture the innovation and

entrepreneurial quotient in children and youth. These individuals in turn build self-sustaining ecosystems that empower more youth, launch start-ups, create jobs, build wealth, and transform communities. Our efforts thus far, in Asia and the United States, illustrate the fulfilment of this promise wherever the model is applied.

In the US, the annual cost of incarceration is more than the yearly fee at Harvard University. On average, cities spend between 25-40% of their budget on law enforcement. Many minority communities in the country are stuck in the cycle of poverty, crime, drugs, truancy, imprisonment, and unemployment. The transformation of a community starts with the transformation of individuals. The catalysts of change are the role models and mentors in a community that significantly influence the children and youth in the community. They learn to recognize their potential, follow higher aspirations, and change their life trajectory. 

EnCube Labs aims to create positive innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems at the grassroots level in these communities, with mentors, mentees, and basic resources, as a cost-effective path to empowering the youth to recognize and live up to their potential and be role models to the next generation. This bottom-up approach should be cheaper to implement, self-sustainable, and financially sustainable.

Our approach is guided by a well-researched and proven framework called Zero2Entrepreneur consisting of five developmental stages:

ZERO: uninitiated youth with unrecognized potential

MAKER: creative and curious thinker and doer who designs and makes things

INNOVATOR: problem solver who identifies unmet human needs and creates solutions for impact

ENTREPRENEUR: value creator who converts a problem into a commercial opportunity

ECOSYSTEM: vibrant, growing, and self-sustaining community, consisting of makers and entrepreneurs as role models

The journey through the framework is defined by the following characteristics:

• Two flagship offerings. Zero2Maker focuses on exposing school children (11-17 years) to core 21st-century skills via experiential learning. Zero2Entrepreneur focuses on carrying forward the maker experience to empower youth (18-25 years) to develop entrepreneurial ecosystems that create jobs and solve social and livelihood problems.

• A robust year-long curriculum is driven by a series of iterative hands-on learning delivered in a blended model.

• Enablers

  • Physical Maker Kits/ Labs for robotics/ electronics/ mechanical design and coding.

  • Mentor Pool (local/ virtual) formed from previous participants. 

  • Cloud-based Ecosystem enabling students to access reinforcement learning, share, connect with experts/ industry, exhibit portfolios. 

  • Competency framework focused on entrepreneurialism, learning agility, innovation, and social engagement.

Our focus is to serve youth in inner cities and underserved communities who face significant barriers in accessing learning opportunities that expose them to innovation and entrepreneurship skills and mindsets.

The city of Fitchburg, Massachusetts is a good example. According to Ms. Shana Fitz (Director of Youth Services, Making Opportunities Count, Fitchburg), the poverty rate in the city is 1.2 times higher than the state average. 22% of Fitchburg youth live in poverty and 52% of teens in the city identify as people of color. Shana points out that despite this reality and limited resources,  young people are expected to thrive. This is not a fair ask.  

It is critical to turn up the investment and provide relevant tools and connections to help these young people explore their skills and realize their latent potential.

EnCube offers two flagship programs to aid youth in these communities.

·       Zero2Maker, a program that exposes children (11-17 years) to core 21st-century skills via experiential learning.

·       Zero2Entrepreneur, a program that empowers youth (18-25 years) to develop entrepreneurial ecosystems that create jobs and solve problems. 

Our approach is defined by the following guidelines: 

•   ENTREPRENEURSHIP TRAINING STARTS AT 10, NOT IN THE 20s: Building innovation and entrepreneur competencies and mindset in school students will change their life trajectory at an early stage.

•   FAILURE IS A LEARNING TOOL: Stepping outside current competencies leads to failures. Designing controlled failures as learning tools helps in overcoming fear of failure and builds the ability to self-learn.

•   MENTORS ARE THE CATALYSTS: Participant engagement in the form of mentorship of new members enables a thriving ecosystem.

•   POTENTIAL IS EQUALLY DISTRIBUTED BUT ACCESS IS NOT:  Rural and minority youth do not get equal access. Equal representation of female students is key.

•   BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN INNOVATION & COMMERCIAL VIABILITY: Connecting participants to the industry will help with the necessary steps to convert solutions into viable commercial opportunities.

•   THE ECOSYSTEM IS THE MULTIPLIER: The ecosystem is the ultimate engine that creates innovators and entrepreneurs in a community. Building this ecosystem from the ground up is only possible with active involvement from program participants and the community at large. 

These guidelines lay the foundation of our program design which focuses on the use of practical application of STEM (mechanical design, electrical system design, coding, and fabrication) to inspire participants to understand future-forward concepts, create solutions for problems, and learn to monetize their innovation. 

Participant engagement is a key aspect of our approach. We ensure this as follows:

• Consistent capture of participant data/feedback. This information is used to enhance/contextualize design where relevant.

• Virtual ecosystem to enable self-learning, reinforcement challenges, collaboration with experts/peers/industry.

Our focus is on breaking the cycle of low expectations, low investments, and low performance that is central to the discrimination faced by people of color and poor communities. Our solution is the use of programs to help children and youth see their untapped potential. Our approach includes a combination of maker kits, mentors, and challenges to teach technology, design, fabrication, solution development, and value creation. These learning interventions will enable the young minds to solve real and local problems, monetize solutions, generate jobs, and create wealth for themselves and their communities

Scale: EnCube Labs has successfully implemented the Zero2Entrepreneur framework and aligned programs in 21 communities in Malaysia, India, and East Timor. We now aim to bring our programs to the underserved poor and minority communities in the United States. 

With our larger mission to reach a million youth in the next few years, we are building out our technology, process, and resource pool to scale. 

The solution we offer is based on the Zero2Entrepreneur framework that has emerged from eight years of research at MIT and the Asia Business School. We have conducted over 50+ workshops in 7 countries enabling 2500 youth thus far and catalyzing 25 start-ups.

According to the WEF Future of Jobs Report, approximately 60% of future jobs have not been developed yet and 40% of today’s kindergarteners will need to be self-employed as adults to have any form of income. We need to prepare young minds for jobs that have not been created yet and to become entrepreneurs.

Most of the current entrepreneurship programs are focused on enabling aspiring entrepreneurs to launch companies. Their scope and impact are limited. EnCube focuses on nurturing a large number of aspiring entrepreneurs from the larger population through creating innovation labs, mentors, and ecosystems.

Our research has established that a focus on nurturing the general population (the uninitiated) can increase the impact by 10x. Recent intervention in India with 52 students from a rural college, resulted in the creation of more than 20 start-ups. This is a huge improvement in an environment where there was only one such venture, across a twelve-year period prior to the intervention.

We are unique in our focus on the pre-entrepreneurship phase, enabling individuals to hone the skills-set and mindset required to be innovators and entrepreneurs.

Our approach is also an innovative blend of hands-on exercises and conceptual learning, virtual and in-person connect, design/technology/problem-solving skills. The cost-effective approach has been applied in 21 poor and rural communities in India, Malaysia, and East Timor. We are now looking to implement the approach in a minority community in Fitchburg, MA.

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EnCube Labs has conducted 50 workshops thus far and impacted 2500 youth, and created 21 ground-up ecosystems across India, Malaysia, East Timor, and the United States. Our participant base has been predominantly centered around rural and underserved communities.

We are currently in the process of revamping our approach (short workshops to year-long interventions with post-program reinforcement done via a virtual ecosystem) and mode of reach (in-person to a blended model).

One of the interventions we aim to launch in 2021 is a YIC (Youth Innovation Center) program in Fitchburg. The first cohort will be a summer session and will consist of 10 mentors and up to 30 youth. Post pilot, we intend to extend the program to a larger user base in Fitchburg and the surrounding communities.   

Our larger goal is to reach a million youth across Asia, Africa, and the United States in the next 10 years with the hope of hitting the 150,000-mark in the 5th year.

The Zero2Entrepreneur framework is aligned to a set of measurable competencies. 

Entrepreneurial Attitudes: Self-Efficacy, Resilience, Opportunity Sensing, Value Realization, Systems Thinking, Adaptability, Decision Making 

Innovation Skills: Critical Thinking, Creative Confidence, Problem Solving, Digital & Physical Design, Fabrication, Prototyping  

Learning Agility: Self-Learning, Curiosity, Research, Digital Fluency, STEM 

Social Engagement: Collaboration, Communication, Leadership, Empathy, Mentoring, Effective Listening    

The programs are designed to capture the accomplishment of specific levels and combinations of these competencies. We have been capturing data in this context across our workshops. We are currently working on enhancing the approach. 

Sample Quantitative Indicators measured in % increase year on year:

1. Number of participants empowered 

2. Number of communities empowered; % increase 

3. Number of active members in a community/% growth of a community 

4. Number of start-ups catalyzed; % conversion vis-à-vis empowered participants; % growth in the number of start-ups 

5. Youth opting for a college education

6. Youth opting to study 4IR aligned subjects

7. Job placements of youth that participated in the programs

8. Salary ranges aligned to the job placements

9. Alignment of the job placements to 4IR related areas/roles

10. Number of industries connected with for real-life problem solving; % increase; Total Earnings of participants from the Industry Connect initiative

11. Increase in community wealth 

12. Improvement in academic performance of relevant participants 

 Sample Qualitative Indicators:

1. Increase in participant confidence/aspiration quotients as captured over a period

2. Stakeholder feedback on Quality of problems solved

Four full-time staff, two each in India and the US, and one part-time in the US.  

We have agreements with design universities to provide us with interns in the product and communication design spaces. We have also outsourced non-core activities like Learning Technology; Physical--Kit Development/Delivery; Graphic Design and Media Strategy.

Our core team is a set of individuals with considerable professional experience and a firm belief that education is key to empowerment. 

• Rajesh brings over 30 years of experience as a serial entrepreneur, product designer, and educator. He served as Professor of Practice in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Asia School of Business, Malaysia (ASB). His research at MIT and ASB was on building rural entrepreneurs.

• Donna Michael has spent her career in high technology marketing, employee relations including developing programs dealing with issues of diversity in the corporate environment. She also participates in her community as a member of school councils, town committees, and as a religious education instructor.  She is the past president and member of the Board of the Massachusetts Justices of the Peace Association. 

• Shanthi Nair has worked as Software Developer and IT Director in the IT Industry. After working for DEC, Progress Software and Degree Controls was IT director in ASB. Designing a ‘future classroom’, dabbling in Positive Psychology Workshops for rural children, Children’s Magazines, running after-school activities, she began her journey with Encube in 2021 to bring better education environments to children.

• Prasanna Nair brings over two decades of experience in the design, build, and management of a Global Talent Transformation practice for clients in Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, the US, Canada, and India. An alumnus of the Nanyang-MIT Sloan Fellows program, Prasanna is a strong believer in skills being the new business currency. She joined the EnCube team in 2021.

Encube Labs, LLC was incorporated by Rajesh Nair to fulfill his dream of creating entrepreneurs from the bottom up through personal empowerment in communities. Coming from a small village in India, he has worked for eight years in diverse environments in Malaysia, Timor Leste, India, Korea, and more. Rajesh has embraced diversity and equality in his prior endeavors by being the CEO engineer in the lab, the CEO technician on the assembly floor, the CEO shipper, or just the driver!!.

The other members of the core team are united in their belief in his vision and their passion for education. The team has grown organically over the last few months and is totally aligned to the norms of diversity and inclusivity. 

The EnCube Labs team will keep with this focus as we expand to take on new challenges. 

In order to create momentum for this work to expand across the US and globally, EnCube Labs needs to build visibility and credibility in the broader educational community, the influencer community, and within funding sources. We believe MIT-SOLVE could give us the platform for scaling our programs into communities of color across the US.

We are seeking funding for rolling out our program, and the prizes would give us the extra lift in our visibility and financial support.

EnCube Labs wants to expand across the US and globally. We need to build visibility and credibility in the broader educational community, the influencer community, and within funding sources. We will require support from relevant partners on all aspects related to building to scale.

We would like to get support from MIT initiatives such as Martin Trust Center, D-Lab, JWEL, and JPAL to enhance the process and the network.

We would like to get connected to organizations with an interest in education and racial justice that could help us scale within the US and beyond. Frontline organizations like the Boys & Girls Club of America and Making Opportunities Count Inc with a wide network and reach within the country can help us engage the urban poor. 

Organizations with similar goals as us and with reach and resources could help us make a significant impact on the under-appreciated youth of America.

Low-income communities have traditionally been unable to provide their citizens with healthcare comparable to middle and high-income communities.  Why?  Investment in these communities is low to non-existent.

Racial equity begins with a long-term investment in communities of color and indigenous people.  

Change begins with education – change begins when children and young people learn they are capable of great things.

EnCube Labs' primary mission is to begin the process of change by engaging in these communities at that crucial starting point when children and youth can be positively influenced and motivated the be the ultimate change agents in their communities.  This is not a short-term problem with a short-term solution.  Racial equity will take time and patience to achieve and it will happen when communities rise up from within. However, breaking the cycle of low expectations and low investments is critical. Our engagement is designed to build skills and confidence to achieve higher performance in education, employability, and problem solving, thereby building expectations and investments.

The ASA Prize for Equitable Education perfectly resonates with Zero2Entrepreneur’s mission and foundation:

To utilize project-based learning, ensure equitable access. We are committed to helping students know themselves, know their options, and make informed decisions to achieve their education and career goals. 

The world expects less from poor communities because they perform low, even though they are primarily existing in a survival mode. What is worse than external expectations is the lower expectations they have for themselves, formed through the experiences. Breaking this low self-expectation at an early age is critical to their achievements in the future. 

This is our primary focus and our mission is to help most needy children and youth understand what options they have without the stigma associated with their environment.  By using experiential learning, these children learn they have no boundaries for what they can accomplish. Learning subjects outside their current competence and learning to apply them to create products, we found is a fun way to learn STEM, creativity, design, and communication skills.

 EnCube Labs has successfully proven to thousands of young people globally that can achieve their dreams. We have set up ecosystems in 21 underserved communities in India, Malaysia, and East Timor. We believe the challenges in poor and minority communities in the US are very similar.

There is a deep divide between those individuals who have access to technology and those who do not. This is particularly obvious when comparing communities of color and indigenous people and white communities.

This past year has brought this disparity to light as children who had access to technology were able to participate in remote education and community activities while children who didn’t have access were left with few resources to ride out the pandemic. This was the case globally, the tech vacuum didn’t respect borders.  

EnCube Labs aims to reduce this disparity by acquainting the youth with technology at a very early age, training them on design, creativity, problem-solving, and exciting their curiosity. From our research, we observed that such an experience changes their confidence, learning abilities, aspiration, and communication skills.

We use the Zero2Entrepreneur framework to build a set of measurable 21st-century competencies like: 

Entrepreneurial Attitudes: Self-Efficacy, Resilience, Opportunity Sensing, Value Realization, Systems Thinking, Adaptability, Decision Making 

Innovation Skills: Critical Thinking, Creative Confidence, Problem Solving, Digital & Physical Design, Fabrication, Prototyping  

Learning Agility: Self-Learning, Curiosity, Research, Digital Fluency, STEM 

Social Engagement: Collaboration, Communication, Leadership, Empathy, Mentoring, Effective Listening

Our focus is on breaking the cycle of low expectations, low investment, and low performance that is central to the discrimination faced by people of color and poor communities. Our solution is the use of programs to help children and youth see their untapped potential. Our approach includes a combination of maker kits, mentors, and challenges to teach technology, design, fabrication, solution development, and value creation. These learning interventions will enable the young minds to solve real and local problems, monetize solutions, generate jobs, and create wealth for themselves and their communities.  In doing so, these communities break the poverty cycle they are trapped in.  

Minority and poor communities, regions where unemployment will be a future problem (such as coal and oil & gas), minority communities with large rehabilitating addicts and incarcerated, and ignored native lands can all benefit from the development of skills in creativity, problem-solving, and value creation.

This concept holds true at a national level as it does at a community level.  When people can achieve a standard

of living in their community, regardless of what nation they live in, the desire to leave for an unknown future in

a foreign country is no longer that appealing, stemming the tide of immigration based on the hope of a better life.

The transformation of a community starts with the transformation of individuals. On average, cities spend between 25-40% of their budget on law enforcement. Many minority communities in the country are stuck in the cycle of poverty, crime, drugs, truancy, imprisonment, and unemployment. A better solution would focus on positive change and reinforcement of positive goals, rather than corrective action.  Once individuals are involved in the correctional system, it is already too late.

Access to digital tools and learning to design with them is the primary focus of the Zero2Entrepreneur program. Digital fabrication, with fast design and fabrication cycles, give the youth the ability to imaging, design, and fabricate in fast cycles, leading to quicker mastery. 

The catalysts of change are the role models and mentors in a community that significantly influence the children and youth in the community. They learn to recognize their potential, follow higher aspirations, and change their life trajectory. 

EnCube Labs aims to create positive ecosystems from grassroots in these communities, with mentors, mentees, and basic resources, as a cost-effective path to empowering the youth to recognize and live up to their potential and be role models to the next generation. This bottom-up approach should be cheaper to implement, self-sustainable, and financially sustainable.

We serve youth in inner cities and underserved communities who face significant barriers in accessing learning opportunities that expose them to innovation and entrepreneurship skills and mindsets. This is especially true in communities where households are women-led and where the incarceration rates are high and many live at or below the poverty line.  Women have had to play the role of breadwinner over several generations in these communities. 

In general, girls grow up hearing from an early age that technology and science are more suited for boys. Unfortunately, they start to believe it at some point, even though they have exactly the same abilities as boys. They make life and career decisions based on this limiting belief. We call boys smart and girls pretty. These different treatments by society leave a lasting impression on them.

Our goal is to reach girls early in their life when they have no fear of learning and the external factors have not clouded their thinking. We want them to experience design and technology and prove to themselves that they are equally qualified for the most challenging subjects to learn at an early age- before the weight of poverty and society crushes their enthusiasm and curiosity.  That early spark can ignite in young people, young women, in particular, interests that they would otherwise not have known.  

EnCube Labs has witnessed this transformation in youth all over the world.  This is the magic that happens when young minds are opened to the possibilities that learning offers. 

Our goal is not to teach technology, but to let the youth from underserved communities recognize that they have the same ability to learn what is outside their current perception of competence. We use design and technology to build their confidence, skill, and self-learning abilities. What starts as spatial thinking, system design, and logic-based coding leads them to higher understanding and deeper learning abilities.

Maker skills are central to our approach. Technology is therefore an enabler in our context. 

We use a combination of physical kits and digital interventions to actuate the journey. 

Our approach includes mechanical design and fabrication constructs, electronic components like 

Arduino/sensors, 3D printers, and coding to train participants to be problem solvers.

We also use a cloud-based learning ecosystem with multiple features and add-on applications 

(Miro, CAD software, Behance, Slack, Video editing, and digital presentation solutions).

This virtual ecosystem enables participants to self-learn, connect with peers/experts/industry, 

collaborate, mentor, seek real-life opportunities to practice their skills, and upload/display their portfolios.

We are continuing to build our portfolio of components in order to offer the newest technologies to our participants.