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Imagining Better Futures for Everybody –

Sustainable Entrepreneurship Education for
Future Design Protagonists

Marianne Kinnula (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1582-8869), INTERACT Research Unit, University of

Oulu, Finland, marianne.kinnula@oulu.fi (mailto:marianne.kinnula@oulu.fi)
Eva Durall (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1778-5804), INTERACT Research Unit, University of Oulu,
Finland, eva.durallgazulla@oulu.fi (mailto:eva.durallgazulla@oulu.fi)
Lotta Haukipuro (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1373-2273), GenZ Project, University of Oulu, Finland,
lotta.haukipuro@oulu.fi (mailto:lotta.haukipuro@oulu.fi)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3535227.3535229 (https://doi.org/10.1145/3535227.3535229)

FabLearn Europe / MakeEd 2022: 6th FabLearn Europe / MakeEd Conference 2022
(https://doi.org/10.1145/3535227), Copenhagen, Denmark, May 2022

Previous research has shown the need for children to grow to ‘design protagonists’, developing skills and competences in technology design and
being able to reflect on the role of technology in their own lives as well as in the society. Entrepreneurship understanding has been linked as
one important competence for design protagonists, for having skills to plan for and reflect on a better future for all of us. To advance
understanding on how to support children to grow to design protagonists in areas connected to technology, business, and sustainability, we
conducted a study with 14-15-year-olds, educating them first about artificial intelligence (AI) and sustainable business thinking, and asking
them then to create and present business ideas for sustainable innovations that use AI. Based on the findings, we indicate the need to link
systems thinking approaches with this type of education and we provide some recommendations for practice.

CCS Concepts: • Social and professional topics → Computing literacy; • Social and professional topics → K-12 education; •
Computing methodologies → Machine learning;

Keywords: Children, Learning, Entrepreneurship education, Innovation education, Artificial intelligence, Sustainability, Protagonist

ACM Reference Format:

Marianne Kinnula, Eva Durall, and Lotta Haukipuro. 2022. Imagining Better Futures for Everybody – Sustainable Entrepreneurship
Education for Future Design Protagonists. In 6th FabLearn Europe / MakeEd Conference 2022 (FabLearn Europe / MakeEd 2022), May 30–
31, 2022, Copenhagen, Denmark. ACM, New York, NY, USA 9 Pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3535227.3535229
(https://doi.org/10.1145/3535227.3535229)

1 INTRODUCTION
Various technology related skills and competences such as understanding of how technology is designed are
generally seen to be important for children to have in the current and future technology-rich world. It can be
called their (technology) design capital   [25], and it can be linked with the recent research on computational
empowerment  [24, 48] and children growing to ‘design protagonists’  [21, 23] who, in addition to having enough
skills and competences in technology design to even drive development of new technology, are able to also reflect
technology role critically in their own lives as well as in the society. These skills can be considered as part of the so-
called 21st century skills or key competences that are argued to be essential in the current and future knowledge
society and contributing to a successful life in it  [38]. The European Commission includes in those competences
the following: literacy; language; mathematics, science, technology, and engineering; citizenship; cultural
awareness and expression; digital, personal, social, and learning to learn skills; and entrepreneurship   [38].
Entrepreneurship education has been linked back as an important element of children growing to design
protagonists, arguing that learning technology design and making related skills should be combined with
entrepreneurship education, to give children valuable experiences in both  [15].

However, combining design/making and entrepreneurship/ innovation education is an emerging area and not
much is yet known how to do it in practice with children. To explore further this combination, we conducted a
study with 14-15-year-olds who worked with tasks related to robotics, machine learning, programming, making,
and business innovation, having sustainability as a perspective for their work. As our research question for the
current study we ask: How can we support children to grow to design protagonists in areas connected to
technology, business, and sustainability? We educated the children about artificial intelligence (AI) and
sustainable business thinking and asked them to create and present business ideas for sustainable business
innovation that use AI, to give them a possibility to plan for and reflect on a better future for all of us. Our aim was
to gain increased understanding of children's sustainable entrepreneurship education particularly when linked
with AI. We chose sustainability as a special focus for our research as, according to the United Nations Sustainable
Development Goal 4.7, education systems should ensure that by 2030 all learners “... acquire knowledge and skills
needed to promote sustainable development, including among others through education for sustainable
development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-
violence, global citizenship, and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture's contribution to sustainable
development.”   [5] The decision to focus on AI was based on the increasing number of AI applications in our
everyday life and thus a need for children to gain AI literacy  [30].

In the next section we present our study background: existing research on the combination of making/technology
education and entrepreneurship/innovation education, and the significance of sustainable innovations and
sustainability thinking in changing our future. Then, we describe our research setting and methodology. After that
we present our findings and discuss their implication, concluding the study with limitations and future research
possibilities.

2 BACKGROUND
Studies combining making/technology education and entrepreneurship/innovation education are still scarce. The
existing studies discuss e.g. the challenges for the adult actors  [15], children's difficulties in conceptualizing who
is the future user for the product/innovation  [51], organizing of the learning process  [15, 18] and challenges in it
 [15], and point out the importance of making entrepreneurship visible to children as a future career option  [13,
42]. Hollauf et al.   [18] make a separation between social innovation aspects, entrepreneurial learning aspects,
and digital fabrication aspects when making sense of how to foster social innovation projects with young learners
and finding ways to motivate them. Iivari et al.  [22] propose the organizers pay interest in learners’ intrinsic and
extrinsic motivation to participate. They further propose taking a collective activity system viewpoint (cf.   [20])
and creating purposeful, shared project goals for the learners, and directing the “orchestrated interests of each
individual participant” towards that goal. The role of makerspaces such as fab labs in entrepreneurship education
have been recognized and making can be seen as an enabler of business innovation and a key to entrepreneurship
(see e.g.  [15, 51]). Next, we discuss what role innovation has in building a better future for all of us.

2.1 Innovations and innovation education paving the way for a better
future

Businesses play an enormous role in culture and society in general as they create innovations and make important
technological advancements, changing the world through those. It is important to understand how businesses are
entwined to society: the benefits they allow and the opportunities they provide. Since companies commercialize
new ideas and technologies through their business models  [8], it is also crucial to understand business logic and
the role of innovation in it. Skillicorn's  [47] definition of innovation is based on several definitions by some of the
world's innovation thought leaders: innovation is “executing an idea which addresses a specific challenge and
achieves value for both the company and customer”.

As innovation is at the heart of entrepreneurship it is important to understand what innovation is, why it is
needed, and how to take advantage of innovation in business operations. When a business innovates, it either
improves its existing products, processes, or methodologies, or creates new ones. Innovations have the power to
change the world and there are countless examples of such innovations that have had a profound effect on our
daily life. In the last decades, digital technology has been a source for such innovations: the internet, computers,
and mobile phones are everyday examples of those, but so are also many services that we use daily, like online
banking or booking a hotel room. From a business perspective, successful innovation enables to add value to
business so that profits can be increased. Innovation also helps to stay ahead of the competition, and innovative
thinking can make it easier to predict the market and keep up with customer needs. Not all innovations are
successful, of course – some fail to add value to business, and some can have unpredictable and unforeseen
consequences that can even have a negative effect on humans and our everyday life. Innovation also relies heavily
on education and science in terms of creating basic knowledge, as a well-performing education system enables the
adoption and distribution of innovation  [37].

There will be a greater need for people to have entrepreneurial skills and abilities to enable them to deal with life's
current challenges and an uncertain future  [17, 38] as well as to make a change in the world. According to e.g.,
Shavinina  [46], a majority of future innovators come from the population of gifted and talented children. But it is
not enough that we focus on the gifted children only: researchers embracing the design protagonist thinking
maintain that everybody should have at least some level of understanding on technology design in general and
gain also some entrepreneurship competences linked with technology design   [15]. Thus,
innovation/entrepreneurship education to develop innovative abilities of children is needed. By innovation
education we refer to a wide range of educational interventions aimed at transforming children into ’digital
innovators of the future’  [22].

2.2 Sustainable innovations require sustainability thinking

The role of innovation in solving global challenges such as climate change and sustainable development is
becoming increasingly important   [26, 37]. With the recognition of the impact of human activities on natural
ecosystems, as well as the increasing economic and social inequalities deriving from the continuous growth
paradigm at global scale, international bodies have urged education systems to equip learners with the knowledge,
skills, and values to address sustainability challenges. The United Nations (UN) Decade of Education for
Sustainable Development report   [5] contributed to path the way, offering resources to educators to embrace
sustainability education. The stress on including sustainability in school curricula also shows in the UN
Sustainable Development Goals, which specifically highlight the need to engage learners  [50].

While in recent years sustainability issues have gained attention within education curricula  [40], scholars have
warned about the limited roles attributed to children and young people positioning them as passive receptors of
sustainability policies, and disregarding them as politicized actors here and now  [6, 10, 16, 27]. As a response to
this gap, researchers have urged adoption of participatory methods   [7, 19], positioning learners as agents of
change  [31, 43].

Several voices in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education have called for supporting
learners to develop “sustainability thinking” that links scientific, technological, environmental, societal, economic,
and policy issues   [49, 53]. From this perspective, learning activities to support learners’ sustainability literacy
should go beyond disciplinary boundaries and encourage students to make relations between different fields of
knowledge. The emphasis on supporting inter- and transdisciplinary thinking relates to the intrinsic complexity of
sustainability challenges, which cannot be approached from a single knowledge domain.

Constructionist learning principles have provided fertile ground for interdisciplinary initiatives that approach
sustainability issues. Following this line, active approaches to sustainability learning have been deployed in game
design workshops   [1, 3, 32, 33], lab kit and Augmented Reality technologies supporting maker activities   [34,
35], as well as through design practices such as prototyping  [11, 29, 41]. All these initiatives share an interest in
supporting learners’ engagement in sustainable thinking through activities involving design and technology. This
approach aligns with recent works advocating for linking maker learning principles with sustainability education
and design thinking   [44]. From this perspective, design thinking is a valuable approach to unfold and ideate
solutions – innovations – for the complex socio-ecological problems faced in current societies.

Sustainable innovation refers to seeking solutions to complex issues, bringing a competitive advantage for
companies but also providing environmental benefits and producing social well-being. According to the definition
of the Radboud University's Institute for Management Research   [12] sustainable innovation “involves bringing
into common usage of ideas, concepts, practices and products that contribute to the ecological environment, social
cohesion and economic viability”. Characteristic of sustainable innovation is that it contributes to sustainable well-
being, it is systemic, and it is inclusive. Sustainable innovation takes sustainable well-being and sustainable
development as the basic principles, leaving economic growth with instrumental value. It also shifts the focus from
a national level to local and global levels.   [36, 39]. To become sustainable, an innovation requires making
intentional changes to a company's products, services, or processes to generate long-term social and
environmental benefits while creating economic profits for the firm   [28]. A sustainability orientation leads to
more innovation and better innovation: businesses involved in sustainable innovation think more broadly and
learn from different perspectives. Changes in the global operating environment underline the importance of the
systemic approach, cooperation, and transparency in the process of generating innovations. This is best achieved
in close interaction between multiple actors such as businesses, research institutes, the public sector, consumers,
and other actors, i.e., in an innovation ecosystem. These ecosystems are complex, dynamic, and self-directed
networks in which openness, interaction and interdependencies are stronger than in traditional networks and
clusters. However, understanding the complexity and diverse interests of different actors in the ecosystem is
required to fully benefit from the network when developing innovations.

3 RESEARCH DESIGN
We report in this paper findings from a study conducted in collaboration with a local school in the City of Oulu,
Finland. 21 14-15-year-olds (6 girls, 15 boys) took part in a one-week (five consecutive days, six hours a day
including a lunch break) cross-disciplinary study organized by a group of researchers with backgrounds in
education, business, human-computer interaction, and information studies in collaboration with a company that
develops educational technology. The study was part of a research program that aims to respond to the need to
generate research-based knowledge about the co-evolution of humans and intelligent technologies and, through
that understanding, support the renewal of human competences   [14]. The students were from two different
classes and participated in the study voluntarily as part of their workplace internship. In Finland, the formal K-9
education includes a so-called work practice program, where students have a 1-2-week internship period in a
workplace that fills certain requirements. They can choose the workplace based on their personal interests or
contacts. Our study was offered for the students as one possibility for their work practice program, marketed for
them as a possibility to gain a deeper understanding of researchers’ work, in the context of working for one week
with topics related to robotics, artificial intelligence, and business. The study took place in a classroom-like
environment at the local university. For the participating students, the week was a combination of actively working
with educational technology and business ideas related to robotics and AI and participating in research related
interviews and filling in various surveys.

As the research project was cross-disciplinary and included a variety of research interests, we collected multimodal
data for different purposes: video and audio data of all working, interviews, several surveys, as well as
documentation created during the week. An informed consent was asked from the students and their parents. Due
to the research setting, we only offered the opportunity for students who themselves as well as their parents
consented to participating in the research. However, there was a possibility of withdrawing the consent at any time
during the week.

For the purposes of this study, we thematically analyzed data related to business ideation: the business plans the
students created in the form of text documents and their presentation slides for the shark tank event. Thematic
analysis followed the process introduced by Braun and Clarke   [4]. They have described thematic analysis as “a
method for identifying, analyzing and reporting patterns within data”. In this study, thematic analysis was
conducted by multiple researchers and it consisted of six phases: familiarizing with the data, generating initial
codes, searching for themes, reviewing themes, defining and naming themes, and producing a report based on the
results  [4].

In data analysis, we paid attention to how the students seemed to 1) understand sustainability and 2) integrate AI
in their business ideas. In addition, we paid special attention to the identification of patterns revealing students’
conceptualization of innovations merging technology and sustainability.

4 FINDINGS
The students were divided into groups of three by their teacher before the study week, based on students’
preferences and teacher's insight into students’ working. They worked in these groups for the whole week. For the
first two days, two entrepreneurs from an educational technology company using AI supported them for using one
of their products (a robotic hand using Natural Language processing and machine learning that students could
build and train by themselves) and one of them shared their business experience with the students on the third
day. The work during the week from students’ perspective can be roughly divided in three main types: reflecting
on and gaining increased understanding of what is AI and machine learning; practical working with digital
technology, including assembling a robot hand (see Figure  1 for a finished robot hand), programming the hand to
do some tasks, and doing a small digital fabrication project; and working with a sustainable social innovation
business idea that somehow exploits AI (Table 1). The students negotiated their roles in their teams on their own,
we did not assign them any roles for the work.

Figure 1: An assembled robot hand.

Table 1: Program of the week from the learners’ perspective.

Day Activities

Monday Reflections on what is AI; Assembling a robot hand using the given robot parts and instructions
using AI software to program the robot and train the software

Tuesday Assembling a robot hand using the given robot parts and instructions; using AI software to
program the robot and train the software; Listening to a brief introduction to how AI and machine
learning work

Wednesday Listening to a brief introduction on AI for sustainable social innovations and creating a better
world: current societal challenges, the concept of social innovation with examples, business needs,
rethinking business by taking circular economy perspective; Listening to one of the entrepreneurs
talking about his path to working in a company that develops educational robotics and AI for
children; Collaborating in groups: ideating a business idea around how to make the world a better
place for all of us with the help of AI / robots / digital technology, fostering circular economy
principles; creating a business plan for the idea, using a given template

Thursday Continuing the work around the business idea and business plan; Visiting the university fab lab and
making a small ’robot’ in a 2,5-hour workshop

Friday Presenting the business plans in a ’shark tank’ format to a group of ’investors’ (three researchers)
who then ‘gave an investment’ for the ideas they rated best; Reflections on what is AI

From the perspective of supporting the children in developing their design protagonist skills, the children were
positioned in the study both as learners as well as active actors. Particularly the business ideating positioned them
as change agents, who actively try to develop solutions for building a better future for all of us.
At the end of the week, each student group had been able to generate a business idea on technology products and
services fostering sustainable development. Each of the ideas was elaborated in detail in a business plan
document. Building on the business plans, the students pitched their ideas to researchers specialized in business,
technology, and sustainability, following the ’shark tank’ format. In Table 2, we summarize the ideas elaborated by
the students’ teams.

Table 2: Business ideas generated by the students during the Work Internship week.

Name of
the
business
Team idea Description of the business idea

Team Carbon AI system calculating the carbon footprint of supermarket customers’ shopping. The
1 Calculator system collects information about the selected items by scanning their codes and is
intended to be integrated at the checkout. By calculating the carbon footprint, the system
aims to generate awareness, but also to change purchase behaviors by recommending
similar alternative products that are more environmentally friendly. Sustainable
behaviors are rewarded with points and coupons that are translated into discounts.

Team Shark-Bot A robot for collecting underwater trash. The robot design blends with the maritime
2 Diver environment and includes features to avoid disturbing marine wildlife. The robot
integrates sensors and AI to automate actions such as detecting when to empty the trash
deposit into the main boat and taking the debris to recycle areas inland.

Team SUStainable An electrical self-driving vehicle that generates its own energy through windmills and
3 car solar panels. The self-driving functionality is powered by AI, which also supports sensor
adjustments for more efficient energy generation. The commercialization of the product
will be based on alliances and cooperation with existing car brands.

Team KhanTech A software service providing real-time data on energy and water consumption. The
4 service collects data from various suppliers and uses AI to predict energy needs, make
recommendations to reduce consumption and select the most suitable deals that
contribute to environmental sustainability. The software can be accessed through diverse
devices and supports various forms of interaction.

Team TrashBot A robot for collecting trash from the ground. The product is expected to contribute to
5 reducing environmental pollution by preventing non-biodegradable trash contaminating
water resources. The robot uses sensors and AI to detect and classify the waste for
recycling.

Team Wall-trees A tree robot planter to address global challenges related to habitat loss due to
6 deforestation. By automatizing tree planting the product aims to make the process more
efficient and faster. The robot is environmentally friendly and uses solar energy. The
marketing strategies target tree planting organizations, nature conservation
organizations, as well as farmers and the forest industry.

Team Dancing A robot for promoting people's well-being by motivating them to dance. By supporting
7 robot dancing, the robot acts as an active friend, helping people engage in physical activity, and
thus reducing some of the risk factors for depression and other health conditions. The
product targets all age groups and is especially suited for people who lack the conditions
for taking part in dancing group activities and do not enjoy solo dancing. The robot uses
solar panels as its main energy source.

From the technology perspective, it is worth noticing that four out of the seven business ideas generated by the
students focused on AI powered robots. Among those, two of the robots specialized in trash picking, one in tree
planting, and the third one in motivating people to engage in dance activities. Considering robot-building was an
important part of the work internship week agenda, students might have felt inspired by the possibilities of
robotics when generating their business ideas.

The robots that students built in the activities in the beginning of the week also used AI, in this case Natural
Language Processing and machine learning. While it might be assumed that the students developed a general
understanding of how AI methods can support specific tasks, the technology descriptions provided in the business
plans were quite vague and ill-defined. In some cases, no AI technique nor specific task supported by AI was
mentioned. In the cases that AI was explicitly mentioned, AI was used for detection and recognition, as well as
prediction and personalization. However, no specific AI method was mentioned, despite main AI techniques being
introduced to them throughout the week activities. Overall, technology seemed to work as a black box that
magically solved the problem at hand. Furthermore, none of the risk analyses included in the business plans
mentioned the potential bias in data collection and data analysis.

When envisioning the products and services, the students visualized their ideas through sketches. The students
strived to describe through visual schemes and drawings what their products and services would do and how they
would look like. Throughout the various stages of the work, the students engaged in sketching as a strategy to
think with, but also to communicate the look and feel of their products when pitching their business concepts (see
Figure  2). In some cases, such as the Wall-trees or the Shark-Bot Diver, the students paid attention to details like
how the robot would refill the seed box or how it would empty the trash deposit. By envisioning solutions to these
types of issues, the students made explicit the need to consider other aspects that make it possible to deliver a
particular service.

Figure 2: Sketch of the tree planter robot described in the Wall-trees business idea.

In most of the business plans (six out of seven), the students identified strategies for increasing the chances their
idea would be successfully adopted. For instance, some of these strategies consisted in building alliances with
established brands offering related products (like in the SUStainable car) and introducing their product as an
additional service that integrates in an existing system (like the Carbon Calculator).

When presenting the business ideas, many of the student teams argued that their AI powered technology would
contribute to environmental sustainability by improving efficiency in performing certain tasks such as trash
collection, generating energy from renewable sources, or accelerating reforestation. Interestingly, the solutions
oriented at changing behaviors or supporting the adoption of healthier habits did not allude to efficiency. The
comparison of the arguments used in the pitches and the business plans seems to indicate that students perceived
that while increasing efficiency was a good way to support environmental sustainability, it might not necessarily
work for addressing social practices such as over consumption or sedentary lifestyles.

Although some ideas showed attention to the social practices surrounding a particular issue (for instance,
understanding consumers’ motivation for reducing their energy and water consumption), in most of the cases
there was little reflection on how the technology might modify existing environments and practices. In relation to
the impact on natural habitats, only in one case (Shark-Bot Diver) the students considered how to blend their
robot in the maritime environment to avoid disturbing wildlife.

From the sustainability perspective, most of the ideas (six out of seven) focused on environmental sustainability
aiming to address issues such as CO2 emissions, natural resource contamination, and deforestation. The way of
tackling those issues responded to a linear thinking paradigm and with one exception, the business ideas did not
take into consideration circular economy principles, despite those having been introduced to the students before
the ideation activity.

In all cases, the students generated local business ideas for addressing global challenges connected to
environmental and social sustainability. When introducing their business concepts, the students showed
awareness of the complex interrelation between the global and local dimensions and were able to elaborate on the
issues by providing examples and facts from external trustable sources. While the students showed confidence in
ideating products and services addressing the global-local dimensions, their understanding of sustainability was
more restricted, limited in most cases to environmental issues. It is worth noticing that only one of the business
ideas (the Dancing robot) aimed to support social sustainability by improving lifestyles and reducing risk factors
for mental and physical health conditions.

Finally, it is important to mention that even though all the business ideas aimed to make the world a better place
by supporting sustainability, none of them tackled the roots of current societies’ sustainability challenges. Many of
the solutions focused on addressing the consequences of climate change, unhealthy lifestyles, or economic
inequality, without critically questioning the causes that might have contributed to producing those issues. Thus,
despite the students’ ambitious goals for supporting sustainable development, by failing to address the causes of
the problems the business ideas risked being superficial and ineffective for achieving those goals.
5 CONCLUDING DISCUSSION
Following the call for advancing sustainability education  [50], this research analyzes learners’ understandings of
sustainability and technology in relation to entrepreneurship and AI during a workshop organized as part of a
work internship program for 14-15-year-olds. We position our research as related to supporting children to grow
their design protagonist skills, i.e., children having enough skills and competences in technology design to even
drive development of new technology, as well as having an ability to reflect technology's role critically in their own
lives as well as in the society. In this study, we were particularly interested in the combination of AI, sustainability,
and innovations/entrepreneurship. We educated the children first about artificial intelligence (AI) and sustainable
business thinking and asked them then to create and present business ideas for sustainable innovations that use
AI.

Findings from our qualitative analysis of the students’ business plans and pitch presentations showed that each
student group had been able to create a solution to a real-life problem they had identified by themselves within the
challenging combination in our project – making, AI, sustainability, and business. In their solutions, learners
showed awareness of the complex interrelation between local and global dimensions striving to create value at
both levels. Interestingly, students’ understanding of social sustainability moved away from the efficiency
paradigm, opening a reflection about what factors impact people's well-being and how to support healthier (and
thus more sustainable) lifestyles. When looking at the ideated products and services, students seemed more
attracted to develop tangible AI-powered solutions such as robots. In relation to their work process, the use of
sketching as a strategy to think with and communicate their ideas is noticeable. In the cases in which the students
sketched their robot prototypes, the visuals showed a higher level of detail than the textual descriptions provided
in the business plan. Our analysis of the business ideas also indicates students’ lack of awareness of the biases and
undesired impacts of introducing technology, a narrow understanding of sustainability, and a linear conception of
business and value creation.

Students’ innovation ideas might be regarded as shallow and idealistic because they fail to acknowledge and build
on the interconnected and complex nature of sustainability issues, which may be described as wicked problems
  [45]. According to Rittel and Webber, wicked problems are difficult because they are ill-defined, with many
interconnected aspects and without a definitive answer. Frequently, solving part of the problem results in
unintended consequences. If we understand innovation as “a catalyst or enabler of systems change”  [52], to be
successful (that is, to find a good solution to a wicked problem), sustainable innovation needs to acknowledge the
systemic nature of the problem(s) to be addressed.

While in sustainable innovation literature, systems thinking has been used to formulate strategies to generate
change in business ecosystems  [36, 52], systems thinking has not been discussed in relation to teaching children
making/technology design and innovation skills. This study shows how important it is in this context too. Indeed,
as the findings from our qualitative analysis indicate, there is a need to link systemic thinking approaches with
sustainability innovation. Innovations are always created to be a part of something – they are never lonely islands
but are always created to be a part of a continent, i.e., part of some system. While introducing students to complex
systems might seem a daunting task, our analysis shows some opportunities on where to start.

As we have already indicated, in their works students already acknowledged the complex and intricate
interconnections of current sustainability challenges, which are global and local. We propose to extend this by
helping them think in a more rigorous way in the network of actors and influences/interactions that form a
system. There are some limited experiences of teaching systems thinking to school students  [2, 9]. Considering
that at the workplace internship workshop, the students were already using sketching and other visualization
techniques as part of their work process, we believe that it would be relatively easy to introduce them to systems
thinking visual tools such as actor mapping and causal diagrams. This would enable them to develop a more
complex understanding of how things are interconnected, escaping linear thinking solutions and thus scaffolding
students to adopt a circular mindset.

Based on our findings, we claim that in order to grow to design protagonists, and thus become agents of change, it
is not enough that children gain knowledge about digital technology development and have skills and
competencies for developing new technologies, but they need to develop systems thinking skills as well. Therefore,
researchers aiming to support children to grow into protagonist mindset, could add systems thinking as part of
their repertoire. Business ideating and business idea development in the context of sustainable innovation are
great examples of a situation in which learners can be introduced to systemic thinking.

Thus, we propose that researchers and practitioners working with children in the context of technology design and
making would consider how to integrate in their projects also innovation and entrepreneurship perspectives, as
well as the topics of AI and sustainability thinking. AI and sustainability thinking are well suited contexts for
advancing children's systemic understanding of societal problems due to their complexity. We see that researchers
and practitioners should consciously consider how they can add into children's design capital   [25] and call for
future research to examine how we could support the learners to move from a ‘techno-solutionist mindset’ and
adopt a more complex understanding of sustainability transformations.

As to the limitations of this study, the study was conducted in one country, city, and school. We had a rare luxury
to work with the students for a full week with full workdays, with no ‘disturbances’ from e.g., other school subjects.
Thus, this study does not represent a quite common situation when working with students. However, we see that
the structure of the week could be applied in a longer-term project as well, where the tasks could spread over a
longer timeframe. We think that intense working with a topic is a benefit, though, as it allows immersion and
focus. This kind of work is usual when developing business ideas, for example in hackathon style events. A longer
timeframe would allow ideas and learning to develop, though, which would definitely be beneficial. A week is a
brief time to “innovation educate” children - more time would be needed to deepen the understanding of various
sustainability dimensions, AI, innovation, business and entrepreneurship, and business ecosystems/systemic
thinking. Another issue is that ‘innovating by order’ is not the optimal situation as real innovations stem from real
(personal) problems.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research is connected to the GenZ-project, a strategic profiling project in human sciences at the University of
Oulu, supported by the Academy of Finland (Grant No. 318930) and the University of Oulu.
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ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-9633-2/22/05.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3535227.3535229 (https://doi.org/10.1145/3535227.3535229)