Jurnal Psikologi Malaysia, 2015;olume 29:43-60.

Abstract

A board game has been designed in order to improve entrepreneurship among teenagers. This paper discusses about the development of the game and a preliminary study aimed to examine the effectiveness of a playing the board game in improving elements of entrepreneurship among the participants. Because entrepreneurship skill can be defined as skills in pursuing opportunities, a success in entrepreneurship is defined as success in pursuing opportunities, both Kirnzerian (discovery, exploitation) and Schumpeterian (creation, innovation) type. Features in the game is designed to represent the following psychological traits that literature suggested as elements of successful opportunity pursuing namely (1) self-esteem, (2) competitiveness, (3) resilience, (4) self-efficacy, (5) practical intelligence and (6) experience. In the preliminary study, a group of participants between 11 to 15 years old played the game twice a week for four weeks, where their behavior are observed during the game, and the collected data is analyzed in two cycles, namely in vivo and thematic analyses. At the moment this abstract is written, the participants had only been played twice; however some qualitative improvement can be seen in terms of competitiveness, resilience, and practical intelligence. It is suggested that the research be done on larger samples, conducted in mixed methods, and the game to be introduced to public in order to arouse entrepreneurship in early ages.