The wide toolbox approach, which I have been blogging about, is a unique way for a Yale cohort to prepare for a career in the 21^st century. Through this approach students are equipped to build things. Yet there is no implied value judgment about whether building hardware is better than building software, or whether building a for-profit venture is better than building a non-profit. The implicit value proposition of the wide toolbox is that in the 21^st century entrepreneurship or building a business is perhaps the greatest opportunity for making an impact because it’s a tool for making a change in the world. The wide toolbox is the ethos that links a cohort to the thought world of Yale; it is the basis of a sub-cultural system.  At its core, the wide toolbox is a self-apprenticeship that constitutes a long game mind-set. It is prima facie evidence of a student’s ability and desire to learn across academic disciplines and fields of knowledge. This approach to positioning yourself, like a golfer who is engaged in course management, suggests that a student is questioning the traditional academic paradigm where focus on a major transforms into a career.

The idiosyncratic road to entrepreneurship of a recent Yale graduate supports this proposition. She majored in art but because of her interest in design and making things, she essentially took enough engineering classes to be able to signify that she minored in engineering. After graduation she worked as a design associate in an academic design studio where she helped engineering majors, as well as non-engineering majors who were using the design studio to make class-related and extra-curricular-related projects. Today she is a co-founder of a start-up that is proto-typing a bio-medical device.

In the post “Smart People Should Build Things,” the point was made that we need our most eminently employable people to start and run companies.  People who have skills, exposure, credibility, resources, talents, character, persistence, know-how, networks, cultural capital, and intellectual capital should build things. I believe that exposing undergrads to entrepreneurship will make them more likely to perceive the entrepreneurship path as a rational choice. A big part of the battle to convince students that entrepreneurship is a viable option is to have enough examples of successful student-led start-ups that subsequent classes believe that success is obtainable by them and their peers.

The case for a long term mind-set that encompasses the wide toolbox can also be made by examining the multi-decade trend of risk and impermanence that has become an intrinsic component of the “new mode” of employment in America. So-called secure or stable jobs are things of the past. They have been replaced by freelancers and contract workers who are employed on a short-term project-specific basis. According to a study conducted by the software company Intuit in 2010, by 2020 more than 40% of the U.S. workforce will be so-called contingent workers. That is more than 60 million people.

It is a fact that graduates who major in math, engineering and computer science fare better in today’s job market than their counterparts in liberal arts. But this situation could be addressed by familiarizing liberal arts majors with the builder/maker/creator bias that epitomizes engineering and computer science. This process would be learned as a part of their adoption of the wide toolbox approach because it lies at the intersection of the humanities, technology, and entrepreneurship.