ScreenME Podcast
The ScreenME Podcast is all about entrepreneurship, particularly within the creative and media industry.
Through her accessible, easy-to-understand approach, the host, Ulrike Rohn, engages in captivating conversations with individuals who bring inspiration and knowledge to the world of entrepreneurship, including start-up entrepreneurs and those dedicated to teaching the entrepreneurial mindset.
Hailing from Tallinn University, where Ulrike Rohn is Professor of Media Management and Media Economics, this podcasts caters to both students and teachers in the creative field and the media.
For university students, the ScreenME Podcast offers a platform to learn from inspiring role models who share their unique journeys into startup entrepreneurship. Some of these guests are recent graduates, providing relatable and practical insights for those embarking on their entrepreneurial endeavors.
For university lecturers and teachers, the ScreenME Podcast serves as a valuable resource to glean experiences, insights, and tricks for facilitating and fostering an entrepreneurial mindset in students.
Tune in to explore the multifaceted world of entrepreneurship through engaging conversations that transcend the boundaries of academia and industry.
The ScreenME Podcast is brought to you by Tallinn University and it's Baltic Film Media and Arts School (BFM) and made possible through the EU-funded Horizon 2020 project on Screen Media Entrepreneurship, ''ScreenME'' (no 952156).
ScreenME Podcast
#33: Before startups: Building an entrepreneurial mindset in children. A talk with Olesja Rotar (Avatud Kool, Estonia)
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What does entrepreneurship look like before startups even enter the picture?
In this episode of the ScreenMe Podcast, Ulrike Rohn speaks with Olesja Rotar to explore how an entrepreneurial mindset begins to form in childhood. Moving away from the usual focus on startups, universities, and ecosystems, this conversation goes back to the very beginning: curiosity, initiative, and the ability to notice problems in everyday life.
Drawing on her experience running a business club for school kids at Avatud Kool (starting from first grade) in Tallinn, Estonia, Olesja challenges the idea that entrepreneurship is about money or scaling ventures. Instead, she shows how children can develop entrepreneurial thinking through small, real-life actions. Asking “why”, taking initiative, managing time, and learning from failure are at the core of this early mindset.
The episode also reflects on the realities of raising and teaching children today: constant entertainment, reduced intrinsic motivation, and the role of parents and teachers in either enabling or limiting independence. Through examples ranging from Lego case studies to student-led projects, Olesja illustrates how meaningful, hands-on experiences can help children connect ideas to the real world.
This episode reframes entrepreneurship not as a career path, but as a way of thinking and acting long before any startup is founded.
Key quotes
“If you see a problem and do something about it, that’s already entrepreneurship.”
“Entrepreneurship is not always about big money and fame.”
Bio
Olesja Rotar is an educator and project manager specialising in entrepreneurship education and knowledge transfer. She studied public administration and political science at Tallinn University, with a focus on economics, advertising, and imagology. She began her career as an investigative journalist at Äripäev’s Russian-language edition, Delovye Vedomosti, before joining Tallinn University, where she spent over a decade working at the intersection of academia, industry, and public sector collaboration.
As part of her work, Olesja contributed to numerous international initiatives, including the INTERREG project Startup Passion in the Baltic Sea Region, where she managed trainings and hackathons for students across Estonia, Latvia, and Finland.
For the past seven years, she has led extracurricular commercial activities at Avatud Kool in Tallinn (grades 1 - 9), developing and managing after-school programmes. Motivated by a gap in the school curriculum, she founded a student business club, giving young learners hands-on experience in entrepreneurship through real-life projects such as student-run coffee shops.
Keywords
entrepreneurship education, children, entrepreneurial mindset, project-based learning, curiosity, initiative, problem-solving, early education, business skills, startups vs entrepreneurship, motivation, learning by doing, creativity, failure and resilience, real-world learning, youth development
Host: Ulrike Rohn
Sound: Tanel Kadalipp (episode 1-14), Sangam Panta (episode 15 -
https://bfmentrepreneurhub.tlu.ee/screenme-podcast/
