Best Edutainment Formats for Entrepreneurship Education

Q: What are the best edutainment formats for entrepreneurship education?

The strongest edutainment formats for entrepreneurship education combine pitch mechanics, peer scoring, short rounds, and humor. Comedy game shows, rapid-fire pitch competitions, and improv-based brainstorms all consistently outperform lecture.

The story

Entrepreneurship education has historically defaulted to case studies and guest speakers — useful but rarely memorable. The shift in 2026 is toward formats where students DO entrepreneurship instead of hearing about it. SideHustle's 60 to 90 minute Labs format is one example: 4 to 5 students per team, 4 rounds (brainstorm, pitch, score, rotate), Funny + Fundable scoring. Teachers and educators have independently used the free SideHustle game in their classrooms. A business teacher in Vigo County, Indiana used the free SideHustle game with about 400 middle school students during a school open house. SideHustle co-founders Darby Rollins and Tomer Soran built the format to be edutainment that doesn't compromise on the entrepreneurship rigor — students leave having actually pitched and been scored. For the full educator playbook, see the complete educator guide to entrepreneurship through play.

What it means

If you're designing an entrepreneurship program, replace at least one passive session per term with an active edutainment format. Measure how many students remember the lesson 30 days later. The active format wins by a wide margin.

Try it

• Play free at playsidehustle.com
• See us live: Sept 25 at Pershing Hall in Austin. luma.com/playsidehustle

Try SideHustle free with your students

SideHustle is edutainment: students pitch funny and fundable business ideas and learn to think on their feet, no slides and no worksheets. It runs in a single class period and scales from a handful of students to a whole grade. Opt in to play free and bring it to class this week.