Original title: Recognition Without Revenue: Designing a Failure-Case-Based Entrepreneurship Education Model for Japanese KOSEN Students
Toma Okugawa · September 2026
Most entrepreneurship education in Japanese technical colleges, known as KOSENJapanese technical colleges that take students from age 15 to 20 and focus on engineering., relies on pitch contests and subjective surveys rather than real business results. To fix this, the author designed a new learning model for KOSEN students aged 15–20 that treats business failure as classroom content. Instead of judging students on presentation scores, the model tracks real-world actions like how quickly students talk to real customers and earn their first yen. The program runs as a ten-week sprint where engineering students start with their technical skills and search for buyers. It also includes an entrepreneurship-themed dormitory floor, an immersion internship, and legal guides for paying minors. The paper does not test this model with students yet. Instead, it provides a ready-to-use failure case, a complete educational design, and a clear plan to test its ideas without needing a full student cohort.
Imagine a cooking class where everyone is graded only on the final plated dish. So students practice the same perfect-looking dish over and over, hiding every burnt pan and spilled sauce. Now suppose the class instead graded you on how quickly you noticed the onions burning and whether you decided to start over or salvage the meal. In this paper, the course works that way: students are scored on real customer conversations and real money earned, not on a polished presentation, and failure is part of the lesson.
Japanese KOSEN colleges are racing to teach entrepreneurship—85% offered it in 2024—but almost no one checks whether it works. This model replaces fuzzy pitch scores with concrete measures like days-to-first-yen and treats failure as a normal step. For teenagers and teachers, it makes entrepreneurship education more honest and testable.
The paper reports no implementation or test of the model, so there is no evidence yet that it improves outcomes. The design is based on one person's autoethnography and field observation, which may not generalize. The validation agenda is proposed but not executed.
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Recognition Without Revenue: Designing a Failure-Case-Based Entrepreneurship Education Model for Japanese KOSEN Students — Toma Okugawa — EdArXiv — doi:10.35542/osf.io/dr9jx_v1
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper. This is a preprint, so it hasn't necessarily been peer reviewed.