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 90-minute Labs format is one example: 4 to 5 students per team, 4 rounds (brainstorm, pitch, score, rotate), Funny + Fundable scoring. The format runs one-time at Mars Hill, the University of Oklahoma, Penn State, Xavier, and the University of Wisconsin. We also activated 10 minutes for ~400 students at Vigo, with strong engagement in a short window. 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.

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 an order of magnitude.

Try it

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