High school students attend business entrepreneurship competition

The students are from Dayton Regional STEM School, Greene County Career Center, Miamisburg High School, Stebbins High School, Thurgood Marshall High School, Waynesville High School, Xenia High School, Goshen High School, Northwestern Junior High School, Piqua High School and Shawnee High School, plus the Wright Brothers Summer of Innovation team.

The FlexFactor program is funded by the Department of Defense and aims to improve critical thinking, creativity, and collaborative skills, while informing students about career pathways in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) as well as advanced manufacturing.

Credit: JIM NOELKER

Credit: JIM NOELKER

FlexFactor is from a California company called NextFlex that manufactures electronic parts.

Sinclair began using the FlexFactor program in 2021 to address the need for a more highly skilled workforce that is adaptive, technical and has automation-era skillsets.

Sinclair says since launching the program, nearly 1,500 students from 17 high schools and education organizations from six counties have participated. In the program, students identify a world problem, conceptualize a product to address the problem, build a business model, then pitch their product ideas to a panel of academic and industry professionals.