Explain how Ohio entrepreneurs use creativity, resources and risk to compete, and use bar and circle graphs to make economic decisions

Learning goal: Explain that entrepreneurs in Ohio and the United States organize productive resources and take risks to make a profit and compete with other producers, that skills like creativity and innovation can lead to entrepreneurship, and that data shown in bar graphs and circle graphs or pie charts can be used to make economic decisions. This lesson teaches statements from Ohio's July 2026 K–8 social studies standards, which the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce anticipates districts will begin to implement in the 2027-28 school year.

What an entrepreneur does. An entrepreneur is a person who starts and runs a business. Entrepreneurs organize productive resources: natural resources (materials from nature, such as wood, water or land), human resources (the work and skills of people) and capital resources (tools, machines and buildings made to produce other things). They take risks: they spend money and time before they know whether customers will buy. They hope to make a profit, which is the money left after costs are paid: profit = revenue (money from sales) − costs. And they compete with other producers, trying to win customers by offering a better price, better quality, a new product or better service.

Creativity and innovation. Creativity is thinking of new ideas. Innovation is turning a new idea into a better product or a better way of doing something. These skills often lead to entrepreneurship because a new idea gives a person a reason to start a business, something customers cannot get elsewhere.

Ohio examples. In Cincinnati in 1879, James N. Gamble of Procter & Gamble, a son of one of its founders, created Ivory, a single bar of soap that families could use both for laundry and for bathing instead of buying two kinds: an innovation. Wilbur and Orville Wright owned a bicycle shop in Dayton, and the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum says their engineering skill and creative abilities already showed in their businesses before they began their research on flight. In 1897 Jerome Monroe Smucker pressed cider at his mill and soon sold his first jar of apple butter from a horse-drawn wagon; his company is still based in Orrville. In 1969 Dave Thomas opened the first Wendy's Old-Fashioned Hamburgers restaurant in Columbus and competed with other hamburger restaurants. Each of these entrepreneurs had to organize resources, take a risk and compete. Not every business succeeds; many fail, and that possibility is what risk means.

Why data matters. Entrepreneurs make better decisions with evidence. Two useful graphs are the bar graph and the circle graph.

Bar graphs. A bar graph uses bars of different lengths to compare amounts. Every bar starts at zero on the same scale, and the title and axis labels say what is being counted. Bar graphs are good for comparing quantities, such as sales in different months or sales of different products.

Circle graphs or pie charts. A circle graph, also called a pie chart, shows how a whole is divided into parts. Percent means "out of 100": 30 percent means 30 out of every 100. The whole circle is 100 percent. Each slice is a fraction or percentage of the whole, and all the slices must add up to 100 percent. Circle graphs are good for showing shares, such as what fraction of customers prefer each product. A circle graph does not show how big the whole is; a slice of 50 percent of 20 customers is 10 people, but 50 percent of 200 customers is 100 people.

One fully worked model. A fictional Ohio student business, Buckeye Bakes, sells muffins at a weekend market. The owner asked 40 customers which muffin they liked best: 18 chose apple, 12 blueberry, 6 pumpkin and 4 bran. To turn each count into a percent, write it as a fraction of 40 and find the equal fraction out of 100. Blueberry: 12/40 = 3/10 (divide top and bottom by 4) = 30/100, so 30 percent. Bran: 4/40 = 1/10 = 10/100, so 10 percent. Pumpkin: 6/40 = 3/20 (divide by 2) = 15/100 (multiply by 5), so 15 percent. Apple: 18/40 = 9/20 = 45/100, so 45 percent. Check: 45 + 30 + 15 + 10 = 100. The circle graph shows apple is almost half of all choices. A bar graph of muffins sold in four weeks shows 30, 35, 40 and 45: sales grew by 5 each week. Decision: bake more apple muffins and fewer bran muffins, because apple has the largest share and bran the smallest, and plan for about 50 muffins next week if the pattern continues. Risk: the pattern might not continue, so the owner may bake a little less than 50 to avoid waste.

Misconceptions. "Revenue is profit." No: profit is what remains after costs. "A bigger slice in one circle graph means more people than a smaller slice in another circle graph." Only if both circle graphs describe the same number of people; inside one graph, the biggest slice is the most people. "An idea is enough." An entrepreneur must also organize resources and accept risk.

Worked example 1 — resources and profit. Buckeye Bakes sells 45 muffins at 2 dollars each. Revenue = 45 × 2 = 90 dollars. Costs: ingredients 30 dollars (flour, fruit and sugar, made from natural resources such as wheat, fruit trees and sugar beets), oven rental 15 dollars (capital), helper's pay 15 dollars (human). Total costs = 30 + 15 + 15 = 60 dollars. Profit = 90 − 60 = 30 dollars. The business organized all three kinds of resources and made a profit this week.

Worked example 2 — a competitor. A new stand opens and sells apple muffins for 1 dollar 50 cents. Buckeye Bakes' choices: lower its price, or use creativity and innovation, such as a new apple-cinnamon muffin customers cannot get at the other stand. If it lowers the price to 1 dollar 50 cents and still sells 45, revenue = 45 dollars (45 × 1 dollar) plus 2,250 cents (45 × 50 cents), which is 45 dollars + 22 dollars 50 cents = 67 dollars 50 cents. Profit = 67 dollars 50 cents − 60 dollars = 7 dollars 50 cents, down from 30 dollars. So if it still sells 45 muffins and its costs stay at 60 dollars, lowering the price cuts profit from 30 dollars to 7 dollars 50 cents. A lower price might keep or win customers, but it does not guarantee that, and selling more muffins would also change the profit. That is why the owner should also consider innovation.

Worked example 3 — read a circle graph for a decision. A pie chart of the stand's weekly costs (60 dollars in all) shows ingredients as one half of the circle, helper's pay as one fourth and oven rental as one fourth. Check: 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/4 = 1 whole. As percents, one half is 50 percent and one fourth is 25 percent, and 50 + 25 + 25 = 100. Ingredients are the largest slice, so if the owner finds a way to cut one cost by the same share, such as finding a supplier whose ingredients all cost one tenth less, cutting ingredients saves the most money: one tenth of 30 dollars is 3 dollars, while one tenth of 15 dollars (helper's pay or oven rental) is only 1 dollar 50 cents. The biggest slice gives the biggest saving when every cost is cut by the same share. The circle graph shows shares, not dollars, so to find dollars the owner uses the total: one half of 60 dollars is 30 dollars.

Graph record (representation task): Using the Buckeye Bakes survey (apple 18, blueberry 12, pumpkin 6, bran 4 out of 40), draw a bar graph with a title, labelled axes and a scale starting at zero. Then make a circle graph of the same data on a circle divided into 20 equal parts, because 40 customers means each part stands for 2 customers: color 9 parts for apple, 6 for blueberry, 3 for pumpkin and 2 for bran. Label each slice with its percent and check that the slices add to 100 percent (9 + 6 + 3 + 2 = 20 parts).

Independent performance: Invent a small Ohio business that uses one creative or innovative idea. Write a plan that names one natural, one human and one capital resource; states one risk; names a competitor and how you would compete; and computes a profit from a revenue and cost you choose. Then make two small graphs from made-up data for your business: a bar graph (for example, sales in four weeks) and a circle graph (for example, customers' favorite products, with percentages that add to 100). Write one decision based on each graph. Success criteria: all three resource types are correct; profit = revenue − costs is computed correctly; each decision states which graph it used and what the data showed; the percentages add to 100.