Each summer for the past 38 years, students and adult leaders from across our state have gathered at university campuses for week-long free enterprise “boot camps” called Business Week. The week has a magical quality that transforms the lives of both the students and the adults who mentor them.

At Business Week, students cover the spectrum of economic backgrounds. Some participants have never been on a college campus, while others are world travelers. Also, skin color and the size of bank accounts simply don’t matter.

When they first arrive, many of the students are unsure and skeptical, but by the second day, the magic has begun.By Friday ― graduation day ― hesitant strangers are transformed into confident enthusiastic friends who have a difficult time saying goodbye.

How does that magic work?

First, friends who arrive together are separated. Any clique, relationship or history that previously defined a student is gone, replaced by an opportunity for a fresh start, a chance to remake yourself. Students are placed in groups of 10 and each group forms a company, creates an innovative product, figures out how to produce it efficiently and crafts a marketing strategy. Students learn how to work in teams, but they also learn how to lead.

At week’s end, the teams participate in a trade show where they sell their ideas to “investors” — business, educators and community leaders from across the state who donate their time to Business Week.

Seeing these young people come together, to watch as their confidence grows, to see them transform into self-assured, enthusiastic, imaginative people — often surprising themselves in the process — is a phenomenon that is difficult to describe.

It happens with the adults, too, as major business leaders bond with teachers and students they’ve never met and may never see again.

So what transforms people?

First, the program is about learning life skills and the realization that you have untapped ability and potential.

Second, students are challenged to be grounded and creative at the same time. Innovation is the order of the day.

Third, Business Week offers students firsthand experience with risk and responsibility. Adults provide guiding hands, but the students develop their companies, find solutions to problems and create something the world has never seen before.

Finally, it is about bringing disparate people together to work, live and have fun.

That’s the magic of Business Week.

Don Brunell is the president of the Association of Washington Business.