Entrepreneurship Journey
Description
The Entrepreneurship Journey is a workshop held and designed by Henry Ford Entrepreneurship Academy in collaboration with Dublin City University and the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Business School. The goal of this workshop is to prepare potential entrepreneurs with a set of tools to develop their skills and expand their knowledge around entrepreneurship. That includes behaviors, competencies, abilities, and approaches to improves one’s entrepreneurial capacity. This workshop delivered through a variety of learning styles designed with experiential learning content. This workshop designed to increase my personal ability to be successful as entrepreneurs as I learn how to connect with and deliver my unique value contribution.
During these three days, my role in this workshop was participating in a group activity, listing to invited speakers who are entrepreneurs, professionals in the entrepreneur field. The group activities were revolving around developing the mindset, value proposition, business proposal, and revenue models. I enjoyed this activity as it adds a unique value to me personally and professionally by providing me with actual and practical experience.
Self-Analysis
On the 5th of March, I have received an email from DCU describing the workshop along with the registration link. When I read the email for the first time, I thought it was a regular workshop held in the university often. And I felt that this somehow one of the master’s requirements even though it was clearly stated that it was not mandatory. I thought that I might gain from it the most as my core modules were finance, so this would be a new experience and opportunity for me. I was slightly concerned that it would be like those workshops with repetitive exercises that you see in most workshops and would not get a proper view of the enterprise.
Gratefully, that was not the case, I really feel satisfied with the experience and knowledge gained related to entrepreneurship. The workshop was exceptional in its design, as it takes a deep dive into three main domains, which are the mindset, human story, and set of unique activities. As a potential entrepreneur, my role is to navigate those three domains to bring my unique value contribution. I can say that I have received advanced training, enriched by the views and advice of local entrepreneurs.
The main reason motivates me to take this workshop is that I want to understand how to develop a business from how to sketch the idea until it became an actual product or service. Another reason is that when I take a personality assessment test called Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, I found out that as ESFJ type, I may not look for new ways of doing things and can be intolerant and rigid. In other words, I may lack innovation, which I have to work and finds ways to work on my mindset to be more innovative to be an entrepreneur or even to become a leader from a creative problem-solving perspective. In the workplace, changing my mindset to be more creative is crucial; employees must find innovative solutions when they experience unfamiliar, ill-defined problems is critical factor for their organization to sustain a competitive advantage (Reiter-Palmon and Illies, 2004).
Analysis of learning:
The main learning outcomes from this workshop are the fact that my entrepreneurial capacity was developed by equips me with the essential tools, the ability to move my idea to the next stage, having the opportunity to listen to other experiences, and meet new friends with common areas of interests and challenges. What I like the most is they train me as an actual potential entrepreneur. During this course, I learned the following aspects of the entrepreneur journey:
Day one: On the first day, I have learned about developing a strategic value proposition of the new business, where I have to identify target groups, brand name, competitive framework, point of different benefits, the reasoning behind the benefits, and finally, brand character.
For me, knowing strategic value proposition is essential as it plays a critical role in communicating how my business aims to provide value to customers, on the other hand, it was beneficial for my career goals since the employee needs to understand the created value of his organization (Payne, Frow and Eggert, 2017). The value-added from creating a strategic value proposition can be shown in the uber case. Uber can be considered as a successful case for creating a strategic value proposition since its business model, and success hangs on two discrete strategic value propositions, one goes to the rider whereas one to the driver. By attracting, linking, and matching suppliers with customers, whereas Uber provides the platform.
Besides, I learned about the “Mindset” concept and how to differentiate between fixed and growth mind. Mindset is about learning how to think or frame situations that set an appropriate course of action. However, to become aware of my mindset type, I have done a mindset assessment. The result shows that I have agreed on 4 of fixed mindset statements and 5 of the growth mindsets. This indicates that I have mostly a growth mindset, which means that I need to work on my mind to apply a growth mindset more efficiently. However, research shows that everyone has a combination of both mindsets, but most importantly, there is room for the growth of mindset orientation (The Guardian, 2018).
At the end of day one, I have learned about ” Human Story,” which includes knowing personal “why” and leveraging conviction while I have enjoyed listing to others sharing their own stories for advocacy and support.
Day two: I have a set of activities where I have the opportunity to put together how to take action to experiment with the idea and validate the assumption. The activity I have enjoyed and adds the most to me is wallet exercise. Since this exercise is about applying a toolkit in a group to support my design thinking practice, where I use a set of tools and methods that are vital for design thinkers to have. Under this activity, I have learned five modes that I have to empathize (interview/observe the client), define (take their requirement), ideate (came up with product/service), prototype, and finally testing.
Day three: I have introduced one of the critical components of the business model, which is revenue models. Being able to identify revenue models will enable me to expand knowable insight on how to generate a valuable income from my potential business activities by identifying revenue channels to pursue. The revenue model is not merely identifying the revenue stream; I have to recognize the value to offer, price amount, and who are willing to pay. What motivates me the most as a potential entrepreneur at the end of the day is pitch and practice part, whereas some girls show their start-up business, which encourages me a lot.
In this POD, I used the constructivism theory of learning. This learning methodology is about personal construction, as a proactive learner, I go through the experience (taking this workshop as collaborative learning), and that meaning is influenced by the interaction of prior knowledge and new events. The constructivism theory of learning is a process of connecting pieces of knowledge in and memorable, yet meaningful ways encourage application in many contexts and perspectives (Hart, 2002).
It focuses on information transactions from an expert (as opposed to facilitators) to learners who do not know which what is I did in this activity. Using this theory, I receive the information, store it, link it to existing knowledge and ideas, index it (like a filing system), and then recover it, so that I can recall it from my memories later when I need it. In cognitivism, the learning process is connecting pieces of knowledge in meaningful and memorable ways (Roediger, Gallo, and Geraci, 2002).
Application in Context
I had the chance to apply (heuristics) while I tried to provide a solution for my client’s needs at the wallet exercise. Heuristics is a problem-solving approach where it used in problem recognition in the marketing field as this method uses abbreviations to produce reliable solutions at a limited time frame (MacGregor, Chronicle and Ormerod, 2006). I then created the requirement list of the client that she wanted to be in her wallet. Despite this I was surprised by the variety of wallets that each team came up with, the needs are different, and problem recognition differs as well, resulting in product diversification. However, the one
that solves the problem and satisfies customer need is the one that can survive in the market place and has good reputation as a business. intricacy of the event. Considering this, I will have to ensure that I adopt a practical (problem-solving)/(needs recognition) approach to use it as necessary to deal with my client in the workplace or to explore new business opportunities.
Overall this workshop supports me in establishing my personal development plan since I planned to develop innovation, teamwork and collaboration competencies. In real-world the success of my career is based on some essential skills and working in a team is defiantly one of them. Which, in result, going to contribute to developing the overall “personal development theme.”
By working in the team efficiently and effectively, often I can accomplish more than when I work alone. Therefore, it is significant that I am capable of using groups and being a good colleague and leader to perform business/academic tasks (Hofstrand, 2009). To enhance my role in teamwork management, I have to Increase my experience in teamworking by working within the dynamics of group and people I don’t know very well, just like what I have done on day two.
On the other hand, this workshop works to enhance my creative thinking skills since it considered an essential aspect of entrepreneurship; this is because creative thinking is bringing best and reliable ideas into the real world, ideas that create new value. Knowing that there is no innovation without creativity and without change there is no enterprise. This workshop addresses value proposition, design thinking activities, and reshaping my mindset. All of that contributes to developing my creative thinking skills and innovation competency significantly.
Evaluate the experience
Overall, I was very overwhelmed with just how much I learned about entrepreneurship and business creation overall. Having applied problem solving approach (Heuristics) as discussed above, I became more systematic in problem solving, for example, I draw a picture when I have a difficulty to understand the problem or if I can’t find a solution for a specific case I work backward by try to assume that I have an answer and see what I can drive from that.
On the other hand, having a growth mindset has improved my overall levels of subjective well-being. The method also enabled me to be better at moving on, pro-social behaviors, and enhance my self-regulation.
Reconstruct self-concept
The Entrepreneurship Journey workshop provided me with detailed insight into how I can start up my own business from how to sketch the idea until it became an actual product or service. I thoroughly enjoyed all three days and feel I would like to even start my own business. Teamwork skills and business skills needed in the workshop were particularly evident, but the importance of problem-solving, and innovation was unanticipated and equally important. This has changed my view of business creation and business fundamentals, which affects my future plan and vision and are areas that I have identified for possible improvement.
Action or Application
What I have learned in this workshop could be applied both in personal and career level. As I have mentioned before, working on growing my mindset has improved my overall levels of subjective well-being, became more systematic in problem-solving, and being able to develop a strategic value proposition of a
new business. For me, knowing the strategic value proposition is essential to me as it plays a critical role in communicating how my business aims to provide value to customers. On the other hand, it was beneficial for my career goals since the employee needs to understand the created value of his organization.
To put my learning outcome into practice, I aim to attend an industry event where the market gap identified, and companies show their research findings on how the local market performs. Also, I intend to learn about SME’s current status in Saudi Arabia and what type of regulations that the Saudi government provides to support entrepreneurs and SMEs.
Bibliography
1- Hart, L. (2002). Human brain & human learning. Covington, Wash.: Books for Educators.
2- Hofstrand, D. (2009). Designing Successful Business Teams | Ag Decision Maker. [online] Extension.iastate.edu. Available at: https://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/wholefarm/pdf/c5-114.pdf [Accessed 16 Oct. 2018].
3- Payne, A., Frow, P. and Eggert, A. (2017). The customer value proposition: evolution, development, and application in marketing. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 45(4), pp.467-489.
4- Reiter-Palmon, R. and Illies, J. (2004). Leadership and creativity: Understanding leadership from a creative problem-solving perspective. The Leadership Quarterly, 15(1), pp.55-77.
5- Roediger, H., Gallo, D. and Geraci, L. (2002). Processing approaches to cognition: The impetus from the levels-of-processing framework. Memory, 10(5-6), pp.319-332.
6- The Guardian (2018). Research every teacher should know: growth mindset. [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2018/jan/04/research-every-teacher-should-know-growth-mindset [Accessed 13 Oct. 2019].
