2011

Entrepreneurship & Enterprise

Assignment-2
The report consist of my personal reflection on the module and how it has changed whe way i look at things.

Kiran[Type text]

PAMPANA KEDARI KIRAN KUMAR-- 10280763 ---------Page 1 5/4/2011

Contents
Introduction: ........................................................................................................................................... 3 Personal Insight: ...................................................................................................................................... 4 Team Performance: ................................................................................................................................. 7 Conclusion: .............................................................................................................................................. 8 References: ............................................................................................................................................. 9

Kiran Pampana

Page 2

Introduction:
My perception of entrepreneurship before taking up the second semester was somewhat narrow. My first thought of entrepreneur was when I saw it on a huge hoarding in India which said be an entrepreneur and make money. They have focused on the commercial element of entrepreneurship and due to which my understanding was that money was the key fundamental that motivates to become an entrepreneur and strongly thought that to be an entrepreneur is to create something people wish for, if possible a lot of people, to make them shell out as much as you are able to pull out for the worth you add to their lives. So my primary belief was that this learning would facilitate me to understand how to make additional money by means of ideas. After going through the modules I understood that money making is one of the basic things that an entrepreneur does like in any another profession and there are many more things that he gets in life by becoming successful. The course group was never boring thanks to the interactive sessions and John's exercises in between to boost the mind, I loved the activity where we exchanging our names and few other games like words completion. The networking part of the course was also very interesting due to which i now have and also building some good contacts in town and the country. My first million made me understand the process to judge to invest in a project and Simventure helped in the practical execution of the academic understanding. Taking up storytelling and becoming a narrator for the audience was a different education too.

Kiran Pampana

Page 3

Personal Insight:

One day in the class Nigel and John spoke about networking, I was surprised to know that Business networking is all about meeting new people from different business sectors and it is also an efficient low-cost promotional technique for increasing opportunities and acquaintances. After giving it a good thought I expressed my interest to my cousin who work for a private firm in the UK, he prepared me well for the event and said many important things to keep in mind like Networking is in relation to being true and reliable to increase reliance and connections. So I determined to go to one of the business events which was arranged at Ramada Jarvis, Hertfordshire. I went to the event and was little tensed and hesitant to talk to strangers about me and my ideas, there were 12 more people who came before me and when the event started people started talking about themselves which made me comfortable. I met many people and got many visiting cards from them, I used these contacts as a good opportunity to build contacts and mailed them and got few responses as well. From this I have learnt that there many ways around us to build contacts, using that opportunity to improve our knowledge and visibility is our challenge. Few of my new contacts that I have developed through the business networking added me on LinkedIn which is a wonderful social networking website. I remember Nigel talking about the importance of social networking in one of his regular lectures. We were also informed that over 80 million professionals use LinkedIn to exchange information, ideas and opportunities, this shows the enormous influence of LinkedIn as a positive business opportunity, jobs and profession networking tool. Initially I had a profile page but was not on the go on it, now I am very active on it as I understood that LinkedIn is like an online resume which can bring more opportunities and contacts, freelance and around the clock that can facilitate me to progress within and beyond the industry limits. It is now helping me to get in touch with the industry best and other professionals.

Information technology has changed the way we live our lives, but I never anticipated a software similar to Simventure to be developed which can make an entrepreneurs life easy. I am pleased that this educational software is given as a curriculum in an entertaining way. This simulation is
Kiran Pampana Page 4

a entertaining and an outstanding way to study how to establish your own business and recognize various different aspects of the business before investing in actual business. Simulations also permit students to validate their common sense with regard to specific circumstances. It forces students to synthesize and incorporate what they read and make real decisions depending on particulars or statistics obtained in the case. Simulations offer students a temporal dimension, a chance to understanding outcomes that change based on their inputs from time to time. It acted as a strong base for me to understand how to develop a business. It helped enterprise and entrepreneurial views with engaging minds and made education pleasurable, individual and significant. Working on this software in teams was also an absolute excitement. It required to formulate decisions and deal through consequences in a trouble-free understanding and coherent style. I was able to understand concepts of taking financial decisions, looking at Market surveys etc., through practical learning, which earlier looked like a difficult academic content. Such kind of knowledge gaining makes for successful learning, it has increased the confidence level in me and permitted me to take part and share ideas when we initiated and successfully ran our own virtual business. I was pleasantly taken aback by the logical building and outstanding capacity of Simventure and how well it linked to real life business situations. The awesome feeling I have taken away concerning operating a business is that it takes tolerance, hard work, forecast and very good managerial skills. All in all I found it was really challenging playing this simulation game as we had to come up with some real decisions which decide the accomplishment or collapse of the business and it absorbs you in very high genuine world of business. At times I was worried and upset as things did not work in the way I/we thought to be for example when we saw loss and got into huge debts it was a bit stressful state as we could not handle in a proper way to bring business back to its effectiveness apart of modifying dissimilar simulation. I realised that lack of suitable inputs from the team also lead to unproductive result, I was not fully paying attention when the decisions were made on investment in the game, so next time when I am using this Business game I will make sure that I put all my understanding and focus in it.

My first million study had the videos of new entrepreneurs who approached the dragons and pitched their idea and their area of business. This gave me an understanding of how people made it big with a simple idea. Dragons are legends in the business with handful of experience in their respective fields but due to the understanding they gained over the years in business they could
Kiran Pampana Page 5

take decisions on investing on a new project which look promising after evaluating the business opportunity. I have looked at so many cases of Dragons Den on YouTube and many times when none of the dragons invested in a project, I felt that if I had money I would have invested, as not all businesses in which they invested were successful as we have seen many failure cases too and opportunities always are not just given looking at an entrepreneurs performance for 10 minutes. The main learning and evaluation of this exercise was with the use of worksheets for each case study which involves a serious thought on growth potential, market size, profitability and competitive intensity of the business. A careful examination of these things will help us to come to a conclusion if we are deciding to invest or not. I have used these work sheets on all the cases that I have looked on YouTube. Brain storming about this process is a great advantage as we get to understand what made others to invest in an opportunity and will give us a chance to think from their point of view before taking a decision. Basing on the results of the discussion we decide the level of risk involved in the project and plot it on a graph. Though we used to do this in a team and come up with a solutions I once felt that my opinion was not properly taken into consideration as I did not properly support my decision and we lost the game. I then understood that communication is also a key to a successful team and if I am hesitant to converse with the rest of the team, then my ideas will never be taken into consideration in any project but I also wanted to make sure that the involvement should be there not only in the discussion but also in decision making. From the very next time I made sure that I voiced out my point to the team and my ideas were also taken into discussion. I believe that every persons view is vital in running a team, from this learning I will make sure to get the feedback and inputs of every person before a final decision is made in a team. I wonder if Dragons do all this as they listens to what the entrepreneurs says and what their fellow dragons ask and based on the answers they come to a conclusion which may or may not work.

One question for which I did not get an answer was Are entrepreneurs born or made, we had a good discussion about the pros and cons on this topic. I have also done a good research on the internet but no one was able to give me an answer for this question. According to me
Kiran Pampana Page 6

entrepreneurs are always made, there is nothing that a person cannot learn in his life. A successful entrepreneurship characteristics are acquired after birth through experience, learning, relations, and so on. Made but not born would imply that nurture, meaning experience and education is more important than inherent characteristics. Proper training for anything will result in being an expert, one such example will be the students who are studying Entrepreneurship as a subject, though we might possess the basic aptitude which makes us to think to become an entrepreneur, but after this module polishing all my skills now I understand how to think like one. If I know what to think and what to do if I am starting a new business, that is all because of the knowledge gained in the class room and my past experience . I recognize what critical areas to look at and how to decide if the venture is the one which fetches me good profits and fame.

Team Performance:

According to (Avery, 2001) A team is a group of individuals responding successfully to the opportunity presented by a shared responsibility. This was exactly what we did for our first assignment. This turned out to be a good learning experience for each associate of the team as well as me. We worked out meeting times the best we could, I believe that this is a learning that each member of the group should remember to use in the future, particularly when we have to structure meeting with colleagues in the future. We all decided to work on it completely individually which means that each one of us will do all the parts and then we will brainstorm and give inputs on the entire content so that none of us miss on the learning. When youre put in a group with four people, you analyse the whole lot of things apart from the given work like how people interact, act in response etc., this is also essential, since the more you study about the person, the better you can read and analyse them, and then you work better together. I also agree and understand that structure is a significant characteristic in team work. Without it, nearly everything becomes chaos, and particularly when we only had a few hours to brainstorm, decide on, be critical, build, categorize and present the product. Here our team did a considerably good job. After which we four divided in groups of two to compile and work. As soon as the group
Kiran Pampana Page 7

started to get a little unfocused, one of the team members used to get them back to reality. Here the power characteristic comes in, the team members had much power, you either did what you were assigned to do, or you could either walk away and be the stranger (to the task) who did not contribute. Each person did their part as the topics were allocated to people who had some experience with the subjects but towards the end we made sure that we all knew the concepts and everyone's contribution was there in the assignment. On the whole, I have thoroughly enjoyed this and each step of completion from the ground up was a valuable learning. I enjoyed looking at our finished product which was exactly on par with the specifications given in the example brief. I am also very happy with the result we have achieved for out teams coordinated performance and was thrilled but more than the grade it has been a great team building experience for me. We as business students are very likely to work in groups and teams in future and these kind of team activities help us in understanding the mindset and requirements of the team members and work towards a goal.

Conclusion:

There was so much that I have understood and learned for the little attention and effort that I have put into the module. Unlike other subjects, for entrepreneurship we never had any stress for learning, whatever everyone learnt was out of their own interest which has a very positive impact after understanding and implementing the skills developed in the classroom and applying them. To conclude the second semester in the university was an important phase of my life as this learning would keep me going for the rest of my life. There are many things that I could not explain in the report which I acquired as a part of my learning, all in all it gave the much needed confidence to work and achieve my goals. I have plans of starting my new business in India, the knowledge and wisdom I have gained here over these months would certainly add up to my thought process, decision making and leadership skills etc., Finally I would not call myself as an entrepreneur for now as I am a person who has great confidence to make it big with my dream and sincerity backed up with creative ideas. When I reach my ambition then I do not need to call myself an entrepreneur as people will.
Kiran Pampana Page 8

References:

BK Connections (2011) [Online] Availavle at : http://www.bkconnection.com/static/Teamwork_Is_an_Individual_Skill_EXCERPT.pdf [Accessed 21st April , 2011]

Kiran Pampana

Page 9