Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Global Entrepreneurship Week at ZSEM and beyond


November 14th through the 20th, celebrates the theme of entrepreneurship around the world.  Students, teachers, practitioners and the general public get some increased exposure of the entrepreneurs past, present and future in impacting our lives.

Every year I have students conduct an interview with an entrepreneur.  These one on one sessions which I encourage to be face to face is one of the easier, straight forward assignments in the array
of tools used to teach the course.  But the exchange is not as impactful as it could be if it happens between 2 people and it is not shared.  I get so much joy out of seeing the dialog exchanges and the wisdom, honesty and reality checks most entrepreneurs provide to the students.  Every year I try to have the post-interview sharing with peers be a little different.  Some years its a poster session, some years its live entrepreneurs like show and tell and this year its all about the video presentations.

As of Monday, the start of GEW there are now over 60 videos posted by students on our event Youtube page and on the Vimeo playlist also created.  The levels of creativity, technical ability and storytelling vary greatly.  But I appreciate the full range of ideas that are behind the creations so its the process not just the product that I will recognize and in teaching terms I must grade.  There are some who planned in advance with a clear vision and were able to execute; there were others who kept it to a clean and simple story and format and resulted in a standout; there were others inspired or intimidated by the technology who pushed themselves out of their comfort zone or retreated to an online template transfer of ppt to video.  There are some who are not satisfied with the work they did either because they are perfectionist or because they started late and don't want to be compared to their peers.  Any way you slice it, entrepreneurs were celebrated and students engaged in some facet of being entrepreneurial themselves in the process.  If we were able to do this in conjunction with a global initiative then that is just the cherry on top.

I also made a submission and I showed them the process...with a simple powerpoint, research I added music, posted and played in front of an audience 4 times, got feedback, retooled and reposted.  I gave them permission to one up the professor and some took that challenge and soared in their own unique vision of the assignment.  There are many more who will need to learn how to take feedback without getting defensive and learn the lifelong lesson "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again".

To learn more about Global Entrepreneurship Week, please visit www.unleashingideas.org
You can check out all the activities registered for each of the 123 countries participating.  

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Green Ideas for Recycling Entrepreneurs

It all started with a friend.  My friend Tamiko Franklin came as a guest to one of my Entrepreneurship classes this semester.  She came in last week and the students had to project what kind of entrepreneur she was.  They thought of cliches like Fashion (not a bad association, just predictable as Tamiko is a well dressed professional) and the more against type like Construction company magnate.  In the end, they got a clue that she was considering entering into the recycling business from a career as a Copyright Attorney.  10 teams of 5 to 7 prepared short video presentations on the kind of Recycling Entrepreneur she could be....paper, plastics, tires, aluminum and many garbage to art themes emerged.  The creativity the students mustered was an impressive array but they failed to Google Tamiko and really learn about her and how she might shape her new business.  This was a valuable lesson about ideas versus opportunities.  Ideas can be fun and come easily but to really have the right fit the opportunity has to be right on many levels...a right fit to the entrepreneur, to the context or environment that the enterprise will operate and a right fit to the potential customer markets in a way that will be better than the existing competition.  Thus, the students exhibited much creativity but when they match it with research as they progress through the course learning modules they will discover the value creation elements of the enterprise and the different approaches which can maximize profits of all kinds: people, planet and profit in terms of money as well.

Here is a sampling of research that could be done along the various components to building a business plan for Tamiko Franklin
1. Background - http://virtuallyblind.com/2008/10/23/interview-tamiko-franklin/, http://www.intelektiv.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9&Itemid=20
2. Idea Generation - http://www.which.co.uk/money/bills-and-budgeting/guides/10-ways-to-make-money-by-going-green/green-money-making-ideas/, http://www.springwise.com/eco_sustainability/ourgreendistrict/, http://sbinfocanada.about.com/od/businessideas/a/greenbizideas.htm
3. Marketing - http://www.nerc.org/,http://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-product-design/post-consumer-recycled-goods-recycling-waste-into-stuff.html, http://www.recycleinme.com/
4. Operations - http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/recycle-one-thing1.htm, http://www.ehow.com/how_2019569_start-recycling-business.html
5 Finance - http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/4-ways-to-earn-cash-from-recycling.html, http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/rrr/rmd/finance.htm

What other resources could you investigate and where would you put them in her business plan?

Future Entrepreneurs

Teaching in higher education in Croatia for almost 20 years, I have mostly been in the private sector.  But I am happy when learners re...