Entrepreneurship - BU2005 - James Cook University Cairns - SP10 - 09.12.2010

Creative Journal

By Soren Terp Nielsen – 12493947

Lecturer Roy Wybrow

Table of Contents First Journal Entry Set ................................................................................................................ 4

How do you stack up against the Five Dimensions ................................................................ 4

What do you need to develop or improve ............................................................................... 4

What is the organisation you have worked for doing to attract and keep entrepreneurial talent ........................................................................................................................................ 5

How would you describe and evaluate the influence your working environment has had on your entrepreneurial orientation .............................................................................................. 5

Second Journal Entry Set ............................................................................................................ 8

Describe your approach to creative thinking and problem solving ........................................ 8

What factors act as barriers and triggers to your creative thinking process ........................... 9

Select a problem that interests (or bothers) you or the group with which you work .............. 9

Third Journal Entry Set ............................................................................................................. 12

Describe an innovation that has had a profound influence on your life/work/the way you live. What type of innovation was it and how has it changed your life ................................ 12

How did you become aware of the innovation ..................................................................... 12

What type of adopter were/are you ....................................................................................... 12

Describe the innovation decision process that you went through up until the innovation became a ‘routine’ part of your life ...................................................................................... 13

Identify key actors within your innovation decision network and how their influence affected your behaviour ........................................................................................................ 14

Forth Journal Entry Set ............................................................................................................. 16

Have you tried to get a venture (of any sort) funded or backed? If you have not, would you now ........................................................................................................................................ 16

Describe and explain the venture and related funding you chose or would choose to pursue .............................................................................................................................................. 16

What kind of issues might you encounter in an entrepreneurial fund-raising process ......... 16

How important is implementation vs. planning .................................................................... 17

Are there any specific issues – benefits or problems – that might arise from your location 17

Fifth Journal Entry Set .............................................................................................................. 19

Find and cite your own example of a recent article that has not been featured in the subject regarding disruptive technology ........................................................................................... 19

Discuss the article’s contents and why you chose it with reference to both what has been covered in this block and your own personal / experiences ................................................. 19

Sixth Journal Entry Set ............................................................................................................. 22

What have you learnt about yourself and the nature of entrepreneurship and innovation? What did you gain from the simulation ................................................................................ 22

Have changes occurred since session 1 day 1, in terms of your own perceptions of whether you might seek to be more entrepreneurial or innovative..................................................... 23

References ................................................................................................................................. 25

Third Journal Entry Set ......................................................................................................... 25

Fifth Journal Entry Set .......................................................................................................... 25

Sixth Journal Entry Set ......................................................................................................... 25

First Journal Entry Set

How do you stack up against the Five Dimensions In the beginning of the Entrepreneurship course we took the GET 2 test, which is a general measure of your enterprising tendency. I did the test and was measured you on 5 different dimensions, which led to the following results:

1. Need for Achievement 10 points of possible 12 points 2. Need for Autonomy 3 points of possible 6 points 3. Creative Tendency 9 points of possible 12 points 4. Calculated Risk Taking, and 8 points of possible 12 points 5. Locus of Control 11 points of possible 12 points 6. Total Score 41 points of possible 54 points

With a total score of 41 points out of a possible 54 I am just outside the highly enterprising tendency margin, which lies between the score of 44 and 54 points. I lie in medium range, which is not bad. It simply means that there is room for improvements.

What do you need to develop or improve With a score of 41 out of a possible 54 points I am in the medium range for enterprising tendency. However, I do fit the enterprising tendency profile quite good in terms of me having a highly developed need for achievements and locus of control.

The other dimensions I need to improve are the need for autonomy, creative tendency, and the calculated risk taking. Again, I would like to stress that I have not obtained a bad score, but these are the dimensions, which I can benefit the most from improving.

The Need for Autonomy is important at it is one of the main driving forces that can get you to leave an organisation to try and start up your own business. This way you only have to answer to yourself and do not have to bother with higher ranking employees anymore.

One’s Creative Tendency is always a good thing to perfect as this is what enables you to be good at problem solving and come up with innovative solutions, products and / or features.

The last dimension I would benefit from improving is the Calculated Risk Taking. The ability to objectively asses the level of risk when faced with an opportunity is a valuable one. It is basically about gaining the ability to weighing pros and cons against each other to come up with the best decision as whether to take on a project or not. The better I can evaluate the pros and cons, the better I can be at taking calculated risk with a clear purpose and action plan to succeed.

What is the organisation you have worked for doing to attract and keep entrepreneurial talent Prior to coming to Australia for my Study Abroad semester I was a middle manager in a telemarketing department of a media company, where we sold subscriptions to newspapers, news magazines, among other things. In the telemarketing department we did not have an official programme for attracting and keeping entrepreneurial talent. However, we did have flat hierarchy that enabled better and more constructive communication between the different layers of management. This was good for our regular meetings about how to come up with a good way to arm ourselves against a highly competitive and declining market.

We came up with an innovative and entrepreneurial project, where we started a sales academy within the telemarketing department in cooperation with a business school. The goal was to create an environment where we attract, keep, and develop and educate our employees (the majority of which are young casual workers). We wanted them not just to come to work to earn money and go home. We wanted them to consider their job as the starting point of a prosperous career, where they came to work to develop and educate their people skills, sales skills, and general corporate understanding. Through a period of 2 years of employment our employees would have gone through a series of fairly simple and digestible theoretical and practical courses on how improve their communication and sales skills. This enabled our employees to set clear and ambitious goals, and turned out to be and extremely successful project almost doubling the department’s revenue within the first year.

How would you describe and evaluate the influence your working environment has had on your entrepreneurial orientation The influence of the working environment is crucial to one’s entrepreneurial orientation. If you do not have your organisation set up so that the employees within can communicate openly within you will have a hard time creating a working environment that appeals to the entrepreneurial orientation and stimulates it. A positive influence in my job was the reward system. You were acknowledged for coming up with good ideas and could win bottles of wine, gift certificates, among others. Even your idea was innovative and beneficial for the company, you would even be acknowledged in articles of the weekly internal news letter. That gives employees a sense of ownership and pride in what they are doing.

In order for entrepreneurial orientation to prosper you need an open minded organisation with a simple processing culture. When I was in the Danish Army I learned that the systems simply kill every entrepreneurial instinct within the organisation. There was such a thick layer of bureaucracy that you more often than not would get nowhere with new ideas that could lead to innovations. It doesn’t work in a large organisation when you strictly have to follow the chain of command. By the time a suggestion reaches the people it was intended several

months could have passed. And then feedback had to travel back through the same chain of command. That is simply not constructive, so you should by all means avoid establishing such an organisational structure.

Second Journal Entry Set

Describe your approach to creative thinking and problem solving I have never really sat down and properly thought about my creative thinking and problem solving in my everyday life. But when I come to think of it I suppose my creative process starts with identifying the magnitude of the problem. Most problems we are faced with are small and reoccurring problems such as splendid too much money immediately after receiving the pay check.

When faced with such a problem I usually tend to go for a quick fix, which means that I probably end up only treating the symptoms of the problem and only coming up with a short term solution to the problem. The symptoms, in this case, could be running low on cash, which means I will have trouble paying my bills at the end of the month. To be able to pay my bill I will have to cut down my expenses and live on a tighter budget for the remainder of the month. This could easily work out fine, but there is no guarantee that the same problem will not occur the following months. I would have to come up with a permanent solution in order to avoid this problem reoccurring.

In order to find a permanent solution, which I try to do with most of the bigger problems I encounter, I try to look deeper than just at the symptoms. It is essential to understand a problem in order to be able to find the root cause of the given problem, so my first step is to find the reason(s) for the problem. My second step is then to set a goal for the problem solving. What do I want to achieve by fixing the problem?

After I have figured that out my creative process usually starts. It is, in other words, here I try to come up with ideas for solutions. I normally get try to find 2 or 3 ideas that can be used as possible solutions just to be sure that if one does not work I have an alternate idea to work with.

Before I try to implement my solution I briefly evaluate the different ideas against each other to determine which would be the better solution. So my approach boils downs to the following steps:

1. Determine the root cause of the problem and why it occurs 2. Set a goal for the problem solving 3. Find ideas through creative thinking 4. Evaluate the ideas 5. Implement the best one

What factors act as barriers and triggers to your creative thinking process There are several factors that can act as barriers to my creative thinking. Below I have listed the main ones.

Ø Negativity: I sometimes have a negative way of looking at things. This could be thinking thoughts such as something being too difficult, too time consumimg, too expensive, etc. That is devastating to creative thinking as it basically eliminates your ability to work and think constructively. However, once you become aware that you are focussing only on the negative aspects, it is relatively easy to change your way of thinking into a more positive pattern.

Ø Fear of failure: Is also an issue sometimes, and it usually occurs if I over-think something. Then I start go all these negative what-ifs into my head. However, this can also be overcome by forcing yourself to think positive and constructive. Another good way to overcome the fear of failure is thinking “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!” I have used that a lot, which has significantly improved my ability to work constructively outside my comfort zone.

Ø Making Assumptions: If you make assumptions during a problem solving process you might end up skipping the entire step of creative thinking. To avoid making assumptions you should try gathering all the information and knowledge about the problem. This can in turn be used to stimulate the creative thinking.

The main triggers to my creative thinking are as follows:

Ø Interest and motivation: If I come across a problem doing something that interests me a great deal I acquire a natural incentive and motivation to think creatively to solve that given problem.

Ø Need for achievements: As I am a very goal oriented person, my need for achievement triggers creative thinking to come up with alternative ways to achieve my goal if I am faced with a problem.

Ø Autonomy: Also if I feel I am not being acknowledged or recognised for my work I turn to creative thinking to come up with something better.

Select a problem that interests (or bothers) you or the group with which you work In the early stage of the Go Venture simulation we had problems with our inventory levels. To solve the problem we turned to the Creating Rich Pictures to understand and solve the problem.

We started out writing a statement of the problem. Then we drew pictures of the current and future situation, and explained the drawing to each other. This helped us to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the problem, which made the last steps of criticising and evaluating options and implementation strategies easier.

Normally we would have just tried to explain the problems to each other verbally which led to many misunderstandings and misconceptions. However we found it hard and very time consuming to make a drawing that illustrates our perception of the problem. So we did not always employ this method of thinking. We learned that some (smaller) problems would be better to approach through merely verbal communication. But if you encounter a bigger and more complex problem Creating Rich Pictures is definitely a good tool to use. You enable yourself to really get into depth with the problem and get more sets of eyes to look at it, which open more doors for possible solutions.

Third Journal Entry Set

Describe an innovation that has had a profound influence on your life/work/the way you live. What type of innovation was it and how has it changed your life The smartphone is an innovation that has changed the way I live my life. It is a mobile phone that combines making telephone calls with all the other ways of communicating. Furthermore it adds the features of a personal digital assistant or a computer.

I have always been a quite disorganised person. Though, it was mainly in terms of remembering agreements and meeting, and organising my calendar and schedule. When I bought my first smartphone it was mainly due to a lifestyle sense of reasoning. I wanted it because I loved touchscreen, thought that a few of the smartphones were very cool and looked stylish.

By the time I had gotten my first smartphone and learned about its practicality and used its full potential, I was able to always stay connected with friends, families and colleagues. They were no further away than a touch of a button. But the most significant change lies in the fact that I now always had my calendar with me and never had to worry about not being able to write down new appointments. My old calendars were always bulky and impractical, which is why I hated to carry it around. It was probably also why I always forgot it at work, or in school, or at home. This made me very disorganised as I had to write notes on slips of paper and remember to bring them into my calendar.

Many of these notes were lost, and ever since a got a smartphone I have become much more organised and hardly ever missed an appointment.

How did you become aware of the innovation It was through friends I became aware of the innovation. Some of my friends are very gadget and technology interested, so by the Apple and other manufacturers started announcing and advertising their touch screen smartphones I had already known about them for a while through word of mouth, which again has proved to be a very effective marketing tool.

What type of adopter were/are you My friends that initially told me about the up and coming innovative smartphones were the first ones I knew to acquire this product. To my opinion they acted as ambassadors for the smartphones, which makes them early adopters. I felt highly influenced by their enthusiasm towards these products, and also wanted to be a part of that.

It took some time though, but by the time I got my smartphone and learned to use it properly I also started acting as an ambassador to others that had not yet acquired such a phone. Due to the above I will place myself in the ‘Early Majority’ group of adopters.

Describe the innovation decision process that you went through up until the innovation became a ‘routine’ part of your life My innovation decision process basically follows the Innovation Decision Cycle Model (Roger 1995) to the dot.

The process started with me acquiring knowledge through friends that tried to influence or ‘persuade’ me into adopting the product. It ended up being with limited success. I did end up accepting the innovation the manufacturer. I liked the concept of the iPhone, but I did not want an Apple product. I wanted a product as good or better than the iPhone, but from another manufacturer. Once I found the right product I implemented my decision by buying the innovation and putting it to use. The confirmation occurred when I realized that the innovation gave me many more benefits than having a fancy phone. It made me more well-organised, increased my ability stay updated, and to get in touch with people.

Identify key actors within your innovation decision network and how their influence affected your behaviour The key actors within my innovation decision network are the persuasion stage and the implementation stage. These are the main actors because they represent the most significant change in the attitude towards the innovation, which affected my behaviour in a way that made me enthusiastic about the innovation and made me want to be an ambassador for it.

Forth Journal Entry Set

Have you tried to get a venture (of any sort) funded or backed? If you have not, would you now Back in 2007 I was working on taking over a franchise of the rental company called Nobody. At the time I had been working there for 2 years as a deputy manager, and I knew the business well. The business was going good but the owner wanted to focus his energy on his other ventures, which is why he put it up for sale.

Describe and explain the venture and related funding you chose or would choose to pursue The venture was as mentioned a franchise that rent party equipment to private and corporate events. Main source of income was jukeboxes, draft beer, soft ice machines, and ice cream bars, but there were many other products such as music mixers, lighting equipment, smoke machines, etc. The idea was to enable our customers to through a good party or other arrangement without having to bother with acquiring, transporting, and setting up the equipment. The concept had been proven to work, and the 2 years I was there the turnover and profits grew with more than 20 % per year.

After having done some research and sparred with my father I decided to go to the banks to get a loan. I wanted to beg, befriend, and borrow, but that proved unsuccessful as my network at the time was quite small, and my father was undertaking his own venture at that time, which basically excluded him as a source of fundraising. After having made a business plan and projected financials for the bank to look at I was approved for the loan, and basically set to go.

What kind of issues might you encounter in an entrepreneurial fund-raising process There are many issues you might encounter during your fund-raising. Before I decided to accept the offer I went over the financial with a friend of mine who is an accountant. He discovered that something was off in the financials. It turned out that the cost of warehousing and maintenance of equipment was much higher than what I had projected and than what the previous financial statements had shown. A significant amount of the costs were covered by some of the other more lucrative businesses the owner had on the same address.

After redoing the financials we found that I would be running the first 3 years without any profit for myself, which led to the decision of declining the offer.

There are other issues you might encounter. If you are looking to gain funds from investors you might have to settle with giving up a larger stake in your company than what you would have originally liked. Furthermore, must be able to prove feasibility and know every detail of your financials and business plan to be able to convince potential investors. You also have to be able to provide investors with a clear exit strategy. Otherwise it is difficult to obtain funds.

How important is implementation vs. planning You cannot have one without the other. They are both very important. The planning provides a purpose and goals, so if you implement without having the planning in order, you basically will not know which direction you are going and what you are steering for or for what reason. The planning is a crucial part of starting up a business, as it ensures that you ask yourself all the questions necessary for you to succeed. The business plan also works as a guide once you get going, so if you are confused or uncertain about i.e. whether you are steering the company in the right direction, you can look through the business plan, and you should be able to find answers to all or most of your questions.

Basically a good business plan should provide you with a clear cut description of 4 elements including the opportunity, the environmental context, the risk reward, and the team you will put together in order to become successful.

Naturally, the implementation is also crucial for the start up. Make sure to implement the right tools, processes and organization structures from the very beginning. Otherwise, your business plan is worth nothing, and you will end up steering your company into the ditch.

Are there any specific issues – benefits or problems – that might arise from your location When choosing the location of your business the wrong location can cause nothing but problems. Essentially a good business in a bad location is a bad business. So make sure you chose a location that provides you with exposure and agility you need.

For my venture I had found a great location in the centre of the district and just 20 minutes from the major city of the district. The land building costs were fairly cheap, and the location was less than 1 km from the major freeway that provides the easiest access to all destinations of the district.

All these factors would have provided me with 2 major benefits. High exposure of the business and minimising the transportation cost, which is the biggest source of expenses for that type of company.

Fifth Journal Entry Set

Find and cite your own example of a recent article that has not been featured in the subject regarding disruptive technology I have found an article on disruptive fuel technologies from the Petroleum Review, April 2010. The article states that “Never before has there been so much uncertainty over the future supply and demand for hydrocarbons – this is particularly the case in transport, which account for 50 % of primary oil consumption. There is clear evidence to suggest that science may deliver a range of technologies that could be commercial within just five years – but the potential of new fuels to disrupt the supply and demand for gasoline and diesel will only be realised if innovators and regulators take key steps to ensure rapid commercialisation of these lower carbon alternatives”.

The article also states that: “Accenture’s research demonstrates that a variety of alternative fuel sources have the potential to transform the supply and demand of hydrocarbons sooner than many expect”.

Discuss the article’s contents and why you chose it with reference to both what has been covered in this block and your own personal / experiences This article was chosen due to the fact that it is very contemporary. Never before has the world been more focussed on the depleting oil resources and global warming. These two things combined have significantly increased the demand for new and cleaner fuel technologies.

I.e. when the first electric cars came out, they were much more expensive than internal combustion cars, and could only run for a very limited time and distance, making them extremely impractical, as you would have to go back and recharge it for several hours all the time. There was basically no point to electric cars.

The article basically discusses the most high-potential fuel technologies that are disruptive to the gasoline and diesel demand and supply. Seen as existing gasoline and diesel companies, such as Shell, BHP, and others, inevitably will have to adopt one or more of these disruptive technologies to survive, their situation can be related to many subjects of this course. To my experience most consumers in the western world are hesitant to adopt new technologies if it seems we will be going backwards doing it.

First of all, in order to survive, they must initiate their creative thinking to find the smoothest way of transition. They have to do thorough research and assess which technology would be best to pursue and how they should adopt it. This can be related to the creation of the business plan, which basically works as a guide or to-do list one should follow in order to be

successful.Second of all, both innovators and regulators must be sure they thoroughly understand the innovation diffusion theory, in order for them to reach their adopters. They must create the right attitudes in the consumers and try to affect the norms of the societies in order to create the right buying behaviour.

Sixth Journal Entry Set

What have you learnt about yourself and the nature of entrepreneurship and innovation? What did you gain from the simulation After having GET 2 test I learned that I have a quite high enterprising tendency scoring at the very top of the medium range, however, I did have room for improvements in some surprising dimensions, such as the Need for Autonomy. I have learned that improve your enterprising tendency, but it is not as easy as it sound. It is not just like flicking a switch. In order to change you will have to look thoroughly at your values as these form the basis of your opinions and beliefs.

A true entrepreneur that scores high in all dimensions has a natural incentive and motivation to undertake new ventures, whereas ‘normal’ people have train, or even, force themselves to embark on a new venture.

In essence entrepreneurial behaviour starts with the right mind set. Koratko and Hodgetts (1998) identified seventeen characteristics likely either to be found among entrepreneurs or at least to be associated with the process of enterprising. These characteristics include perseverance, drive to achieve, opportunity orientation, among others, and if you have these characteristics you are very likely to take on entrepreneurial behaviour.

The course and the simulation have given me the understanding of the entrepreneur’s perspective and the vital role the concepts and processes play in the establishment of a successful enterprise. Here, the planning plays a vital role, as it ensures that you work through the opportunity recognition, the environmental context, the risk-reward, and the team need. The business plan works as a blueprint and can help you avoid the typical causes of failures, such as underestimation of the start up time, overestimation of the market size, lack of expertise, among others.

Through the simulation I have learned that is not only important to plan, but it is also important to implement the right routines and process to support your plan. If you fail to do so, you will end up joggling too many balls, and might easily lose track of important things, such as inventory reorder points, employee schedules, worker morale, and customer satisfaction, among others. Because I did not implement the right routines and processes from the very beginning, I lost track of these things, and had to struggle to regain control.

Have changes occurred since session 1 day 1, in terms of your own perceptions of whether you might seek to be more entrepreneurial or innovative After having done the GET 2 test, the simulation and the course in general I have realised that I could benefit from improving my creative tendency. If I do so it will not only make me more entrepreneurial and innovative, but it will also make me better at problem solving in general.

I have yet to come up with a plan for improving my creative tendency, but, as mentioned earlier, it is a matter of working with my values that form the basis of my perceptions and opinions. Furthermore, it is obviously also a matter of skills. I have train my creativity skills by thinking positive, and by using the Creating Rich Pictures method. As mentioned in the book, McFadzean (1998). One approach to fostering creativity is the development of rich pictures.

References

Third Journal Entry Set Chapter Author: T. Mazzarol Date: 2008 Title of the Chapter: Chapter 6 – Adoption and diffusion of innovation Book Title: Entrepreneurship and Innovation: A Manager’s perspective Page number in the book: 126 Place of publication: Prahran VIC 3181 Australia Publisher: Tilde University Press

Fifth Journal Entry Set

Petroleum Review 2010: Disruptive Fuel Technologies. (April 2010). Retrieved 6 December, 2010, from Accenture’s website: http://www.accenture.com/NR/rdonlyres/CDD96F68-3A58-44E3-A7CC-A4956806486F/0/Accenture_PetroleumReview_DisruptiveFuel_APR23.pdf

Sixth Journal Entry Set Chapter Author: T. Mazzarol Date: 2008 Title of the Chapter: Chapter 2 – Entrepreneur mind and action Book Title: Entrepreneurship and Innovation: A Manager’s perspective Page number in the book: 25 Place of publication: Prahran VIC 3181 Australia Publisher: Tilde University Press Chapter Author: T. Mazzarol Date: 2008 Title of the Chapter: Chapter 3 – The Entrepreneurial Process Book Title: Entrepreneurship and Innovation: A Manager’s Perspective Page number: 57 Place of Publication: Prahran VIC 3181 Australia Publisher: Tilde University Press