1.     What are the connections between the disciplines addressing entrepreneurship at ODU?

Essentially, entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial ventures are rarely, if ever, a single-subject matter. You will be pulling knowledge and resources from many different schools of thought, and aspects of the world like IT, business, marketing, psychology, and the like to make a venture successful.

2.     Is entrepreneurship an art or science?

I would honestly argue it’s a little bit of both since it’s interdisciplinary in nature. It’s a science in the way that is must pull from aspects like IT, business, and other sciences to succeed. Basically, you can get it down to a science to be successful, but it has some flexibility to be considered which is where the art aspect comes in. Art is flexible by nature; art has no defined path or algorithm to it. You can be creative and improvise with it, which is what you can do with entrepreneurship. Now, just like it being a science, it must have some structure, so it can’t be completely improvised.

3.     How is failure good?

Failure is a teacher. When you fail, you can learn several lessons from it: where did it go wrong, how could I have done better, how can I change this so that next time I can succeed. Failure not only points out the flaws in your idea but gives you the experience necessary so that next time you have an idea, you don’t have to fail as much.

4.     What have I learned from failing?

What I’ve learned from failure is that it’s fine to start over and try again. It’s basically like practice; if you keep doing it, you’ll get better overtime, but if you suck at something and give up on it, you’ll suck at it forever. The only real failure is giving up doing something. Taking a break is fine and natural, but giving up isn’t.

5.     What ethical issues might arise related to what I am working on?

The topic my group has in mind so far has to do with supply chain protections. The biggest ethical concerns that come to mind for supply chain are safety conditions for workers, fair labor, and corruption. It’s unethical to ask people to work in unsafe, or dirty conditions, and to ask them to work harder, longer days without proper rest, compensation, and days off. It’s not only a recipe for burnout and low morale, but it’s a proven fact that the damage it can do to a person’s psyche can have unpredictable, but often dangerous results. As for corruption, if managers or workers are skimming profits, or cheating a business or vendor out of their profits, they need to at least be given the chance to correct their behavior. All corruption does is cause ripples of troubles that spread throughout an enterprise.