- What are the connections between the disciplines addressing entrepreneurship at ODU?
The seven main disciplines that should be carried out for entrepreneurship are the following:
You need the discipline to identify your ideal customer.
You need the discipline to develop a marketing plan. How will you generate a steady and predictable stream of new leads for your business?
You need the discipline to develop a complete sales system.
You need the discipline to be proactive rather than reactive.
You need the discipline to focus and refocus on the MOST important thing every hour of every day.
You need the discipline to settle in for the long term
You need the discipline to set aside dedicated time for yourself and enjoying your family.
These seven main disciplines should be carried out in any endeavor for entrepreneurship to raise the outcome for success. How this correlates with ODU is that they preach a very similar practice on how to carry out entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is celebrated and encouraged at ODU. However, there is a set of guardrails to help guide you in such a broad term. Entrepreneurship can be completed without using any discipline, but it will have a much lower success rate and overall lower sustainability. This is why I feel that ODU does a great job in teaching the healthy and sustainable way of entrepreneurship.
- Is entrepreneurship an art or science?
Drucker lays out his view of Entrepreneurship. “Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice. It has a knowledge base, of course, which this book attempts to present in an organized fashion. But in all practices, medicine, for instance, or engineering, knowledge in entrepreneurship is a means to an end. Indeed, what constitutes knowledge in a practice is largely defined by the end, that is by the practice. Hence a book like this should be backed by long years of practice.”
This quote does a fantastic job laying my perspective on this question. I feel similar to Drucker’s view on entrepreneurship. The claim is that it is neither an art nor a science. Instead, more of a practice. I think that this simple description gives a very accurate depiction of what entrepreneurship is as a whole. Entrepreneurship can have a lot of different avenunse that it can travel through. Tying it down to just a science base description or art is too narrow-minded. I feel that it should be left open if given a description on it. Describing it as a practice implies that you can apply this term to just about anything. Which, is very true. You can be an entrepreneur in just about anything.
- How is failure good?
A lack of success or failure. This is a description of failure, but this is a terrible way of perceiving it. Failure might not have a positive connotation but it shouldnt be frowned upon. Every human makes a mistake to lead to failure. Those takeaways are what you need to regroup and understand the issue. Once you understand the issue you can make adjustments to veer away from making the same mistake again. A lot of good things can come from failure. Failure can make you change how you think.
Failure should be perceived as this:
Failure is a redirection. It shows you where you shouldn’t be.
Failure is an opportunity. It’s a chance to reevaluate and come back stronger with better reasoning
Failure is not fatal. No matter how hard it may be know that failure simply means you get another shot to try it all again.
- What have I learned from failing?
Failure has changed my way of thinking completely. For example, before facing any type of academic success there were a lot of errors I made beforehand. I used to be a very unreactive student. Meaning, that I would push everything towards the last minute which would cause me to rush and create lackluster assignments. After racing terrible grades on these assignments I noticed that if I actually planned my week out in advance I can insure every assignment was given a fair amount of time for full completion. From there on, I was able to receive some academic slowly. The moral of the story is that failure always helps teach you a lesson on why things aren’t working the way they should.
- What ethical issues might arise related to what I am working on?
I see one main issue that might arise on what I am working on with my pitch. I feel that my putting my pitch into fruition is far more complex and has a set of its own challenges. Benign so young and approaching multi-million dollar entities seems almost impossible. Simply, because of my inexperience and my age. These traditional companies that have been around for years don’t necessarily have to agree with my ideas. Due to the fact that what they’ve been using and preaching has worked for so long. However, I feel that in newer companies would encourage my fresh mindset and ideas that will help them. This also way of traditional thinking has been frowned upon by these newer companies because they noticed that it has just stunted growth and sustainability. What these traditional companies tend to do is not be as proactive as they should because you should rather make changes sooner rather than later.