Category Archives: Enterprise Education

Blog, Enterprise Education, Skills Development

The five types of student entrepreneur

After working with over 20,000 students in the last ten years, I have started to stereotype those coming through into five simple student entrepreneur categories. There is no real theory and a great amount of research here, but I just wanted to share my thoughts and observations on these student entrepreneurs.

Wanta-preneur

This group of people want to mega rich, famous and of course a owner of a super big business. They just want it all! Yet hard work, planning and dedication to entrepreneurship is not at the core of their motivations. They sometimes do start businesses, normally with co-founders who do all the work, while they talk about their business, the people they know and the mega plans they have.

Pros : Great talker who other may believe
Cons : Lacks hard work and dedication

Business-Anarchistic-preneur

Staying the same is not an option, so these people think of distributive technology, business models and taking all the biggest businesses, traditional methods and societies. They know that they will succeed as its only there ability to change the world that will save it.

Pros : Out of the box thinking
Cons : Others don’t take them seriously, just too radical

Social Entrepreneur

This group not only want to start a business but one that helps others. They have great amounts of passion, dedication and drive to see this business idea into a fully developed business. These people understand the need to develop others, work in teams and share the value of their business with as many people as possible.

Pros : A Team player
Cons : Takes too long as brings too many people with them

Geek-preneur

The richest people are Geeks, so why not start the the next Microsoft, Apple or Facebook. These people can make technology work for them and create small dynamic businesses which engage users throughout the world in their dream creation.

Pros : Easy to start boot strapped business
Cons : Lacks people skills to engage others

Just-do-It-preneur

This group just get on with it, never thinking for one moment they can’t. What they lack in skills, knowledge and network, they balance with the shear determination and brut force. They are the bull in the china shop style of entrepreneurship.

Pros : Self belief and determination to make it a success
Cons : Lacks style and skills which makes others believe

As with all people and businesses it about having the team, a set of skills and maybe every business should have a mix of these.

 

So which type of student entrepreneur are you?

Blog, Enterprise Education, Skills Development

The process of developing a business plan

When I look at the process of creating a new venture, I often see people forget some of the basic elements in the process of developing a business plan.

The first three steps are:

  1. Opportunity discovery,
  2. Business modelling
  3. Business planning

 

Opportunity Discovery

The best idea is the one which provides the best business opportunity. Therefore we are not looking for any idea but an idea which provides the best opportunity.

Therefore the process of ideation captures the current industry trends and the competitor in and around them. The technology innovation currently applied to this market and the outlook we see in terms of costs and market adoption trends.

The creative problem solving can not sit in isolation and needs to be surrounded by the context for it to be applied to create an outstanding  value proposition later on.

Business Modelling

For most people this is filling out the Business Model Canvas, a tools which provides a powerful view of the business model. But again this is completed in isolation within a full understanding the ecosystem, actors and their behaviours.

The process of modelling is about understanding the relationship between the key actors within the ecosystem, it doesn’t matter if its designing a new road bridge, a tv or a new products. This dynamic relationship is so important in understanding the processes and metrics to be put in place to plan the business.

Business Planning

The core aspects of Business Planning are risk analysis, scenario planning and financial planning. Once these are done the rest, include product design, marketing strategy and operations are secondary.

All investors want to know you can manage this risk and act accordingly.

The process of developing a business plan are about understanding the dynamic relationship and how to mitigate the risks they pose to your business. Its not an exercise in writing or filling out the right amount of words in the right sections.

 

The process of developing a business plan is simple yet so many people get it wrong. Just remember to understand the dynamic nature of business and that your business startup will be connected with these and therefore needs to adjust to maintain a successful course through the early years.

Blog, Enterprise Education, Motivation Techniques, Resources

5 places to run your startup business, on the cheap

What places to run your startup business?

When starting out, you only seem to have costs and they keep coming in. The five set of fees are:

  1. Office space
  2. Utilities
  3. Incorporating and legal fees
  4. Accounting costs for the first year in business
  5. Payroll for employees

So one of the main costs is office space and if we can reduce that we can survive for longer and hopefully last until we start making more money than we spend.

  1. Run your startup business from home. This won’t work for every business, but if it will work for yours it can save you a pile of cash on utilities and rent.
  2. Coffee Shop’s are happy to have you and have good wifi. You also get to meet like minded people and can invite people for meetings in the coffee shop.
  3.  Look out for a business incubator which helps startups by providing them space, mentors and events. These are normally free for a set period.
  4. Spare desk in someone else’s office. A lot of businesses have space and if you can use one or two desks in return for some form of payment, even your manpower it will be cheaper and more flexible.
  5. Find a co-working space where you can rent space as-needed for much less than the cost of a traditional commercial office which is normally looking for 3-5 years.

Just remember when looking for office space its “Location, location, location.” , which drives home just how important location is when choosing a space for your startup business.

Blog, Enterprise Education, Entrepreneurial Mindset

Entrepreneurship as a career choice – Millennial Entrepreneurs

The Millennials are making the career choice of being an entrepreneur.

Promoting entrepreneurship as a viable career option and supporting self-employment on an higher educational campus has both community and economic relevance. The role of higher educational campuses to nurture and develop the entrepreneurial and innovative talent is foundation to creating the next generation within our community. The trend is for millennial University students to be empowered to come out of university with an understanding of entrepreneurship, with a view that these skills and knowledge allow them to make informed life choices.

Millennial Entrepreneurs

Our Millennial Entrepreneurs understand how to start new businesses and take on the risk and rewards of being an founder.  Entrepreneurs are the dreamers who are fuelled by the desire to pioneer, lead, innovate and invent disruptive technologies and products. The tech savvy millennial wants to work the way then want, the hours they want make the opportunities they want.

In the 1980s we saw a massive increase in self employed and now their children are following the footsteps or the desire of their parents and opted for a career that was decided by their elders. However, the opening up of the world economy during the 1990’s and the great advances in tech field has had far reaching impact on the way business was done world over.

Millennial Entrepreneurs Motivation

These momentous changes are opening up new business creation tools and unexplored business models for the young and ambitious who were not satisfied being put in a single career for their entire life. Young people are drawn towards entrepreneurship because:

  1. The desire to be their own boss and have better control
  2. The motivation to take risks in the changed global environment where unexplored new opportunities were present
  3. The ambition to develop and execute a plan right from the ground level
  4. The aim to do well financially and take their growth trajectory to unprecedented level

New Venture Creation (NVC) Programmes are available to equip nascent entrepreneurs with the skills necessary to start a scalable business.  These university degrees have been developed by entrepreneurs to support Millennial Entrepreneurs on the entrepreneurial journey, and to develop the entrepreneur within  alongside an in-depth understanding of how to start and run a business.

Students will be in a class with like-minded Millennial Entrepreneurs developing a strong network of entrepreneurs. Throughout the  degree, the focus will progressively move from entrepreneurial mindset, creativity, venture feasibility and marketing, to business operations, stakeholder communications, sales and growth strategies.

Blog, Data Analytics, Enterprise Education

What skills do you need to be a successful Entrepreneur?

When starting a business, we all come at from different directions, at different ages, different backgrounds. There are so many skills required to run your own startup. Successful Entrepreneur skills, are the ones you’ll need to run everything from serving customers to preparing your accounts. Below are listed 13  core skills required in running a startup business and how you might develop your core skill set further. The successful Entrepreneur skills are:

  1. Opportunity Recognition – The recognition of new markets and opportunities, such as a new customers’ need is core to becoming a successful entrepreneur.
  2. Ideation – Ideation is the creative process of generating, developing, and communicating new ideas. Always write your ideas down in a book and come back to them when you can do something about it.
  3. Research & Analysis – This involves both qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis. Understanding the customers, competitors and costs structure are important in making a startup work.
  4. Resources Identification – Working out the resource requirements then leads to determining what types of resources you will need to start-up and operate your startup.
  5. Risk Analysis – This process of defining and analysing the dangers to your startup business posed by potential natural and human-caused events.
  6. Tactical Planning – As a startup the horizon is low, so focus on this process of outlining business plans for the coming year. This differs from strategic planning as strategic planning encompasses longer-term goals that reflect the company’s direction and its purpose outlined in its mission statement.
  7. Operational Design – Operational design is the first level of strategy implementation and rests upon operational art. This cognitive approach uses your skill, knowledge, experience, creativity, and judgment to develop operations to organise and employ the resources available.
  8. Business Modelling – A business model is the map of how a startup generates revenue and makes a profit from its value proposition. From this a business plan and processes may be derived.
  9. Cash Flow – In the early days of a business maintaining a healthy cash level, liquidity ensure the business survives. Cash is king.
  10. Team Building – As a new business building a team is important, which requires various types of activities used to enhance social relations and define roles within team are developed and maintained.
  11. Branding – Branding is one of the most important aspects of any business, it develops you icon and a connection with your suppliers, customers and financial stakeholders.
  12. Marketing – The communications of you value proposition should generate leads which can be turned into sales.
  13. Negotiating & Selling – Getting the right prices from your suppliers and selling at the right price is fundamental for a startup to grow. These skills go hand in hand together.