Hey! Me again who else? So the I.D.I.O.T. is back and
is now kicking! Ehem let us go straight to point, or not. So here I am again
with yet another blissful reflection (or not) about our discussion last June
24, 2014 on our subject Technopreneurship (just go back a few pages to know
what technopreneurship is or heck just search the internet but to just give you
a brief idea, if you did not know yet, it is basically just the combination of
the two words "technology" and "entrepreneurship") And yey!
Guess what? Contrary to the two previous meeting, this time I did my best to
come on time and it bore fruit. I’m not late! Yahoo! Let us celebrate! LOL
achievement unlocked! Anyway again first things first, the ritual for all the
late comers and the so called "virgins" (first time being under our
facilitator) were performed xD. Well there were still a lot of them (even
though it's already our third meeting and that they already know what the
consequences are) so the performance goes on for quite awhile but hey it's fun!
And gosh it’s more fun if you are not one of them (hahaha nagsalig!). And because
of that... tenenen... the consequences for being late on the next meeting has
changed. Late comers will now treat the whole class, and of course including
our facilitator, breakfast. Gosh! (in Goofy's voice). I did not agree to this!
Joke! Well I think there is no other choice it's either say yes or YES! And hey
this is quite reasonable because I myself skipped my breakfast just to arrive
in class on time. But I wonder what kind of breakfast would the late comers
feed us (assuming I am not one of them xD) because imagine feeding almost 70
people even if they are going to budget at least Php 10.00 for each of us it's
still going to cost more or less Php 70.00 (obviously) and imagine if you are
the only who is late. Yikes! No, just no. That is going to cost me so there is
no way I'm going to be late next meeting and I can assure you that and that’s a
promise. Believe it! (I’m actually referring this to Naruto’s famous English
dub quote hehe) There is still the Field Trip & Seminars to worry about and
don’t get me started on “it’s only Php 10.00 or Php 70.00” because remember a
thousand would never be completed without a cent. And the same logic could be
applied for the payment of our FTS. So I really need to save especially for the
packet money. This is getting really unrelated to the actual topic so enough of
that ludicrous chit chat and let us head down and discuss what happened or
rather what we discussed during our meeting proper.
(I know that I am supposed to point out what I liked
and what I least liked during the discussion with 2500 words each respectively
but I just have to say that “What’s not to like?” so I will just be kind of
“storytelling” what happened and give my point of view and opinions about all
of it so here goes nothing)
After discussing the new consequences for the tardy
people, for starters, well, we continued our discussion last meeting which is
the SEED model. So now let’s talk about the SEED model. S – stands for
“Self-Mastery”. First E – stands for “Environment Mastery”. The second E –
stands for “Enterprise Mastery”. And last but not the least, D – which stands
for “Development”. Based on what our
facilitator discussed, Self-Mastery is a passion that comes from knowing
yourself. Discover your weaknesses and strengthen your most valuable skills and
capabilities. Knowing yourself better before anything else is very important.
This is like mastering your skills and talents and taking it to the next level
and the same time strengthening your weaknesses to decrease you vulnerability
when a problem comes. Knowing yourself much better can help you, as an
individual, determine your skills and how far your creativity takes you in
innovating something new, something original with a purpose. As I said before
(in my previous reflections), I did have regrets choosing this line of course.
I could have been an artist, a detective, a technician because I know I have
the passion for arts, and even though being a detective is not a game I think
it’s fun and sort of entertaining in a way, and most of all I have the knack of
tinkering through broken things and fix it so I could have also been a
technician. And now I’m thinking why not bring those passion and talents to the
IT industry? It’s all about how you handle yourself in different situations with
the best of your abilities. This is a very big help for me and for us to
discover what will be our possible future in this area of Information
Technology. In order to be a good technopreneur, you should master and know
yourself better. So how can one master oneself? There are a lot of ways to know
yourself much better. One of this is the Intelligence Quotient (IQ) test. While
your IQ does not really determine your success it’s still essential to know
your brain’s limits and thinking capacity. To be honest I was actually planning
on taking up Bachelor of Science in Computer Science (in UP because I just want
to be boastful xD) but well I did research about it and thought that it’s
beyond what my mind could comprehend LOL. So I decided to take a little (just a
little) precaution and ended up with Information Technology here in USeP which
is still ah no comment. With that, knowing your brain’s thinking power could
also help you make better decisions and could help you especially in analyzing
and taking up risks (Risk Management). How so? This is just my opinion but
think about it, you determine risks and spotted one. The first thing you need
to do is analyze it and if you know that the problem is beyond what you could
solve you can come up with more alternatives. There are always ways right?
Knowing yourself is not just about knowing how smart or intelligent you are but
also on how emotionally stable you are. There are Emotional Quotient (EQ) tests
for this matter. Knowing your emotional stability or firmness is important
because it helps you determine or on how you react on certain situations. It
helps you manage your stress when something out of your control went wrong. And
remember stress management is very important because if all your stress builds
up it might lead to depression and we all know where depression goes as far as
I know a lot of them ended in suicides. Well that was completely unrelated to
the topic but I added it because I think it was worth mentioning. There are
also these what we call personality tests. These tests are the best way to
determine who you really are and also with these you can improve your overall
personality by developing your negative sides. I don’t intend to push anyone to
change their bad personalities but still it could help you become a better
person as a whole. I’m not saying that we should negate all our negative
attitudes and does not recommend because sometimes it is already part who we
are as person and a man who is too good is just too good to be true and it
might label you as a hypocrite and make you a bit of dull or shallow person.
Perhaps just balance all positives and negativities because as the old text I
happen to stumble upon before in a book or video game I guess - light would not
come without darkness and chaos would not come without peace, they can’t stand
alone which means they coexist with each other. And that were just ways on
knowing yourself much better but how do we practice self mastery? When you say
self mastery it means to master yourself which means you need to acquire
complete knowledge about yourself. Become proficient, know your insides and
outs, your frontwards and backwards. Understand yourself and set your goals and
envision them to make a clear view of what you really want. Know your strengths,
your weaknesses. Polish those and success may come and shine brightly to your
tomorrow. Knowing yourself means knowing you really want to in your life and
the things that you really don’t want to achieve. It will simply guide you to
your true happiness. Isn’t that right? With all of that, what really is a self
mastered person?
A self-mastered person, according to our facilitator:
· does not need high IQ
· does need high EQ and
AQ
· is naturally a/an:
o performer –
competitive and efficient
o epicure –
sensual and cheery
o boss – takes
charge and loves a good fight
· is whole-brained
· has a personal vision
and knows strengths and weaknesses
Once you overcame and answered all that you will a
step closer to mastering yourself and the SEED curriculum. If you got all of
what I was trying to say then I guess it is okay to move on the next letter.
The first letter E in the SEED model refers to the Environmental Mastery. It
usually involves generating business ideas, plans, and seeking for
opportunities out from our environment through different style like serendipity
walks, crisis, trends and anything under the sun. Just like what we did in our
previous activity, we visited business establishments, observe these places,
look for flaws or rather any inconveniences, and think of something we can
innovate to simply business operation and make the customer’s life easy and
comfy. What can we do for our environment (referring to the surroundings or
conditions in which we live in not the natural world)? What can we change in
order to change our way of life for the better? We have a lot of crazy ideas
but which f it would guarantee a change? Those wild and creative ideas are just
examples of what could do to contribute in today’s technological era if we ever
manage to pursue it and if, of course, our idea is actually pretty decent,
original and full of purpose. Every one of us has experienced crisis and
hardships. From that, we could make it a motivation to create and innovate
ideas pertaining those hardships we encountered in our life. We need not to be
afraid of failures. Instead use those failures as fuels to light up your
burning desire to succeed. Take it as lesson learned, never make it happen
again. Move forward and dream high. Our own hobbies could also help us think of
a playful, unique but also an idea with a lot of purpose. Just open your
imaginative mind to create something new which could progress the quality of
life. Another input to Environmental Mastery is the awareness towards our
environment. What issues or problems do our country or simply our community is
facing right now? Which problems needs urgency and is also timely to be solved
right here right now? Think of ideas
that could help solve those problems and it should not be a temporary one but
one that may change our way of life because that’s what technology brought to
us: it changed our lives for the better. Imagine without Microsoft Word or
simply a personal computer I would be writing this reflection on a typewriter
or even worse on a sheet of paper and manually counting the words from one to
5000. That would be such a hassle and it might come true if can’t finish this
on time lol. Well that was just one of the many scenarios we can visualize on
how well the technology changed our lives. Some may say it only made us a lot
lazier, that would be a bit true lol, but that is the point right? No? Well let
us just stick to the fact that the technology made our lives much easier
(Hayahay!).
An environment-mastered person
· understands the
industry he/she is in
· sees the opportunities,
not the problems
· is on top of the
situation instead of being under the
situation
· is the
organization/industry innovator and strategist
And I think that wraps up the E on SEED which is the
Environmental Mastery. Let us now move on to the next letter in the SEED model.
The second letter E stands for Enterprise Mastery. This mastery covers how to
(or you should) run a business. Our facilitator stated that this mastery
pertains to the knowledge of the different enterprise disciplines such as
creating the business, marketing management, operations management, financial
management, and lastly the risk management. The word itself describes an idea
on how to run business operations such as companies and marketing, and other
business establishments. Mastering this mastery would be the easiest one out of
all that was mentioned (at least for me). Why? My only reason is that mastering
this, unlike self mastery which you need to master on your own, you can master
it together with the team mates or work mates in the industry you decided to
venture into. A lot of people in the same industry can guide and help you
through your adventure and some may even fight and come along with you. Like
how you started a Role Playing Game (RPG) alone with a Non Playing Character
(NPC) guiding you until such time you met friends along your journey who will
also fight with you side by side until the final boss and complete the game.
The only difference is that in real it does not end that short or simply put
not until you are dead. True story bro. Anyway the Enterprise Mastery mostly
deals with the industry you want to take as a path to your success. In this
phase mastery you also need to master or know about what kind of industry you
put yourself into. What does it sell? Who are your customers? What is its aim?
How would you sell your product? How would the people know your product exists?
There are a lot of questions that needs to answered in this phase that pertains
to the industry you will take on and because this is a technopreneurship
subject let us say that that industry your taking on is an ICT or other
technology related business. You need to have a vast knowledge regarding the
technology or the technological product you are selling and the people who
might use it or your target and possible audiences because it will give you an
edge on how you plan your resources and helps you move your pawns in a
strategic pattern (metaphorically speaking). This will help you plan out your
next actions. In an online game they tend to test things out release a patch,
receive feedbacks, implement yet again another system or redo the previous one
in order to make their gamers happy and contented for the game to live and
survive. That was just an example of how you model your development cycle (and
base on my example they were using spiral model just search it up on the
internet if you are curious as what that is).
According to our facilitator:
An enterprise-mastered person:
· understands and integrates the functions of
management (marketing, human resource, operations, and finance)
·
understands and integrates the process of management (planning,
organizing, directing, and controlling)
·
leads and inspires rather than manage
Mastering it would be a very step closer towards
completing the SEED curriculum (obviously) and will head down to the last
phase. The last letter is the D which stands for development of business plan.
Our facilitator told us and discussed to us that:
Business plans covers:
·
writing the business plan
·
presenting and depending the business plan
·
adding refinements to the presented business plan
Who wants the D? This phase may be last stage in the
curriculum but remember that after this is the real start of your journey. If
we reference it to movies and tv series the SEED was just the prologue and what
comes next the real chapter where the plot explained in the prologue will be
put into use. Which means the masteries you mastered in the SEED curriculum
will really be helpful in the upcoming challenges you may face in the industry
you got yourself into. Anyway, the development phase refers to the development
of the business itself. Planning the business starts here where you need to
brainstorm with your team mates, write your ideas, present and defend it. This
is where you put all the masteries you had just mastered to use. Refine those
masteries through development. From the word development itself, you need to
develop your idea. As they say it all starts with an idea. With that idea in
mind create a business proposal or any sort of proposal pertaining to that
idea. Gather all of the relevant information like how can you handle this, do
your risk analysis and management, its feasibility and usefulness, and
especially the revenue rate of the business. This might be the most rigid phase
in the entire SEED curriculum because as I said just a little earlier it will
use all the masteries mentioned before. This phase could also refer to the
actual development of the project or business proposed. So can you or rather
can we do it? Are we up for the challenge and master each one of it
progressively? If I am to be asked then I think I will pass… joke… I will
definitely take on the challenge, master all of it to the best I can, and let
the SEED sprout and maybe sometime in the future it will bore a fruit, no not
just a fruit but fruits… the fruits of my labor. I will accept the challenge so
will you?
After the discussion of the SEED model or curriculum
we went ahead and discussed the four types of entrepreneurship. The four types
are the Incremental, Imitative, Rent Seeking, and Innovative entrepreneurships.
Let us first discuss the incremental type of entrepreneurship. The incremental
type is a routine business which is a business wherein operations are daily
repetitive tasks that keep the business going; such as general accounting,
customer service and technical support, coffee shop and anything that has (from
the word itself) routine. For example, the accounting department must keep
track of all incoming payments from customers and all outgoing payments for
expenses. Common operation expenses include rental fees for an office building,
salaries for employees and utility bills. Continuous production of products and
output of services are also part of operations[1]. So it is also safe to say that Incremental
entrepreneurships are businesses which modest novelty such as the new Business
Process Outsourcing (BPO) businesses. Incremental are also the common type
which we can find everywhere. Sari sari store, car wash, carinderia, and a lot
more common businesses we see today are all incremental. If you already got
what an Incremental entrepreneurship is then let us move on to the next one.
Another type of entrepreneurship is the Imitative one. The concept of this type
of entrepreneurship is simple, from the word itself, to imitate. It is the
imitation of business venture, business model, and business template.
Entrepreneurs who adopt this kind of entrepreneurship are called imitative
entrepreneurs. Imitative entrepreneurs are characterized by readiness to adopt
successful innovations inaugurated by successful innovating entrepreneurs. Imitative
entrepreneurs do not imitate the changes themselves, they only imitate
techniques and technologies innovated by others. Such entrepreneurs are
significant for under-developed economies because they put such economies on
high rate of economic development. Entrepreneurs prefer to imitate the
technology already existing somewhere in the world. However, the talent of
imitative entrepreneurs should not be under-estimated. Even imitative
entrepreneurs are revolutionary and agents of change. They have ability to do
things which have not been done before even though, unknown to them, the
problem may have been solved in the same way by others. Innovative entrepreneur
is creative, while imitative entrepreneur is adoptive [2]. Examples of
businesses that adopts this kind of entrepreneurship are another branch of a
specific business and franchised operations. We can also see a lot of
businesses with this kind of operations such as Minute Burger, Burger time, and
lot of our favorite (?) and famous fast food chains like Jollibee, Mc Donalds,
KFC, and many more. Although these can still be considered as Incremental since
they are routine business but they are still considered imitative since they
are just branches who imitate the business plan, model, and template of the
very main branch. Imitative is really easy understand I think since you can
already define it from its name alone which is imitative. And to add a lot of
the successful entrepreneurs out there are imitative entrepreneurs. So now let
us discuss about the third type of entrepreneurship which is the Rent Seeking.
Rent Seeking entrepreneurship are businesses that utilizes standards,
regulations and laws to share in value of enterprise. A business is rent
seeking when a company, organization or individual uses their resources to
obtain an economic gain from others without reciprocating any benefits back to
society through wealth creation. An example of rent-seeking is when a company
lobbies the government for loan subsidies, grants or tariff protection. These
activities don't create any benefit for society, they just redistribute
resources from the taxpayers to the special-interest group [3]. A good example
of this kind of businesses is the Coca cola export which was also mentioned by
our facilitator. I hope you get what a rent seeking entrepreneurship is with
that explanation so we could move on. Shall we? Okay so we are on to our last
but not the least type of entrepreneurship which is the Innovative type.
Innovative entrepreneurship are businesses based on an innovation. A new kind
of business that is proposed and later imitative entrepreneurship will copy it
if successful. It is base on an idea, idea that is centered with a revolution
in mind. Entrepreneurs who ventured into the world of Innovative technopreneurship
are called Innovating entrepreneurs. Innovative entrepreneurs are generally
aggressive and possess the art of cleverly putting the attractive possibilities
into practice. An innovating entrepreneur is one who introduces new goods,
inaugurates new methods of production, discovers new market and re-organises
the enterprise. He arranges money, launches an enterprise, assembles the
various factors, chooses the competent managers and sets his enterprise go.
Schumpeter's entrepreneur is of this type. His entrepreneur belongs to that
nation which has wide industrial base, modern banking facilities, rich
infrastructure, up to date technology and the like. Innovative entrepreneurs do
not exist in developing economies where lack of capital, technological know-how
blocks the path of innovativeness. In developed countries, people are highly
developed and consistently look forward for change. They want to consume such
products which do not commonly exist in the world. They want progress as they
have achieved high level of development. Innovating entrepreneur played a key
role in the rise of modern capitalism, through their enterprising spirit, hope
of making money, and ability to recognize and exploit opportunities [2]. From
all of the four kinds entrepreneurship we discussed (there are actually many if
you look up and search the internet, as they say, go Google it!) in my own
personal opinion, Innovative entrepreneurship is the most promising one. It is
really hard to come up with a unique, awesome, and full of purpose and
especially business oriented ideas (base on my experience) and it amazes me how
they can come up with such. They think really vast and wide, extending outside
the box and I do not know if I could become one of the innovative type because
I really doubt I am. I am only an artisan, not an artist. What is the
difference between an artisan and an artist? An artist creates his own
masterpiece base on his ideas while an artisan draws or creates art with the
ideas of others. So if ever I become an entrepreneur in future (which would not
happen because I do not intend to) I would be the imitative type well I already
why, it is because I am only an artisan. I am not bringing myself down I am
just evaluating myself base on my capabilities because I do not really have a
creative mind. I can say I am a bit smart, average but that are not enough to
be innovative but I am still going to do my best in this subject to submit the
best of the best innovation which is kind of unlikely but who cares I can dream
and I want to dream right now because I am getting a bit tired and my English
is kind of sucking too hard now LOL. What does that even mean? Anyway the
innovative entrepreneurs are really something ad I really simply admire their
vast and wide thinking capacity. I wish I had. Oh and haha I was kind of
practicing Self Mastery there for a while. Calculating my capabilities and
coming up with what I want and do not want to do. I do not want to write
anymore LOL jokes aside I really do not want to be an entrepreneur hehe. The
only thing that is present inside my heart pertaining to entrepreneurs is
admiration and nothing more. Enough of that I do not want to be an entrepreneur
and that is that. Case closed. So let me share now the activity we last
meeting.
So last meeting we had this certain activity where
there are three situations or cases from which we need to draw of conclude our
own opinions on what should we do if we are on those situations. We were
divided into three groups and were asked to get a bond paper which is very rare
and ugh I really just did not have a bond paper and most of my classmates if
not did not have also so we were forced to buy and what is worse is that one
sheet cost us Php 2.00 ugh such a waste. Anyway the first group was asked to
share their opinions, ideas, or what they need to do in the first situation but
first they need to write it down the bond paper of course silly me. The first
situation is that if the father of the family does not have a job and the
family does not have any kind of business and you are just there watching your
father hopelessly searching for money to feed your stomachs. There answer was
not what I expected and it was not what our facilitator wanted to hear either.
Well for me I do not really know what to do if I were on that situation. First
of all I really can’t relate if it is between a father and child since I am
really that close to my father. And second I just did not really know what to
do LOL. But one thing I thought was why not start a business of some sort. I
mean I am (in the situation) is educated from what I have remembered and I
could use what I have learned in school to teach my father the same thing I
have learned in school but of course it should be business oriented since my
family needs money. Start small and you will end up big. Our facilitator also
quoted that “Give a man a fish and he will live for a day. Teach a man how to
fish and he will live forever (or until he dies)”. And that is really true
especially for those beggars on the street we see everyday who still has strong
bodies. Why not work rather than beg? Well it’s their choice but I hope their
mindset would change though but enough of that let us move on to the second
situation. I am on group two by the way so I am also part of the sharing of
ideas in the second situation. The second situation is that a person is a
graduate of any degree course but do not have the “pleasing personality” (and
most of them regard this as looks) that companies usually look for an employee.
If am actually in that situation I could really be frustrated I mean I have the
brain just don’t mind the looks! If face with that kind of situation then why
not just find a job online? Isn’t that more convenient? No boss to boss you
around ain’t it fun? LOL but still you need to be competent even if it’s online
and then when you earned enough money why not start a business of your own?
Become a the boss instead of just an employee! Show those who rejected you
who’s boss! But no revenge cause that will only mean trouble lol. Then the next
and the last group were to present their ideas about the third situation. I did
not really remembered what they shared that time so I’m just going to share my
own opinion. The third is that the people have jobs, however the payment is not
enough to sustain their everyday needs and are striking out or what we call
“nagwewelga” for their wages to increase. For me they don’t really have the
right to do that. I mean they chose that job so they have to live up to it. I
remember the time when there was a factory for Tupperware here in Davao. Then
because of the workers insisting that their pay should increase instead of
fulfilling their request they closed down. After that they were unemployed.
They should have think as one as the company. What effect would the company
suffer if ever they increase their wages? They should have thought more not
just selfishly thinking on what will be best for them. If they don’t like the
pay then simple just resign and find a better job or better yet start your own
business and discover how a pain running a company really is.
References:
[1] Mary Jane - The Difference Between Projects &
Routine
Business
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/difference-between-projects-routine-business-21340.html
[2] HRITESH D - What are the
different types of business entrepreneurs ?
http://www.publishyourarticles.net/knowledge-hub/entrepreneurship/what-are-the-different-types-of-business-entrepreneurs.html
[3] Investopedia.com
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rentseeking.asp
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