Wednesday, February 1, 2012

New Ideas on Teaching Entrepreneurship

The Ateneo Graduate School of Business Advantage

Our REE conference in Bangkok Thailand started at l000 am at the Study Room of Shangrila Hotel.  The hotel, while luxurious costs 50% less than the Seoul Hotel.  The breakfast is great too.

I was seated on the table where Dr. Antonio del Carmen of ME, Glen San Luis, executive director of CCE, Prof Tommy Lopez guru of ME, Hans from the Netherlands and Dr.Shigeo Kagami of University of Tokyo were seated.  Dr Kagami and I were the first to be seated and he sat besides me to engage me in conversation.  Dr. Kagami is US educated, runs tech and entrepreneurship courses in Japan and runs an incubator.

The speakers who had the most impact:

l.  Tina L. Seelig.   She is the Executive Director of Standford Technology Venture Program of STVP.  She and Edward Rubesch, the MC opened the conference.  Tina made two exercises:

       l.  The jogging around the room to see who comes from what countries:  India, Indonesia, US, Thailand, Japan etc.  That raised the energy level of the participants.

      2.  The what can you do to improve the id exercise.  I was paired with Truc Dao Phan, a very young student fromVietnam.  We were asked to do a prototype on how we can do a better id to start a conversation. I did not realize that doing a prototype was stressful.  It is something that I do regulary in my subject in GROUP CREATIVE ACTIVITIES.  I think the best one was the flower shaped id with petals containing information about the wearer.

2.  Peter Kelly.  He is the Director of Education Experience Design  of Aalto Ventures Program. He discussed the role of Design in Entrepreneurship (as in Stanford Design School.  That the future of business in the 2lst century is no longer technology but design.)

He proposed that entrepreneurship should be accompanied by IDEATION, coming from intution and asking WHY not.  INNOVATION is for engineers, and answers the question why.  And must answer the question, has it worked before (and thus does not have much impact, and less spectacular)

He suggests the enterpreneurship, design  schools must have less schoolrooms but rather more studios and kitchen.  Ideation involves the production of ARTEFACTS, TAKING RISKS, TRIAL AND ERROR, and resources.

His exercise, in his term was spectacular.  For ideation, he had pictures, strawberry, onions, pepper, cheese and a refrigerator. The task was to have two dishes:  one salty and one sweet, using the ingredients described under time pressure.

Our table came up with the following dishes:

l.  Pizza with Strawberry as the main toppings, with pepper, cheese, onions;

2.  Passion Gazpacho Soup.

3.  Omelet with Strawberry

and for the dessert, spaghetti with chocolate bars topped with strawberry.  Hmm that was yummy.  We had to ask for chocolate from Peter. For spaghetti, we used rubber bands.

Other groups used a lot of paper for the foodstuff;  we had more food ingredients.

Dr. Shigeo, Tommy and I were the chef.  I think we did great.

I think we managed this one well because, I have been used to this prototyping thing.

The idea of limited time and resources brings out the best in entrepreneurs. 

So Timmons is right, enterepreneurship is about doing something from nothing, rather than just talking

Peter said we were spectacular.  In the absence of  a kitchen and utensils, just using scissors, I think we approached the level of most nearly like delicious dishes.









"New ideas create more and better new products and services; create more wealth."

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