Supporting emerging entrepreneurs (page 2 of 2)

These are learning, focus, and growth:

1.The first of the outputs is learning

, and it is concerned with ensuring that there is some documentation of experiences, lessons learned, information and records available, and the intelligence gathered in support of the student's entrepreneurial activities. Common deliverables in this regard are business plans that are created by students at fixed points of the curriculum.

2. The second output is focus

, or the specification of vision, setting of priorities, ensuring of strategic direction and the existence of a plan of operation. This area of focus feeds into the process of career counseling where students are mentored through deciding on a possible career path.

3. The third output is growth.

Growth is concerned with untapped opportunities, the expansion of the students competency set and his/her area of responsibility, acquiring new equipment or facilities, increasing the customer base or entering a new market, and so forth. A major benefit from this output is growth in existing businesses that students are involved in.

Our approach represents a logical and systematic process for taking an emerging entrepreneur's environment apart, evaluating and understanding it, and then putting it back together again. Importantly, mentors follow the logic of the model, starting with the core, and then only examining other internal issues. After this external relationships and activities are reviewed.

The mentor adheres to the discipline of this approach in spite of some potential resistance from the student, who is likely to want to focus only on a particular interest at a point in time. This disciplined approach is facilitated by the use of detailed course guides that clarify the value of a specific learning activity in the process of realising graduate outcomes for students. Some of the areas are investigated simultaneously.

The three layers and the various sub-components of the model are not independent. For instance, an examination of record keeping and financial management issues can help clarify problems in production, operations and marketing. Similarly, the assessment of marketing and customer issues may serve to identify a problem with required infrastructure.

These inter-dependencies are reflected in the mentor's review of the student's development towards becoming an entrepreneur. Once the mentor has moved through the three layers of the model, the mentor conducts a detailed review of the internal consistency among the seven sub-components of the model. Those areas least consistent with the others are identified and supported.

Our model allows faculty mentors at SHC to clearly distinguish problems along the route to developing as an entrepreneur from symptoms from causes. Furthermore, it enables mentors to establish clear cut priorities in terms of where they, and the student as an emerging entrepreneur, should focus developmental activities. Finally, the model is instrumental in helping students to better understand his/her own environment, and to harvest it more effectively and efficiently.