Sample MGN428 Developing Entrepreneurial Mindsets Assignment

MGN428 Developing Entrepreneurial Mindsets Assignment Sample

Assignment Brief

Weight 50%
Individual Task
Due Week 13
Max. 2500 words

In Brief

Throughout the unit you are required to reflect upon your entrepreneurial self and your entrepreneurial mindset and document these reflections in a report. Your report will comprise three components. First, you will reflect on a personality test around your entrepreneurial mindset and your social impact awareness taken at the beginning of the unit. Second, you will identify and interview an entrepreneur or intrapreneur and reflect upon this conversation. And third, you will reflect on a personality test to be taken at the end of the unit, and consideration of any changes in your entrepreneurial mindset throughout the unit. This final assessment will help you understand your journey in developing entrepreneurial skills and mindset.

Task Description

Self-reflection is the capacity of humans to exercise introspection and to attempt to learn more about their fundamental nature and essence. It is also a very powerful learning technique. In this Assessment, we ask you to focus your exploration lens onto yourself, away from the content of the unit itself.

There are three specific points along your MGN428 journey at which we request you to self- reflect, and document the thoughts you arrive at during these self-reflections.

The first point is the personality test that you undertake near the beginning of the unit. The purpose of this test is to understand your entrepreneurial orientation as informed by the answers you provide to a series of questions that are commonly used to this end. In your self- reflection at this first point, think about what you experienced in taking the test, and why you experienced these experiences. Also consider the results of the tests and evaluate their accuracy, as you see it. Do you think the results are a good reflection of your entrepreneurial orientation? What else did you learn about yourself from the taking of the test as well as its results? Your self-reflection should include these and other themes.

The second point of self-reflection will be made at a time that is convenient for you during the semester. For this exercise you are required to identify and arrange a conversation with an entrepreneur or intrapreneur. This individual could be someone you know very well (e.g. a family member or a friend), or someone in your more distant network or someone recommended to you. You may also tap into the network of QUT Entrepreneurship and the Foundry, which can connect you with someone to converse with. In your conversation with the entrepreneur or intrapreneur, find out about their journey. Why did they embark on this journey? What are their primary motivators? What have they learnt? When have they failed, and how did they recover? What were some of the successes they accomplished? Where are they today, and where do they want to be in the future? These are just some of the questions you may pose during the conversation. Once your conversation is complete, your task is to document your own thoughts about entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship. As you do this self- reflection, you may want to put yourself in the shoes of the person you conversed with, and consider how you may have reacted or behaved under the same circumstances. What would you have done differently? What would be your own strength areas, and also weak areas in experiencing such an entrepreneurial journey?

And finally, the third point of self-reflection is near the end of the semester, when the same personality test undertaken at the beginning will be retaken by yourself. In a similar fashion to your self-reflection exercise at the first point, conduct the same self-reflection once again. However, on this occasion, focus on the differences you observed in the testing process and the results of the test. How have you changed, and why do you think these changes have happened? And just as equally, in the instance where you observed no or little change, what are the reasons for this? As you answer these and other questions, look for the sources of explanation within yourself.

Please note that the process of self-reflection may not be straight forward to you. It is encouraged that you review the resources made available on Blackboard, although it is highly encouraged also that you explore resources beyond these to feel comfortable in how you will undertake the self-reflection exercise.
The report itself can be written as one comprehensive treatise of your self-reflections, or then a document divided into three sections reflecting the three points where you exercised self-n reflection. While there are no specific formatting guidelines, it is always good practice to produce a clear, easy to read and follow, and well-structured document. In terms of the language use, there is no requirement for a highly academic writing style, as the document is self-reflective text, and should come from within you, and be authentically written.

Solution

Introduction

The purpose of this self-reflection report is to understand my own entrepreneurial orientation at the beginning and end of the semester. In this regard, I have undertaken the Big Five Personality Test for analysing my orientation and further engaged in a meaningful conversation with an entrepreneur in my circle of acquaintances for exploring entrepreneurship.

Section 1: Personality Test at Beginning of Unit

Understanding entrepreneurial orientation has become significantly important for both individuals and companies to help in entrepreneurship development (Wales, 2016). It has often been considered as an essential factor helping in the successful development of new products or services, contributing towards high business performance and enhancing social performance. It also includes autonomy and aggressiveness as important factors to be included under entrepreneurial orientation (Cho & Lee, 2018). I have used the Big Five Personality Traits test for analysing my own entrepreneurial orientation. In this regard, the test has helped me to understand the presence of five traits in my behaviour or personality. These include openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism and agreeableness (Awwad & Al-Aseer, 2021). It has been observed that individual personality traits generate a significant impact on entrepreneurial alertness and intention by evaluating individual suitability to entrepreneurship. Thus, I have undertaken this test to explore my alignment towards entrepreneurship for assignment help.

While undertaking the Big Five Personality Traits test, I came across various types of questions. These questions were directed towards my relationship with peers, ability to understand my emotions, my personality and behaviour and others. Here, I experienced certain difficulties in answering some specific questions as I was unsure about my feelings towards them. In this regard, I had to select the “neutral” option for answering such questions as I was unable to analyse my own emotions, feelings or opinions towards myself regarding such questions. However, I felt it easier to answer questions about relationships with peers, taking up tasks, socializing and new experiences. Furthermore, the Big Five Personality assessment provided scores on the five major dimensions of my personality. This helped me to comprehend my own traits and behaviours associated with entrepreneurship development, alertness and orientation (Leutner, et al., 2014). I scored moderately high on openness dimension that depicts my tendency of thinking about abstract and complex things by being creative, intellectual and adventurous . This helps in entrepreneurship orientation as openness helps to generate new, creative and smart ideas. I scored high on conscientiousness as well, which shows that I emphasize on self-discipline and control for pursuing my goals (Leutner, et al., 2014). Scoring high on this dimension can have negative effect on my entrepreneurial orientation as I tend to be more organized and responsible, while entrepreneurship involves high uncertainty and disorderly things.

Besides, I scored low on extraversion that implies that I do not actively engage or socialize with people for earning any social rewards . While this can help me to generate more creative or innovative ideas for entrepreneurship, it can also be difficult for me to network with people in the professional industry. Moreover, I gained relatively high score in agreeableness that determines my tendency to put others’ needs before my own interests. This trait can be helpful for me in gaining cooperation of others during the entrepreneurship venture (Kerr, et al., 2018). However, high agreeableness can also make me less competitive, tough-minded or less sceptical, which might make it difficult for me to climb the corporate ladder. Lastly, I scored moderate in the neuroticism dimension, which shows that I have adequate capability of handling my negative emotions of stress, anxiety, fear or guilt . I need to focus on decreasing this dimension as high neuroticism can lead to excess stress when I face uncertain or unfavourable situations during entrepreneurship.

The Big Five Personality test has enabled me to better understand my own personality while looking at the different traits. I have come to understand my own strengths and weaknesses, thus, I can work on them in the future. It has further helped me to analyse how I can use specific traits for enhancing entrepreneurship orientation. I have become more aware about my own behaviours and actions and work on them accordingly to improve my entrepreneurial alertness. The test has made self-reflection more comprehensible for me to develop my entrepreneurial skills and abilities (Porter, 2017). I am now well accustomed with the fact that high agreeableness and neuroticism might not be helpful for me in the future if I tend to start my entrepreneurial venture. Here, I will focus on working on the same along with improving my conscientiousness. In the future, I will also try to strike a balance between being a highly introverted or extroverted person and instead, start networking for improving my entrepreneurial orientation. For developing an entrepreneurial mindset, I would also need to emphasize on being socially responsible and accountable towards my behaviour and actions. In this regard, I will learn to improve my skills and abilities so that I am able to contribute positively towards society and environment through my entrepreneurship venture. Thus, having widespread knowledge about my personality traits have now helped me to develop entrepreneurial orientation, which would further help in benefitting individuals and society.

Section 2: Conversation with Entrepreneur/Intrapreneur

During the middle of the semester, I arranged an interview with one of my acquaintances who has recently opened up a café shop in our locality. He has been working as an industry professional in the marketing department for a renowned organization for around ten years. However, the person has always dreamt of opening up his own business venture, which recently came true in the past six months. The café shop has been running well with college students, office goers, business men, family and friends’ groups visiting it often throughout all days of the week. I realized that arranging a conversation with this café owner would be beneficial for me to gain new perspectives on entrepreneurship orientation as well as knowing about starting a business venture. For this purpose, I conducted a meeting with him and requested to provide me with detailed insights about his experience of opening up the café. He was more than willing to cooperate and help me in this interview. I engaged in a detailed conversation for two weeks everyday to gain as much knowledge from him about entrepreneurship. Thus, this was of immense help to me as I learnt about the importance of entrepreneurship orientation and alertness, key entrepreneurship skills and developing such abilities in myself.

The café owner decided to start his own business venture in our locality that had no coffee shops and people generally preferring tea. Here, the café shop also serves tea alongside coffee to the customers along with a book store that provides them with the opportunity of enjoying their coffee or tea while reading a book. The owner made me realize about the importance of generating new ideas and using creativity for starting a business. Furthermore, he undertook the risk of opening a coffee shop in a place where individuals prefer tea. Here, no coffee shop was present, which presented an excellent opportunity to the person in starting one himself. I came to know that the main reason behind starting this venture was his love for coffee and passion of doing something on his own (Campos, 2017). These acted as motivators for the entrepreneur. Thus, he was willing to leave his secure job and follow that passion of starting his business venture. (It displayed the presence of innovativeness in his personality of inspiring new ideas Anwar, et al., 2022). The café owner also represented risk-taking behaviour by jumping for something uncertain my making resource commitments. His proactiveness has also been evident from this as it searched for opportunities and utilized them for the business venture. Thus, I could identify all the three elements of proactiveness, risk-taking and innovativeness in his behaviour while conversing with him. This helped me to understand the importance of these factors that have helped in building entrepreneurial orientation in the café owner. Here, the owner also displayed presence of competitiveness aggressiveness in his personality as he undertook the risk of serving tea as well despite the presence of various tea brands and shops in our locality. He also used autonomy by including both these tea and coffee options alongside books in his shop to compete with the existing rivals in the market. Thus, it made me understand that this high entrepreneurial orientation has contributed towards the high performance of the new business venture.

From the conversation with the café owner, I learnt how entrepreneurs are willing to undertake business-related risks, compete aggressively with rivals and favour change and innovation. In this regard, I also came to learn from him about how he undertook extensive research before starting the new venture. He focused on understanding consumers’ tastes and preferences, competitors’ offerings and current market trends. This made him analyse the viability of opening a café shop in our locality. In this regard, I learnt about the entrepreneurial mindset of the person that has helped him to engage in this entrepreneurship venture. This is because he possesses a frame of mind where he focused significantly on intuitive information processing after collecting relevant data from the market research (Ismail, et al., 2015). He developed an intuition from such data processing that customers might like trying coffee as well if they get the chance of visiting a coffee shop serving both coffee and tea. He also emphasized on attracting the book lovers by including a book store along with the café. Thus, such entrepreneurial mindset helped the owner in starting the venture in an uncertain and highly competitive business environment.

In the middle of the semester, this conversation with a local entrepreneur of a café shop was of utmost importance to me. I learnt from a real-life experience about how the person started a new business venture despite facing difficulties. Thus, it helped me to comprehend about entrepreneurial mindset along with developing an entrepreneurial orientation, which will be beneficial for my own entrepreneurship development.

Section 3: Personality Test at End of Semester

I undertook the Big Five Personality test again at the end of the semester. This was because I wanted to identify any changes in the five personality traits of openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and extraversion. In the new test results, I observed that my score of openness to experience has increased than the previous one . This shows that I am now more comfortable in dealing with uncertain and unforeseen events that help me to learn about new experiences. My creativity, intellect and imagination have improved in this regard because of the various group and individual tasks and assignments that I have carried out during my entire semester. In this regard, I have come across various events and experiences in my course that have taught me to be creative and unconventional with my ideas. I have used my critical thinking and analytical skills in different tasks where I had to provide solutions to various real-life business scenarios. This has helped me to think outside-the-box, which has further made me embrace new experiences. Thus, enhancing this openness can further prove to be beneficial for me in the future as I will be able to come up with innovative ideas for starting a new business venture. Therefore, I will gain more entrepreneurial orientation through the help of this dimension.

Furthermore, my score on conscientiousness has significantly decreased in the new test result . This shows that my ability to exercise self-discipline and control for pursuing the desired goals might have deteriorated during the semester. I think that this low score can be because of the difficulty that I experienced in managing time of handling different tasks during the semester. I lost control over my routine and tasks during the middle of the semester as I was struggling with appearing for exams, performing extra-curricular activities, participating in group or individual projects and submitting different assignments. During this period, I was having difficulty in managing all these tasks and prioritizing them to achieve the desired outcomes. This might have it difficult to have control over such tasks, thereby leading to lack of self-discipline on my part. I also became somewhat impulsive and often lost focus while handling all the tasks simultaneously. While this might be helpful for displaying entrepreneurial behaviour, low conscientiousness can hamper my professional development in the future.

My score on extraversion has also largely increased in the new test result . This displays that I am now comfortable in engaging and interacting with people as an act of socializing. I have also developed a tendency of gaining admiration, excitement, friendship and power from the social relationships. In my opinion, this extraversion has been possible because throughout the entire semester I had to participate in various group projects. I was involved in presenting project with other team members before the classmates, which required me to frequently interact and converse with them. Furthermore, I also participated in role plays by forming teams as part of our group assignments. This also forced me to come out of my shell and engage in conversation and discussion with the team members. Such group projects enabled me to express myself gradually and voice my opinions. I also started liking interacting and speaking to people during the end of the semester. This extraversion nature can be helpful for me in the entrepreneurial orientation as now I will be more comfortable in networking with various business professionals.

However, the agreeableness score has slightly increased in my new test result .This displays that my tendency or intention in putting others’ interests before my own has further increased during the semester. I think that this agreeableness trait has improved because I participated in different group projects. Such projects made me put more emphasis on achieving the group goals instead of focusing on achieving my individual goals. It taught to put others or the team’s interest above others, which might have enhanced my agreeableness trait. Furthermore, these projects have also made me learn about trusting and forgiving for the greater good to achieve the team goals. While this trait can be beneficial for me to improve teamworking skills, it might not be effective for entrepreneurial orientation. This is because high agreeableness might make it difficult for me to start a business venture as it requires being competitive, sceptical and tough-hearted.

Lastly, my score has negligibly decreased in neuroticism dimension. This indicates that I am still not efficient in handling negative emotions like fear, anxiety, stress or sadness. I need to work on reducing neuroticism trait in my personality because its presence can be harmful for my entrepreneurial orientation. It is because I am likely to experience various stressful and unpredictable situations in my business venture that would require me to remain calm and composed.

Conclusion

In this report, I reflected on my own personality traits and their relevance to my entrepreneurial orientation. In this regard, I used the Big Five Personality test for analysing my entrepreneurial orientation in the beginning and end of the semester. 

References