3A - Entrepreneurship in my Life

Exposure

Entrepreneurship in Media

Much of what I know about entrepreneurship comes from the entertainment industry and media. I watch movies about entrepreneurs such as Mark Zuckerburg, Steve Jobs, and Ray Kroc because their success is interesting to me. Each of the previously listed billionaires specialized in vastly different industries yet still shared one common trait: drive. Though Ray Kroc was a sleazy man who took credit for the McDonald's brothers' life's work, they never would have seen the success they did if he had not been the man to constantly drive the idea forward. There has to be a leader in each idea who pushes the business forward against all of the critics and cynics, and this leader must have the mindset of an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur is ready to accept failure but also knows that after mistakes is improvement and with improvement, life.


A quote I associate with the entrepreneurial spirit the most is by a journalist named Bob Schieffer. He said:

 “I had the chance to make every possible mistake and figure out a way to recover from it. Once you realize there is life after mistakes, you gain a self-confidence that never goes away."

 

I really feel this is the mindset one must have as an entrepreneur because there is no perfect business, and there will be a few flies in your soup (metaphorically speaking). Maybe the first business is the one that takes off, maybe it takes 10 tries before success is seen. Either way, if you want it, take it because failure is not the end.

Entrepreneurship in My Life

As far as some cool interaction with an entrepreneur, I don't really have any memorable ones. I've heard through my uncle that I have a cousin who started brewing in his garage and now owns and operates a full-scale brewery. His debut drink is named something like "The Devil's Bathwater" and is sponsored by some kind of well-known chef guy. I'm not sure about the details but what I do know is that sometimes all it takes is a name. "The Devil's Bathwater" is an incredibly enticing name for an alcoholic drink because it implies a wickedness that can only be achieved by alcohol and the devil himself. This was also one point I drew from the movie "The Founder". You can have a good product, and you can have a good system, but both are useless without the approval of the public. A catchy name may be all it takes to make it big.

E-N-T Three Double-Oh Three and Me

First, to be frank, I enrolled in this course because it is a requirement for my Innovation Academy completion and Innovation minor. Perhaps in my case, a better question is why I enrolled in the Innovation Academy? Well, to be even more frank, that was kind of a beautiful accident, and a prime example of everything happens for a reason. The principles that innovation builds off of are exactly the type a business major, such as myself, would want to show to an employer or in the case of an entrepreneur, would want to use to create an ethical, purposeful solution. The flexibility of the program also leaves opportunities ready for the taking so long as one knows how to maximize the benefits much like in entrepreneurship. But coming into this program, I had no idea about any of that when I clicked the little box asking if I wanted to join.

Last semester, I had a marketing professor in Thailand who came up with an ingenious equation. Ready for it?

new thing + solution = innovation.

That's it. And so far, it's the best definition of innovation I've heard yet. So my answer to this prompt, "what you hope to get out of this class" is how to take that equation above and turn it into something tangible. I don't need theories or long textbooks on how to be successful. I want to go back to the basics and figure the details out on the way. I hope to get inspired. I want to leave this class knowing that if I want, I can.