IA5
The guest lecture that impacted me
the most was Rebecca Harris’s lecture on entrepreneurship. Rebecca Harris is
the Executive Director for the Center for Women’s Entrepreneurship at Chatham
University. She co-founded Toledo Area Parent News, and was the founder and
president for Harris Consulting from 2004-2009.
From Rebecca’s lecture I gleaned
five core aspects for being an entrepreneur:
1. Follow the money – find a need
2. You must have passion for what
you’re creating
3. Understand that you have three
choices if your business is not working the way you want:
-stay
and accept
-stay
and change
-exit
4. Know that it’s not about you,
it’s about your customers
5. Failure is a part of
entrepreneurship, and a part of learning
The textbook defines an entrepreneur
as someone who identifies a business
opportunity and assumes the risk of creating and running a business to take
advantage of it. There are three core characteristics of entrepreneurial
activity: innovation, running a business, and risk-taking, and we can see these
reflected in Rebecca’s points about finding a need, failure, and what to do if
your business isn’t working the way you want.
I think Rebecca’s point that “it’s
not about you, it’s about your customers” is especially relevant to today’s
entrepreneurs. According to current business news, “new ventures are framing
their businesses in terms of social impact.” It’s crucial to understand who you
are creating something for, how they will benefit, and why they need it. People
want to know what entrepreneurs are doing for society. Women especially are
more likely to get funding if they have an emphasis on a social mission.
When perusing through business
news, I happened upon a video-lecture from Harvard Business Review that
discussed five strategies to help people think like entrepreneurs: https://hbr.org/video/5596812243001/whiteboard-session-how-to-think-like-an-entrepreneur
1. What are people already asking
for?
2. Challenge key assumptions – be
innovative
3. Test & iterate
4. Talk about failure
5. Develop intermediate metrics –
things that show your progress
I thought it was interesting how
some of these points were similar to Rebecca’s five strategies. Both lectures
stressed finding a consumer need and talked about failure and how it’s a
natural process. In fact, failure is important because it gives you the
opportunity to learn and grow. Rebecca used her personal experience to
highlight each one of her five points, and the Harvard lecture referenced
specific entrepreneurs to provide examples for its points. Both lectures were
helpful because they connected the advice they were giving to real people and
real life situations.
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