Spectrum Institution of Science & Technology (SIST) in Sri Lanka need a bachelor level programme for innovation and entrepreneurship education.
The 5-days Innovation & Entrepreneurship Pilot (I&EP) programme created by the InnoOK Co-operative (InnoOK Osk.) focuses on building entrepreneurial competences related to new business venture creation and business model innovation as well as the key managerial competences. All these are needed for successful implementation of for-profit business and not-for-profit business.
To start on their entrepreneurial path, students will undertake different group and individual tasks to put into practice what they will learn in the classroom.
Themes and Scheduling
DAY 1: Programme overview & Entrepreneur – Passion for Change
DAY 2: Ideating For-profit Business and Not-for-profit-Business
DAY 3: Business Modelling – Value Creation and Capturing
DAY 4: Strategic Entrepreneurship – Balancing Between Entrepreneurial and Managerial Mindsets
DAY 5: Business Model Innovation and Coping with (Business) Failure
ADDITIONAL: Pitching Competition
Business Opportunity (BO)
Rather than expecting business opportunity (BO) to be found “as a mushroom in the forest”, in the I&E Pilot the BO will be created by activities of both human individuals and teams, i.e., the “entrepreneur”. Those activities include competencies, experience, and everything that the entrepreneur believes may be feasible sources for the future and emerging BO. How feasible the outcome of creation process, the BO, will be depends on how thoroughly (explicitly or implicitly) entrepreneur reflects what he or she has experienced and learned both prior and during the BO creation process. During the process, the Creative Problem Solving (CPS) and Business Model Canvas (BMC) are key tools for creating new business activity – even based on inventions discovered earlier by other persons. The outcome of the BO creation process forms the basis for the future for-profit business venture or not-for-profit business venture.
Entrepreneur (E) vs. Manager (M)
In the context of business, every person who acts or behaves either entrepreneurially or managerially can be called “entrepreneur” (E) or “manager” (M) respectively because of the learnable entrepreneurial or managerial mindsets. While former (E) is about creating the starting point, i.e. the BO for the future new for-profit business venture and no-for-profit business venture, the latter (M), however focuses on running the already established for-profit business (or not-for-profit business) venture as successfully and feasible as possible.
Strategic Entrepreneurship (SE): Entrepreneurship + Strategic Management
One way to combine entrepreneurial activities to managerial activities in a for-profit or not-for-profit business venture context will actualise through balancing between entrepreneurship and strategic management (SM). The former, the entrepreneurial activity based on entrepreneurial mindset actualises as opportunity seeking (OS), whereas the latter, the managerial mindset actualises as advantage seeking (AS). Based on the for-profit or not-for-profit business venture’s situation the emphasis between OS and AS activities entrepreneur and manager execute may vary from 20 to 80 or 80 to 20 but (never) 50 to 50.
Business Model Innovation (BMI)
Business Model Innovation (BMI) is a new source of innovation that “complements the traditional subjects of process, product, and organizational innovation” (Zott et al., 2011: 1032), which relates BMI to organizational change processes. This stream emphasizes the capabilities, leadership, and learning mechanisms that are needed for successful BMI. Innovation in BMI is seen here as invention that offers people alternative tools, ideas, means, etc. to solve emerged anomalies. Anomaly means something surprising that people face in real-life situation. For example, if boat an entrepreneur or a manager faces an anomaly the key thing in the I&EP is that an invention is valuable only when it is first utilised as sources of the entrepreneurial process with the BO as its outcome and then implemented into real-life context in applicable window of opportunity.
InnoOK executed the pilot online (Skype) on November – December 2018.