Yup, I’ve successfully completed my previous course on ‘Writing a non-fiction book in 30 days’ and I’d strongly encourage all first time non-friction writers to take such a course as it helps one to structure and plan the core outline of the book based on industry guidelines and experiences from the tutor. I personally think it helped speed up my thought process by leaps, although I’ve not started writing the actual contents (I’m holding on to it for other reasons) 🙂
So I did what I do best. I took another course, this time, its a 2 weeks (daily) night class on entrepreneurship or ‘new venture creation’. The first and most common reaction I get when I tell friends (and family) that I’m doing an entrepreneurship course is the curiosity (how can entrepreneurship be taught?) and the immediate assumption that I’m going to quit my day job and start a ‘next big thing’ (if only its that easy…).
To explain the first part, the course is actually a condense business course aimed at first time business owner to identify the steps and requirements of doing a business and it does include (common) stuff like marketing, intellectual property, finance, SWOT, PEST, how to write a business plan etc and I think its a great course as it gives non-business graduates a good overview / refresher.
The course does not ‘transform’ one to be an entrepreneur but it prepares one on what entrepreneurship really is (this is very important) and how to minimize your risk and maximize your potential by ensuring you are aware of the basics of business (and where to get capital) and how to ensure sustainability and scalability etc.
Having said the above, I have not completed the entire course so there are possibilities that my verdict might change (although its ‘so far so good’).
Now to explain the second part – no, I’m not going to quit my job to start a next big thing. Well, not yet, unless I managed to come up with something really big.. as in ‘world domination’ scale…. 🙂 But the knowledge gain can be applied in various part of one’s career (and hobbies).
Take for example myself, as a Product Manager of a region, I do need to analyze and decide if a new offering (be it a product or service) to be launch in country x is viable and all the skills I’ve learn so far in the entrepreneurship course can be applied like the market research, marketing, financial, IP, how to ensure sustainability and scalability. It’s not that I’m not already doing such due diligence but to perform these task from the viewpoint of an entrepreneur is very different from that of an employee.
So I’d say entrepreneurship skill-set is quite viable even when one is working as an employee (and for the record, I did start my own business when I was much younger, it was quite successful but I got ‘burnout’ by my own success and decided that I need to do my degree as I want to teach when I retired).
So there you go, that is the course I am participating at the moment – Entrepreneurship. 🙂
BinaryHealthCare (BNHC) 