Take-aways from Entrepreneurship class:

Entrepreneurship Class:

Though the course's main objective is not to make everyone an entrepreneur, it can provide sufficient tools and pointers to think about Entrepreneurship. It says "What to do and what not to do?" but doesn't say "What to do?” Also, we are very fortunate to have Prof. S Venkataraman, who is an entrepreneur by heart.

The Lesson that touched my heart is - the Ruth M Owades case (Very famous HBS Case). The case is about Ruth, who is a well qualified, top rank employee, who wants to pursue her entrepreneurial life. She will be left with three options front.

The class discussion is to evaluate the best among the three. Most of us looked conservative and concluded that 'she should wait for one more year and do some more analysis', which I strongly differed for the reasons - waiting for one year doesn't add much qualitative data. The more analysis we do, the more information we need, which makes it as 'Analysis Spiral' and the bottom line is "no decision will be made". Prof. gave some important insights, which I feel are the major take-aways from the case.

(1)There should be proper balance between 'Bias for Analysis’ & ‘Bias for action’ and thereby minimizes the tendency to consider ‘opportunity’ from an objective point of view. It also makes sense to spend your imagination before you spend your money.

(2) Spend your imagination before you spend your money. Keep the investment as minimum as possible - always there is an option to exit.

(3) Decisions are not number based all the times. Sometimes we need to go with faith.

 

 

Kishore, Class of 2007