art + entrepreneur = business idea

My name is April Shane Padillo, 4th year BSA student of Asia Pacific College (APC), which was established in 1991 as a non-profit joint-venture between IBM Philippines and the SM Foundation, and I am here to give my side about chapter five of the book Entrepreneurship by Hisrich, Peters, and Sheperd. Our course is currently being handled by one of the newest professors in APC, Mr. Ramon Duremdes.

Chapter five is about Creativity, the Business Idea, and Opportunity Analysis. It discusses the various sources of ideas for new ventures; methods available for generating new venture ideas; creativity and techniques for creative problem solving; importance of innovation; opportunity analysis plan; aspects of the product planning and development process, and; aspects of e-commerce and starting an e-commerce business.

All entrepreneurs are artists. Even if it is not obvious, they do have the heart of an artist inside them. They do not realize that they are already showing their artistic side every time they plan ahead for their business or every time they try to solve some issues in their business.

In running an organization, businessmen should always have new ideas in mind to keep their business survive in the competition. They should always come up with an idea which will make their business exceptional in the market.

There are five main sources of new ideas from which an entrepreneur may want to consider. Those were consumers, existing products and services, distribution channels, federal government, and research and development.

A consumer for me is the most important source of idea that a businessman should be focused on. Consumers are the people who are actually the reason why there are existing establishments. Entrepreneurs were able to run businesses because of consumers’ needs and demands. Businessmen should always watch over consumers’ behaviour in markets.

As to how they could produce an idea? There were several ways for them to do it. The usual way of generating an idea is through brainstorming. With brainstorming, they can generate ideas as much as they want to and from those ideas, they can already select the best option that fits the criteria in meeting what they really want to achieve for their business.

Businessmen must never forget about innovation because it is the key to the economic development of any company. Innovation is always patterned to the idea that has been generated by the entrepreneurs.

Being artistic does not mean you are great in painting, drawing, acting, nor writing. Being artistic can be shown in how you can manage to cope up with the rapid changes in the society. It is actually being shown by all the entrepreneurs around the world most especially these days that the whole world is being attacked by financial crisis. Despite of the challenges when it comes to survival in the competition, entrepreneurs were able to come up with ideas as to how they will keep their business running knowing the fact that most of us were already starting to get broke.

Putting yourself into thinking what you can do for your business is never an easy thing to do. Put yourself in the shoe of an entrepreneur and try to live a day as if you were the boss of a very well-known company. You might be thinking that if you were really them, you will feel like you can already die for so much fun having all the money in the world. Is that how entrepreneurs really feel? I do not believe so. I know that they have gone through lots of tough times before they were able to reach what they deserve. Maintaining what they have reached is the challenge for them now and in order for them to survive, they have no choice but to use the artistic side of them.

SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEURS: HOW DO THEY THINK?

I am always thinking and dreaming about being a successful businesswoman someday. I am always inspired by those Cinderella stories who from being poor became a princess after passing all the struggles in life. Being a successful entrepreneur is like experiencing being like Cinderella. You have to go through lots of challenges before you can achieve what you were dreaming of. Is this how an entrepreneur thinks?

If that is how their mind works, then everybody can be a successful entrepreneur but why are there people who cannot reach their goal of being successful in running a business? Why are there persons who suffer losses in their family businesses? Why are there folks who from being at the top, suddenly went down at the bottom? How do entrepreneurs run their minds?

“Entrepreneurs sometimes take what they have; who they are; what they know, and; whom they know and select among possible outcomes.”

With that, it simply means that businessmen, for every particular situation, think a different way. They are coming up with lots of ideas and from those ideas that they have generated, they will be selecting the best that they know will resolve the situation. Not knowing if it will be effective or not, entrepreneurs are enormous risk takers.

It is never easy to think like entrepreneurs. In all times, there were factors that you really need to consider. It is like there is always a process that you will have to follow to come up with great ideas. Being in the industry, you have to always think of the consumers who are the reasons why you are on top and who the real people behind your successful stories.

Being businessmen, you also have to accept the fact that it is not always your time to be at the top. There were moments when you will have to go down and those failures should not be the reason why you have to stop. If you are at the bottom, there is always a reason for you to go up. That is how an entrepreneur faces all the challenges that arrive.

In school, Asia Pacific College, I am currently enrolled in the Entrepreneurship course under Mr. Ramon Duremdes, Jr. He knows that there is an entrepreneur heart in all of us and he is helping us release what we have in that heart. Someday, we can be as reach as Henry Sy if will be able to realize how to manage and how to achieve our dreams of running our own business.

Honestly, there were moments that I felt board about the course but each day, the topics are giving and giving me reasons to come to class. Every time that someone is discussing something in front of the class, I feel like I am already thinking like the way an entrepreneur thinks with the ideas that are coming out of my mind. I am always learning something new in each lecture.