Create and Innovate
During my second year in college, I took a class on Creative Thinking and Innovation Management which had lessons that thoroughly resonated within me as a student aspiring to innovate and own a business. With these lessons, I am able to apply it in my life in the future and even in the present. As a management student, this class enhanced my knowledge, my skills, my understanding about being in this field. I will now talk about the topics that reesonated in me the most and which made a big impact in my life.
- Sensing the Gaps
During our introduction to innovation, one of the first things we had to do is to think of a problem (social or not) that we want to tackle. Through these we had to identify the “gaps” or the problems of our market. We had to do this in order to start our venture of creating our own prototype and business. In my group’s case, we created a water hyacinth packaging in order to tackle the gaps of 1.) non-biodegradable packaging negatively impacts our environment through pollution and 2.) scarcity in finding sustainable materials. This lesson impacted me because as an aspiring business student, sometimes we overlook the problems that we want to tackle. There are times that we jump towards the solution rather than identifying the problem. With this lesson, it impacted me by marking in my mind to firstly find the problem that I want to tackle in order to create the business that I desire.
2. Key Factors of the Social Enterprise Success
This topic is an additional lesson that we learned from one of our webinars “Innovation in Fashion”. One of the topics that was talked about during the webinar is “Creating and Capturing Value” wherein we learned about how we must know when to create value and when to capture that value. Through these, we can make our businesses bigger by having sustainable value for our market. This topic is one of my favorite topics because it is one of the important process that happens for startups and small businesses. One of my ambitions is to have a startup business even before I graduate and that topic is very applicable for me in order to grow my business. Wanting to open a small business, even in this pandemic, we need to have ways to have value towards our customers otherwise the growth will be slow or none at all.
3. Blue Ocean Strategy
The Blue Ocean Strategy is one of the most interesting topic for me as it can guide me when I venture or research about a new market that I wanna tackle. By being one of the first to create a market, it allows me to grow the business and it gives the business advantage compared to Red Ocean Markets.
In conclusion, the class Creative Thinking and Innovation Management has taught me a lot of topics that impacted and will continue to impact in my life. By applying the lessons I’ve learned, I believe that I can continue to grow and develop my skills in being an entrepreneur that will create and innovate. For the students who will take this course, I have a lot of tips for your mental preparation. First of all is to always, always and always to treat yourself with importance which includes, but not limited to, taking care of yourself, having time for yourself, and to rest up to allow your body to gather itself especially in times of trouble. Another tip is to manage your time wisely as to prepare for the workload that will come your way but this workloads and lessons will come a long way in your life. Lastly, have an open mind to prepare yourself to be more creative and innovative, not only in this subject, but in your daily life as well!
