Critical Analysis and Reflection Report on Recognising an Entrepreneurial Opportunity

Background

It has always been of interest to researchers and practitioners to explore and define what profile dimensions or mindsets are prevalent among entrepreneurs that drive their entrepreneurial behaviours, as well as how potential or existing entrepreneurs recognise suitable opportunities from a variety of possible ideas. These two areas have been addressed by academic literature from many perspectives. In this subject, we will focus mainly on the relevant concepts that have been discussed in the textbook. These should be supported by other academic sources where appropriate.

Frequently, co-working spaces hold events for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs to learn, listen, and share their stories so that others may learn from them or to ‘pitch’ to an audience. These co-working spaces are often a key hub within an entrepreneurial ecosystem and are frequented by other entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, potential supporters, and potential entrepreneurial stakeholders.

In this assessment, you will be able to share with others your entrepreneurial profile dimensions or mindsets, and how well they are aligned with the Opportunity Recognition Process Model.

Summary

This is a two-part assessment consisting of a:

5-minute oral presentation of 6–8 slides

1500-word critical analysis and reflection report.

For the written report:

Select four of the profile dimensions or mindsets that you believe best demonstrate your entrepreneurial behaviour. For each of them, discuss briefly a supporting personal or professional occurrence to justify your choice.

Using the Opportunity Recognition Process Model (Fredrick, O'Connor & Kuratko 2019, p. 160), reflect on your four entrepreneurial profile dimensions or mindsets to determine how well aligned they are with recognising an entrepreneurial opportunity. In this case, you have to take into account the three stages of the Opportunity Recognition Process Model, namely, discover, generate and recognise.

Provide justified recommendations to further strengthen your chosen entrepreneurial profile dimensions or mindsets in line with the Opportunity Recognition Process Model for becoming a successful entrepreneur or intrapreneur on your preferred entrepreneurial career path.

Learning outcomes

This assessment addresses the following learning outcomes:

Examine contemporary entrepreneurship theory and practice to create insight into enterprise growth opportunities (Learning Outcome 1).

Reflect upon, and apply contemporary entrepreneurship approaches, techniques and ethical perspectives, that develop an entrepreneur’s: leadership, mindset, capabilities and pathways to an entrepreneurial career (Learning Outcome 2).

Communicate entrepreneurship knowledge, skills and ideas to others clearly, persuasively and credibly (Learning Outcome 4).

Resources

This assessment is based on the first four modules of the learning materials. Module 2 (The Entrepreneurial Mindset) and Module 4 (Opportunities Assessment), in particular, should be used to meet the requirements of this assessment. A set of profile dimensions or mindsets that characterise entrepreneurs has been listed on pages 48 to 50 of the textbook (Fredrick, O'Connor & Kuratko 2019). Reliable information from any other academic sources can also be used.

Written report

The entrepreneurial profile dimensions or mindsets and the entrepreneurial opportunity recognition model both need to be critically analysed, along with the relevant individual reflections in your written report. As stated in the Task section above, there are three requirements.

When describing your four entrepreneurial profile dimensions or mindsets for the first requirement, you should mention a personal or professional occurrence for each of them to justify your selection.

For the second requirement, using the Opportunity Recognition Process Model (Fredrick, O'Connor & Kuratko 2019, p. 160), you must reflect on your four entrepreneurial profile dimensions or mindsets to determine how well aligned they are with recognising an entrepreneurial opportunity. This means that the first two requirements are interconnected. You will lose marks if connections between the first two requirements are not made or are not clear enough.

For the final requirement, you must provide justified recommendations to further strengthen your chosen entrepreneurial profile dimensions or mindsets in line with the Opportunity Recognition Process Model for becoming a successful entrepreneur or intrapreneur on your preferred entrepreneurial career path.

When dealing with the entrepreneurial profile dimensions or mindsets and the Opportunity Recognition Process Model, take relevant ethical considerations into account and highlight them in your discussion. Academic supporting material should also be provided throughout your analysis and discussion in the form of in-text references.

Format

The required length for this report is 1500 words (plus 10% tolerance). A mixture of first-person and third-person can be used in the report as it covers personal reflection as well. Refer to Section 6 Reflective Writing in the AIB Style Guide (pages 25–28) for guidance.

It is recommended that you use the following report structure, but you can use more headings and sub-headings if you wish. Use the report template provided.

Title page

Executive summary

Table of Contents

1. Introduction (briefly introduce the concept of entrepreneurship and your entrepreneurial journey)
2. Four chosen entrepreneurial profile dimensions or mindsets (sub-headings should be used for each of them)
3. Entrepreneurial Opportunity Recognition Process Model
4. Recommendations
5. Conclusion

References

Appendices (if any)

Requirements

In terms of presentation and style:

Use the AIB-preferred Microsoft Word settings (see the AIB Style Guide). All written assessments should be submitted as Word files (.docx). Word is available from your AIB Office 365 account. If you prefer to use an alternative word processor, such as Pages for Mac, ensure that you save or export the file to Word (.docx) format before submitting it.

Use author-date style referencing, which includes in-text citations and a reference list (see the AIB Style Guide).

You are required to use at least six (6) academic references for this report.

Your references should be from credible sources such as books, industry-related journals, magazines, company documents, company websites and academic journal articles. Ideally, relevant academic journal articles should be used for academic discussion.

Your grade will be adversely affected if your assessment contains no/poor citations and/or reference list and if your assessment word length is beyond the allowed tolerance level (see Assessment Policy available on the AIB website).

Oral presentation

Please consider your colleagues, the board of directors or potential investors as your target audience. Use the Oral presentation template provided and the following structure as a guide:

Title slide (with report title, your name, date) and introduce yourself.

Contents/overview/agenda. You need to give the audience a sense of what you are including in the presentation—set the scene.

Communicate your four selected entrepreneurial profile dimensions or mindsets with the relevant personal or professional occurrences to justify them.

Communicate how well aligned your chosen four entrepreneurial profile dimensions or mindsets are in line with the Opportunity Recognition Process Model.

Communicate the key recommendations to further strengthen your chosen entrepreneurial profile dimensions or mindsets in line with the Opportunity Recognition Process Model for becoming a successful entrepreneur or intrapreneur.

Include references as appropriate in your PowerPoint slides. All references should be listed on the last slide.

Look and feel of the presentation slides

Your presentation should contain 6–8 slides and run for 5 minutes (plus 10% tolerance, i.e. 30 seconds tolerance).

To ensure good communication throughout the slides:

Keep things simple. Slides should not be unnecessarily complicated or 'busy'.

Avoid text (or bullet point) overload. Slides are meant to support a speaker and supplement a written document (in this case, the written report). The detail can be found in the report; the slides provide a summary of key points.

Use high-quality, appropriate graphics (only where relevant). Graphics/tables/images/animation should not be included to impress the audience but should be used only if relevant and if they enhance the story told in the slides.

Keep your slides interesting and engaging. Remember, you must get a message across to the audience and that means you need to engage the audience.

Using Zoom to record your oral presentation

Please ensure you are using AIB's Zoom account to record your presentation, not your personal one.

When you are ready to record, follow these steps:

Open your PowerPoint presentation

Open your AIB Zoom account (https://myaib.zoom.us/)

Login with the same login details as your Learning Portal login

Select Host to start a meeting

Select the Share Screen button Zoom Share Screen button and select your PowerPoint presentation, then click Share

When you are ready to start your oral presentation, select the Record button Zoom Record button

Talk as if you are delivering your presentation to an audience and navigate through your slides

Stop recording and End Zoom to finish

The link to your recording will be emailed to your AIB email inbox and is available from your AIB Zoom account

Check your recording and either re-record or submit your shareable link via your assessment submission point.

Tips for using Zoom

Do a practice recording first, and ensure the presentation fits within the given time constraint

You may pause your recording at any time, so it might be helpful to pause after each slide to take a deep breath and then continue.

You can edit the start and endpoint (cutting unwanted sections from the start and end) but not the middle

If you make a major mistake between the start and end, you will need to start over again.

For detailed recording and submission instructions see Recording your oral presentation with Zoom (PDF).

For help with your presentation skills, you are invited to an (optional) drop-in Q&A session with AIB’s Academic Skills Advisor in week 3. Please see the calendar for the time and zoom room of the drop-in session and live webinar on oral presentations.

Grading criteria and feedback

Your assessment will be marked according to the following grading criteria:

Depth of demonstrated understanding of contemporary entrepreneurial concepts (20%)

Depth of critical analysis and reflection on entrepreneurial profile dimensions or mindsets (25%)

Depth of demonstrated critical alignment between the selected entrepreneurial profile dimensions or mindsets and the opportunity recognition process model in an ethical manner (25%)

Presentation content and engagement in making effective use of oral communication skills, visual aids and time (20%)

Referencing (5%)

Structure, communication style and language (5%).