Entrepreneurship 101

by Lin, Ming (SMU (exchange student)

For me, it’s my first time to get the regular training of entrepreneurship from school. Before taking this course in Singapore, I took lots of Entrepreneurship competition in Taiwan and Mainland China. While I decided to take this module, I still wondered what could I gain from it because I thought I already had enough Business Plan writing experience. However, I am totally wrong. Without the module, I would never make up my mind to become an entrepreneur.

During this class, we were asked to brainstorm and really execute those ideas. Compared to my previous experience, the execution part is brand-new for me. The process is very challenging. 8 team members come from different background and use unequal perspective and have different expectation toward this module. During those times, we needed to argue and modify our business plan again and again and this kind of experience was what I did not have before. Then, the experience reminded me “in the process of entrepreneurship, the key point is not business idea but the whole team member”. Due to strong teamwork, we corrected our track and moved to the final destination step by step.

In addition to the take-away in cooperation, I think the mindset is another key point. Due to the inspiration of this module, I attended lots of Entrepreneurship speech. The most impressive sentence for me is “ those MNC come and go, why not start your own MNC.” In Taiwan, almost every top university student pursues the career path toward MNC leader. However, when facing the global trend, those MNC just leave Taiwan and go to Mainland China to set up new branches. For that, we already lose lots of job opportunities and fall into vicious competition. Then, how to start our blue ocean strategy and be different from other people does matter. The path of entrepreneurship is painkiller.

Finally, I appreciate the professor, Pamela Lim give us such a precious opportunity to let us be able to make mistake for learning without worry.