Strategic Entrepreneurship - **ASSESSMENT -2** INDIVIDUAL

INDIVIDUAL TASK COVER SHEET

Contents 1.0 First Personal Journal Entry Set 3 1.1 The Personal Journal – Entry One 3 1.2 Skills and Experiences 3 2.0 Second Personal Journal Entry Set 4 2.1 Profile Entrepreneur: Muhammad Yunus 4 2.2 My inspired person – Muhammad Yunus 5 3.0 Third Personal Journal Entry Set 6 3.1 Poster Entrepreneurial Company: Grameen Bank Company 6 3.2 Company – Grameen Bank 7 4.0 Fourth Personal Journal Entry Set 7 4.1 Poster Company’s BMC 7 4.2 SWOT of Grameeen Bank 7 4.3 Blue Ocean Strategy 8 5.0 Fifth Personal Journal Entry Set 8 5.1 What have I learnt? 8 5.2 Changes on perceptions 9 References 10 Appendix 11 1. Grameen Bank BMC (Canvas) 11 2. Grameen Bank SWOT Assessment 11 3. Blue Ocean Strategy Business Model Canvas (BMC) 11

People have different personality traits. Some are energetic, ambitious, conservative, and systematic while others are loyal, cooperative, talkative, and independent. There are four basic personality traits which are D for dominance (active/task-oriented), I for influence (active/people-oriented), S for steadiness (inactive/task-oriented), and C for conscientiousness (inactive/people-oriented). I am a type of person who focus on the future and the big picture. Whenever there are new challenges, setting and achieving goals, and seeing tangible results, I am extremely motivated and competitive in achieving goals. Whenever there is work, I analyze and research information accurately. An environment that is peaceful and organized with few or no conflicts or arguments is what I prefer. When I am under pressure, I become impatient and controlling, and may push others to complete the project on time or lash out an individual that makes careless mistakes. So, my personality type belongs D style but mostly to D style (Dominating, directing, driving, demanding, determined, and decisive). My second personalities are conscientiousness then to influence and steadiness.

Some of my behaviors are as follows.

· I am motivated by winning, competition and success.

· I accept challenges and take action and achieving immediate results.

· I may be limited by lack of concern for others and impatience.

· I am afraid of being seen as vulnerable.

· I value competency, concrete results and freedom

· I love being independent and want new opportunities.

· I have a goal of unique accomplishments.

From the four type, Hipster, Hustler, Hacker and Herder, I have a Hipster personality type, due to my creation of new experience to capture people’s attention and idea formation for great challenges. There will be furthermore identification on my skills and experiences that I believe will be useful and valuable throughout my entrepreneurial ventures. Skills, experience, knowledge and network are the four divided verification.

Firstly, in the skills I have learnt 3 language which are English, Chinese and Burmese. In know more in leadership skills where I can do strategic planning and equal dividing with the members. I got good management skills in groups and also with my daily routine like human resource management. I have mathematical skills which is easy to apply with the financial accountings as well.

From my experience, I had a good management background from my family business and some educational skills like writing assignments and presentation as well. As I am quite young, I am not having a big experience in life. This doesn’t still fit to what an entrepreneur is.

Looking at my knowledge, I have never been graduated but from the previous semesters that I attended in JCU I have known what I have to. I am taking International Business and Management which I will be graduating soon. Apart from that, I only finish high school.

As for the networks, I have connections with friends international who are from JCU. Most of my friends are from Myanmar which is my hometown. I also have some connections with the suppliers and entrepreneur from Myanmar when I did my family business.

There are many personality traits that helped Muhammad Yunus have a Noble Peace Price and become a successful entrepreneur until these days. He is the idea creator of microcredit and I learnt a lot from him. Through all the successes and struggles that he passed through, the very first respect given to him is the vision that he has on people instead of himself. His mind of wanting to help others from trouble is very admirable and from his work done, people from all over the country have peace and calm in finance. He formed Grameen Bank under the assumption that people can have long- term loans with any amount of money. He has no fear and passionate with all the growing microcredit and he have confident on what he did. There are other reasons why I inspire him, and other unique value and creativity is mentioned above in the table. Instead of getting selfish in life, I know to become selfless by what Muhammad Yunus did.

Grameen Bank appealed to me the vision of achievements as it is very successful and wealthy within a short period of time. Grameen bank is very popular due to the unique banking service. They provide long term loan to the poor with the different interest rate depending on their income level. As an example, they take 20% to the normal people, 5% to the students and none to the beggars. This idea is a solo market around Bangladesh and this strategy boomed all over the country. By seeing this, I felt the heart-warming creative idea. Not only this the bank might feel challenges like the return of the loans, but they refuse being pessimistic. This is what I feel of trusting people and taking risk over what is done regarding the money used and a big outlook. Most people may not dare to challenge this type of risky assets. By taking the opportunities and strength instead of the failure, this motivation creates me a bravery to success. Moreover, I know that there is always a success if you fulfil the needs of the problem and this mainly depends on the vision.

(The BMC is attached in the appendix)

Strength

Grameen Bank is one of the largest client bases all over Bangladesh and they have many branches. They provide quality service to people with the quickest and most efficient way. Grameen Bank has been awarded a Noble Peace price which is an honorable and competitively advantage. Other strength includes the skilled human resources which is the main key to success a bank and yet Grameen is at its best.

Weakness

Grameen bank has a lack of adequate marketing effort which they never look back at the marketing strategy and never had a marketing team for that. They also have a lack full scale automation. Moreover, they also have a lot of employee turnover and they have lack of skilled employee. Due to the lack of technology in the branch offices, they may not know how to use high tech accounting, and this causes waste of time.

Opportunity

There are still openings to move on for Grameen Bank. They can improve and add on the value of services to the borrowers. As this is a bank aiming to women, they can focus more purchasing power to women. As the economic scale of Bangladesh is growing Grameen Bank has a high chance on gaining its market.

Threat

As this is a solo market entry all over the world, there might be people who will see as a negative impact on the term “Microcredit”. There are also national and political unrest every time, there might be effect on the financing economy. There will be market pressure for lowering of lending rate. Moreover, there will be increased competition in the market and causes price war.

Blue ocean strategy refers to the creation by a company of a new, uncontested market space that makes competitors irrelevant and that creates new consumer value often while decreasing cost. Grameen Bank has used most of the Blue Ocean Strategy already which include like the poverty reduction over what people has never dare to do. They created the microfinance which is to give long term loans and interest free to the poor. This noncompetitive market has been similar to the NGO which is a non-profit organization, but Grameen Bank is making profit more or less. Although it might be hard for Grameen bank to re-invent the microfinancing process, there will be possibilities to suggest additional comments on the Company Business model. Grameen Bank has challenges in the economy of scale. They should be able to reach the critical volume of transaction for the financial operations to become self-sustaining. Moreover, Grameen Bank should reduce the cost like sharing resources, as it is serving the bottom of the pyramids in the economy. These strategies are unique to improve the blue ocean. To re-invent the Grameen bank, they should create a micro investing for the poor instead of microfinancing to reduce risk from losing money. This strategy is to invest for a business instead of loaning money without any purpose from the loaner. There is no market for this blue ocean strategy, and this will be creation for people and economic growth.

When I started learning this subject, I learnt a lot about the entrepreneur around the world. Not only the famous entrepreneur but also their respective skills and creative idea that they have. I know that the subject is to know how those entrepreneurs have, form and apply the skills and knowledge. As for me, I am learning just to gain information and knowledge by learning the theories. For more practical gains, I need to work in the future. From learning the subject, I have learnt all the various situation on how to analyze when you are an entrepreneur. I know that this subject is easy but all the information that I learnt is very useful in real life business. I knew that some business may be unique, and some business is common. From this, I also understand that innovation is also important. In the school lesson, I have learnt to think out of the box which is a common philosophy to succeed in business. Furthermore, in this assignment and subject, I mainly learnt the canvas which is very new to me and this will be very successful in the startup of a business. With the canvas, we can decide whether the business will succeed or fail before investing. Moreover, I have never gone detail on the inspired entrepreneur and now I have researched a lot about him. Muhammad Yunus is admirable for me as I studied that from his thinking, he changed lives and environment. “Peace” is the word that is very exceptional in his noble prize where his mindset is respectful. I find this subject very beneficial as this is very new to me.

As from my perception after learning Strategic Entrepreneurship, I am keener to become an entrepreneur, but I know that I need more experience and skills. This is just the beginning of my entrepreneurial life. From day 1 of this subject, I thought this seems difficult, but I gained a lot of entrepreneurial skills. As an entrepreneurial life there will be a lot of challenges in business. Looking back at my DISC personality type, I would love to be an entrepreneurial rather than innovation. I love to create new idea and accept new opportunities. All these business motivations come across with one quote form this subject, “Think out of the box”.