Yvanna Hildaiz
11:58 AM (3 minutes ago)
to me
A good paper will; • Clearly identify the competitive and other contextual barriers faced by the entrepreneur and how they influenced what he or she did. Make sure that you have done adequate research on the dynamics and key success factors of the business that you are writing about. Ask yourself: 'Does my paper provide useful facts and a good guide to someone seeking to enter the business or the industry that I am writing about?" e • Provide rich details about concrete actions: how precisely did the entrepreneur make a sale, recruit a key employee, or secure a bank loan. . Cover an interesting venture and a candid entrepreneur. In some cases there simply isn't enough material to write a good paper. Pick your subject carefully - unless you do, you might end up wasting your time and writing a marginal paper, no matter how much effort you put into it. O Explain the dynamics of the entrepreneur's actions--how one decision or action led to another or precluded some other option. Avoid clichés and will focus on the surprises. For example, unless there is a compelling reason to do so, do not mention that the entrepreneur found great intrinsic satisfaction in launching the venture and had always wanted to be in control of his or her own destiny. But a finding that the protagonist had no desire to be an entrepreneur or got bored with the venture may be noteworthy! • Provide concrete do's and don'ts. Ask yourself: 'Does my paper provide any rules of thumb to someone making a sale, recruiting employees or securing bank loans?" ("Be persistent does not count as useful rule of thumb. Concrete ideas on how to be persistent without being annoying does.) Critique the steps taken by the entrepreneur by comparison with other entrepreneurs in similar situations. The lack of such comparisons (or dubious 'pro-forma' comparisons) provides a clear indication of a "bad" paper. • Provide good and complete evidence to back evaluations and lessons learnt. • Develop a rich set of lessons or theory that: Draws on comparisons with the cases we discuss in class and are contained in the reading materials as well as other ventures you are familiar with. You cannot draw many sensible inferences on a "sample of one" (ie, the subject of Challenges or modifies the knowledge and ideas that you have encountered in this or your courses. At a minimum your paper should contain concrete evidence that you have learned something at Fletcher! If you are writing about fund raising tasks for instance your paper should reflect what we studied in this course of your other course work in -Discusses the conditions under which the lessons might not hold (I usually find "if-then" type statements more interesting than absolute claims). . Be well written.