All about being a Technopreneur

                On the 16^th day third week of July, our instructor Sir Randy S. Gamboa discussed the lessons pertaining to Technopreneurship. He also taught us what were the essence and the importance of being a technopreneur. He also presented his own slides that contained all the topics of Technopreneurship. To continue, I just want to share my own understandings and the lessons that I have learned from his lecture. If you want to know, just scroll down and have some time to read my thoughts and opinions of what I’ve learned.

                First, our instructor explained to us what the definitions of the Entrepreneur were and how it differs from the word technopreneur. He mentioned a lot of things but the things that I learned about that topic were simple. Being an entrepreneur is that those people who enter into new and pioneering ventures. If you want to become an entrepreneur, you must be a business minded person and your only mission is to start and own up your business. On the other hand, technopreneurship is the same as entrepreneurship. The only thing to consider is the technology that technopreneurs are equipped. There businesses are always in the field of technology. Some technopreneurs are always persistent of doing their own technology just to sell their ideas to different companies or establishments that needs them.

                Let’s proceed to the next topic that I had encountered during the lecture time. This topic was all about the SEED course model. Our instructor presented to us the SEED model just to be familiar with the model that would really help us in this subject. First, S means Self-Mastery. According to the slide, this is the passion that comes from knowing me. For me, I learned that when you master yourself, you may know your passions. When you know yourself and your own passion, you know what you want to do. As a reflection, in my college life I was a little bit confused of the things that I am going through. It was just like I am in a long curvy path road with different kinds of signage to the way where I want to be. Learning new things is always there and these things that I am learning really took my head upside down. Sometimes I didn’t know where I want to go and that thing really bothered my college life even now. I am really sad that the course that I took which is Information technology is a very hard course to deal with. Thou, this problem don’t prove that I am not fighting to survive my college life being a student. Instead, I prayed to God and ask for his guidance so that I may able to find my true passion. During the days of being a college student, I slowly identified my abilities and skills and these were the skills that I am longing to have for my future career. I realized that my passion is on the multimedia graphics field because I love this kind of job. The job where I love to develop my skills and abilities is to be in the field of multimedia and graphics.

                Aside from the Self-Mastery, the second one that came from the SEED model is the Environment Mastery. According to the slide, Environment mastery is about generating business ideas and seeking opportunities out from his or her environment through. Our instructor discussed to us that the possibilities of generating ideas are most likely be found through:

These kinds of things must be included to the SEED model. It really helps us how to identify or to master our Environment and what would be the things that needed to do to uncover our true potentials when we pursue to become an entrepreneur or technopreneur.

                The third one is the Enterprise Mastery from the SEED model. According to the slide, Enterprise Mastery is how to run a business. Our instructor told us how to run our business when we want to become a successful technopreneurs. First, by creating the business that you want. This would be the first thing to do. Then, when you finished that, you will probably thinking for managing your market, operating your management, manage your finances and managing the risks that you might encounter dealing with the things inside your business.  These kinds of things were already discussed by our instructor which is also Sir Randy during our Project Management discussions last year. It also has these topics that can really help us build and manage our own projects.

                The last one is the Development of Business Plan. The slide that Sir Randy presented to us was a little bit boring. Instead, he managed to bring it as a fun way to learn. He cited some of the examples that covered the developing of a business plan. He also told us when we try to develop any business plans, we must first write it. And after that, we must learn how to present it and defend it. We must also try to add some refinements to the presented business plan that we had made.

                During this day, there was a time that our instructor commanded us to group ourselves to answer the exercise that he posted in his slide presentation. According to his slide there were three questions that were being listed. So there were three groups and I was assigned to be a part of the group two. The question that we answered was a little bit harder than the other groups. I cannot remember the exact words but I still remember that it was all about being in a situation of depression or something like that. The question was turned like this:

Question no. 3: If there was a college graduate that looked for some Job interview, he found a company and one of the requirements of the Job is to have a “Pleasing Personality”. The college graduate was not able to pass the Job interview because he didn’t have a pleasing personality. What would be the implications that you may say.

                The question that we answered was that and we formulated and brain stormed our ideas pertaining to that topic. My group mates and I already knew what the reasons that the college graduate didn’t accepted were. So the implications that we answered were these:

                I also didn’t forget this question from our professor. This question was “What makes an entrepreneur a technopreneur?” At first, I already formulated some answers and these answers were already discussed from the previous slides that I had encountered. The real answer would be a “Technology idea owner who ventures to make his idea a commercial reality”. Our instructor also said that an entrepreneur, who gets a technology idea, finds an opportunity to make it a commercial reality.

                Our instructor also commanded us to explain the things that we made from the past essays that we answered. Those essays were all about the innovation of technologies from houses, fast food chains and shopping malls. I was the first one to explain what the technologies that I have created were. At first I wasn’t able to remember the full coverage of what I had done to those essays. Then, I already remembered the thing that I wrote in my essay and it was the technology named “Smoking Machine Button”. The smoking machine button was the one that I remembered during that time it was because I already started my explanation in the technology from fast food chains. Then I explained it to the whole class but our instructor thought that it was a simple technology and he didn’t found it appealing and useful to the fast food chains.

                To continue, I was assigned to express and write my learning about the alternative mindset and the concept of Job creation. First, our professor which is Randy S. Gamboa told us that there are two mindsets of a human being. First is the default mindset and the second one is the Alternative mindset. I have learned that the default mindset or what we called the “Employment Mindset” is the idea which is what most of the humans thinks. This idea is to “go to school, get good grades and land a high-paying job”.  Of course, all of us wanted to get good grades and get a high-paying salary from the job that we wanted to get. Usually, we encountered this kind of mindset to some of the parents in our society. The default mindset of the parents sets their kids in the school to get some good grades and to be able to graduate and get some nice job that would pay a high salary for their kids or to be specific these may look like this: “Go to school, get good grades and land a high-paying job”. This is probably the reason why some of the parents in our society commonly have a default mindset. A straightforward mindset that is systematically presented by the parents and which their children bear until they go to college.

                Dealing with the mindset that is usually common to each family in our society, this “Default mindset” can be a perfect thing that the parents would think for their kids. What if there is also an alternative mindset that would change everything. As what our instructor said, the Alternative mindset or what we call the Technopreneurship mindset shows a mindset which applies to the opportunities provided by technology and the usual idea of some other people which is to “go to school, get good grades, and create your own company” not only that the Alternative Mindset provided supplementary concepts like the utilization of knowledge and skills paired with core values and the passion to innovate and create the way of technology. 

                This mindset would aid some entrepreneurs to become more inclined with technologies and it would help them to make a way that all of the technologies that they made would really have a good results like creating their own name in the world of technology based business industry. This alternative mindset would really help some of the intellectual and technical capable individuals to stay in their own country and to avoid circumstances like leaving from their own country to help other country by their own skills.

                The last topic that I want to share to you is about the concept of Job creation. Job creation usually involves in doing what would be the best for us. This concept can be first achieved by the use of SEED curriculum as a model. Its primary purpose is to train students to develop them in the proper discipline and make them ready in gratifying to technology-based enterprise management, may it be as company or enterprise leaders or as technology-based company employees.

                The job creation always starts by identifying ourselves. It is also indicated to the SEED curriculum that the primary step when you need to be a good technopreneur is that we need to identify what we really are and we must be aware to ourselves in order to know our passions and even limitations. The next thing that I have learned is to be independent. Being independent to yourself is essential for you because this is the way that you are able to identify your limitations of being a technopreneur. You must also depend on the things that are important to you. Especially when you are trying to find some solutions that you cannot handle, you must also think of being dependent to the other things that surround you. Don’t e fooled with other things and don’t be like a robot that there is some other person is controlling your body. Instead, be the controller so that you would achieve what you want for your job.

                I am always longing to have a business someday that would bring myself to the next level. Of course, all of us want to have good businesses that could be managed well. So if we want that to happen, let us all learn the principles and the mindsets of being a technopreneur and let us not forget God. Everything would be satisfactory if we put God first.