by Aminat Abubakar

When I started the class and first opened the book Disciplined Entrepreneurship by Bill Aulet, all I could see was a maze. I asked myself, “how I can go through the maze to finishing line?” However, as time progressed and we went through the class under the instruction of Dr. Lisa Fournier each week became clearer. It made me focused deeply about my offering through the structures and processes in the Aulet notebook; gradually my idea began to turn into a reality. Bill Aulet’s book using the 24 Steps serves as a guide to entrepreneurship. It walks us through the design process of product or service creation.

You must have the entrepreneurial spirit in you to be able to start a business or manage a business successfully. I enjoyed Dr. Fournier’s online Entrepreneurship classes. Online class was initially scary but has taught me the discipline of self-study, and organization. You have to go out of your comfort zone to make it. You must! The online class prepared me for my last term of independent work along with the other courses we took include emotional intelligence, innovative intelligence and creativity, strategic intelligence, financial intelligence, and organizational intelligence.

The entrepreneurship class taught me to understand the important issues that entrepreneurs need to know and understand. The first important lesson is the awareness of the need of your customers, potential customers, and overall market need. You then come out with a solution to satisfy that need or solve the problem. IDEO human-centered design model believes all problems are solvable. They involve the “communities in order to understand the people they are looking to serve, to dream up scores of ideas, and to create innovative new solutions rooted in people’s actual needs—about believes that as long as you stay grounded in what you have learned from people, your team can arrive at new solutions that the world needs” (IDEO.org, 2015). The greatest mistake an entrepreneur would make is developing a product or service they ‘FEEL’ that is needed by the people, which is a result of market failure! I now realize that being an entrepreneur is not an easy task, it takes a lot of hard work and determination to succeed, but more than anything, a strong passion for what you set out to do.

Also, I discovered in my research though Aulet Steps along with IDEO worksheets potential clients’ needs, which comprises of leadership development and on the job training skills. My future consulting firm would offer solutions in the form of workshops, training, and retreat. Our specialized service offering includes strategic intelligence, organizational intelligence, innovative intelligence and creativity, and leadership and emotional intelligence. Our team of specialists would bring new and innovative ideas to clients to help evaluate their strengths, resolve problems, develop talent, develop leadership skills, and implement plans through new trends to manage change.

I would like to thank Dr. Fournier for instilling the entrepreneurship spirit and knowledge in us by guiding us through each step along the way in the Entrepreneurship I and II classes. Dr. Michael Petty in providing us with the business methodology to becoming future smart thought leaders through leadership development classes include emotional intelligence, and innovative intelligence and creativity, strategic intelligence, financial intelligence, organizational intelligence towards the successful management of an organization or our businesses. Dr. Sheb Bishop for steering us into understanding the importance of integrating information technology into business operations because of today’s rapid dynamic change in the global business world due to technological advancement. These we learned through the combined class attendance of the DBA and DIT cohorts, courses include cloud and visualization architecture, enterprise data architecture, and enterprise systems architecture. As well as Dr. Sehba Husain who taught us at the beginning of the DBA program.

As for my fellow cohorts, it has been a great journey and remarkable support system that we all shared. I wish every one of us success through the remaining part of our journey to becoming Future Smart Doctors (DBA/DIT)!

To be successful, leaders must work hard in mastering the right aptitude to be successful and remain relevant.

THANK YOU!

Reference
IDEO.org. (2015). The field guide to human-centered design. Retrieved from http://d1r3w4d5z5a88i.cloudfront.net/assets/guide/Field Guide to Human-Centered Design_IDEOorg_English-ee47a1ed4b91f3252115b83152828d7e.pdf