MMM241 Entrepreneurship and Innovation- Sells General Merchandise

1. You are watching the news with your friend, who owns a medium-sized farm cooperative store and warehouse that stocks and sells general merchandise, tools, food, and supplies for farm and industrial businesses. It is a bad news day, and you are getting rather depressed. There is a large rescue and recovery operation starting nearby where there has been a flood affecting a whole town centre and some surrounding farmland. In a different local town, there has been a factory fire in a food processing plant that has closed the plant, and the fire spread to consume a dozen houses in the same neighbourhood. At a poultry farm down the road, there has been an outbreak of avian flu and the department of agriculture is quarantining the area and euthanising thousands of chickens. You turn to your friend and comment negatively about the situation. Your friend is genuinely upset by the suffering shown on the news, but to your surprise, makes a series of comments about it being a good news day, and mentions the names of people they know at an insurance company, some government departments, emergency services, and chambers of commerce. Thinking about your negative feeling and depression when watching the bad news, you wonder why your entrepreneurial friend thinks differently and seems positive and motivated. How can this be explained in terms of entrepreneurial cognition?

 

Sub-question. Discuss specific enterprising mindset factors that may be influencing your friend’s response to the news on that day and explain how that enterprising mindset can lead to the creation of business opportunities in this case example.

2. Review the details you studied in MMM241 about social entrepreneur, Stephanie Woollard, and her Seven Women enterprise helping to lift severely disadvantaged women out of poverty and discrimination in Nepal. Discuss the key dimensions that distinguish the mindset of social entrepreneurs from that of business entrepreneurs and justify in which of these two categories you would put Stephanie and why.

Sub-question. Referring to key facts about Stephanie Woollard and the staff of Seven Women in Nepal, discuss and explain whether entrepreneurship is really another word for ‘human freedom’. Consider issues of finance, team collaboration, self-empowerment, and sustainable development goals in your discussion. 

 

3. You decide you will establish a new food van business offering healthy sandwich wraps in biodegradable bags to visitors at conservation reserves, walking trails, and national parks in your area. Construct a lean canvas for the new business in point form in the template (you can add hypothetical ideas relevant to this business idea).