As a result of the National Entrepreneurship Week from 24th to 30th November 2008 in Sri Lanka I got a chance to attend the Seminars and Workshops organized on the second day. According to the schedule the day was started with Employability, this was not an interesting session for me but anyway there were so many undergraduates who were interested in. There were two Sri Lankan Entrepreneurs present at the event, the Chairman of OpenArc Group and the Managing Director of Norfolk Foods. Moreover there were few Post Graduate Students from the UK Universities who had started their own Enterprises and they were prepared to address the gathering on their success stories. To be honest these sessions were really interesting.
Starting an Enterprise is not a simple process as joining a company. It should have a great potential and a passion to produce a product or a service for a specific customer base while undertaking a great amount of risk. Speakers listed out a set of attributes which an Entrepreneur should have. Here are some of the points which I found exciting.
- A desire to achieve (Passion)
- Risk taking
- Visionary (A creative thinker)
- No demarcation (Rather love the mankind)
- Works with available resources
- A vision towards a completely different world
- Ethical people
- Seeing the horizon before others
- Set examples for others
- Live with SWOT Analysis (A strategic planning method)
There were two interesting enterprises started by the post graduate students from the UK, My Own Work and Tinderbox. My Own Work is an online portfolio and the Tinderbox is a creative event organizing company.
My Own Work http://www.myownwork.co.uk/
Tinderbox Creative Events
http://www.tinderboxevents.co.uk/
The bottom line of the event was if you have a passion to start an enterprise just go for it, it might be a success or it might be a failure however you will gain experience. Someday you will be able to achieve your goals.