Reflective Reviews

Reflective Reviews

Name:

Course:

Presented to:

Date:

Introduction

A reflective review is an essay presenting personal thoughts and experience in developing a specific project or topic. A writer reflects on a topic or a project by exploring emotional experience and objective facts encountered (Pasquarelli, 2006, p. 94). This paper presents my reflection on two topics I wrote, namely, review of personal entrepreneurial strategy and reflection of critical review of chapters and a project on developing a business plan that we did as a group. The reflection largely focuses on personal experience and identifies several of my perceived strengths and weaknesses for being a prospective entrepreneur.

Personal Entrepreneurial Strategy

A personal entrepreneurial strategy refers to an individual plan to convert own creative and innovative ideas into a viable and lucrative business. My essay on personal entrepreneurial strategy explored on John Brayson,s business ideas that he developed after his high school studies and his plan to establish an Aquacine First Food Restaurant that eventually became very successful. I evaluated the unique traits and skills of Brayson that drove him to become successful in planning and implementing his business ideas. I weighed them against my own and realized that I have several strengths and weaknesses that influence my ability to be a prospective entrepreneur.

One of my strengths, as learnt from Brayson,s traits, is that I am good in human relations. I am emotionally stable, have good interpersonal relations, and good communication skills. I prefer to work in teams and enjoy sharing my experiences and background. I also like to listen to suggestions and solutions given by others. Secondly, I realised that entrepreneurs tend to be confident in their actions. I have self confidence that propels me to undertake activities without sense of fear. I am also a risk taker. I tend to make decisions without having full information, especially where the expected outcomes are beneficial to me. One of my weaknesses is that I lack entrepreneurial and managerial knowledge and skills that are essential to the development and implementation of a business idea. Also, I realised that implementing an entrepreneurial idea requires one to have leadership skills, which I lack. Generally, the personal plan helped me to gauge my ability to come up with successful business.

Critical Review of Chapters

I conducted a critical review of chapters 1, 2, 7 and 8 of the New Venture Creation: Entrepreneurship for the 21^st Century- A Pacific Rim Perspective, a book written by Timmons, Gillin, Burshtein and Spinelli. During this review, I learnt about the revolution of entrepreneurship and its impact on social and economic environment. It was encouraging to find out that entrepreneurship has both advantages and disadvantages but advantages outweigh disadvantages. I also learnt about various traits exhibited by most successful entrepreneurs including commitment, courage, good leadership skills, opportunity obsession, good communication skills, self-confidence, tolerance and ability to take risks, creativity and self-reliance and motivation to excel. As I was doing the review, I realized that I posses all of these attributes except leadership skills.

I also learnt about the importance of a business plan because the chapters explained differences between businesses formed based on businesses plans and businesses.............