Developing Entrepreneurial Attributes

MgMT13151 – Assessment Item 1

Essay – Developing entrepreneurial attributes

•30% or 30 marks

•This is an individual essay that will be 1200 words +/- 10%

•Week 4 Friday (3 Aug 2018) 11:55 pm AEST

•This individual written assessment is designed to:

–Assist you to develop your understanding of the knowledge, qualities and skills needed to become a successful entrepreneur by investigating real world innovation and start-up activities and events.

–Give you the opportunity to enhance skills in critical thinking, research and written communication skills.

•All submissions must be uploaded through the Assessment Item 1 link on the unit Moodle page.

•The essay can be uploaded as a pdf or word document.

•Penalties for late submission are applied according to the policy. This is 5% of the total marks for this assessment item deducted for every day the assignment is late.

Task 1

1.Identify and describe three events aimed at developing new innovations and start-ups.

–Some of these events include Hackathons, Start-Up weekends, and Innovation events, competitions and conferences.

–You should search the internet for these events by conducting a google search, for example.

–When you discuss these events you should name the event, the organising body for the event, the ‘audience’ for the event, the duration of the event and so on.

–Remember you only have 1200 words overall for the essay so this task should only take about 300 words.

–This should form the introduction to your essay.

–You should reference the websites for these events.

Task 2

2.Discuss the entrepreneurial attributes you would gain from participating in such events. Depending on the events you choose you might be able to answer the following questions:

–What insights will you gain about how to be a successful entrepreneur?

–What would you learn about launching or pitching an idea?

–What would you learn about entrepreneurial partnerships or teams?

–You should use the theory from the textbook and from journal articles here to find the attributes of entrepreneurs and try to match them to the content of the websites.

–Again, this might only be 300 words in length but it should address the attributes gained from events generally, not the three events separately.

Task 3 

3.Discuss your agreement or disagreement with the proposition that the ideas generated by such events do not benefit society but are a way for organisers to exploit the ideas of participants.

–You are required to develop a short argument here either agreeing or disagreeing with the proposition.

–Who benefits from these events?

–You need to back up your stance with research so again you are expected to use the textbook and journal articles to support your discussion.

–This should be the conclusion part of your essay.

–Again, this might only be 300 words in length.

Meaning of words

•Demonstrated understanding: this will be shown when you make a link between the theory and the website content.

•Critical evaluation: this will be demonstrated when you give your verdict as to what extent a statement or findings within a piece of research are true, or to what extent you agree with them. Provide evidence which both agrees with and contradicts an argument.

•Minimum number of references: if you only use 8-10 references you will receive 1.5 out of 3 marks.

•APA referencing system: you must only use this referencing system in the body of the essay and in the reference list at the end. Ensure you familiarise yourself with it!

•Essay structure: there should be a clear and cohesive discussion of the three tasks.

•Appropriate conventions of academic writing: this is quite a formal style of writing discussed later.

Essays

•Have an introduction, body and conclusion.  In this case the essay will follow the structure of task 1, 2, and 3.

•Must be written in paragraph form with full sentences.

•Do not have headings other than the title of the essay.

•Do not contain tables or figures, these can be placed in the appendix but must be briefly discussed in the body.

•Your essay must be clearly referenced in-text to indicate the sources of information.

•It must also include an alphabetical reference list with full publication details that exactly match the in-text citations. 

Appropriate writing conventions

•Must be within the word limit (first word of introduction to last word of the conclusion).

•Write in paragraph form with full sentences. A paragraph is more than one sentence.

•Introduce a new topic in a new paragraph, don’t write overly long paragraphs.

•Make the first or last sentence the topic sentence of the paragraph.

•Write using formal academic language and specific innovation, entrepreneurship, and start-ups words, theories, concepts and terms.

•Avoid using casual conversational language. For example, instead of writing “it’s a good idea to think about . . .” write “an important consideration is . . ”

Write in the third person not using “I”, “we”, “one”, “he/she”.

Plagiarism

•CQUniversity has a policy on plagiarism and you are strongly encouraged to familiarise yourself with it.

•Not having read the policy is no excuse when you are reported for plagiarism.

•The following URL will lead you to CQUniversity’s policy repository where you can search for plagiarism procedures and policy. https://www.cqu.edu.au/policy

•There is also information on the unit Moodle site about plagiarism and academic misconduct.  You should read this information and watch the student video.