entrepreneurship

 The final lecture of the week was based on starting your own buisness or entrepreneurship. Charlie Dickenson studied Politics at Swansea University, and then decided to start a business. She had an idea and tried to do it herself and found it very difficult, but it was a learning experience.

After the introduction,  proceeded into the principles of entrepreneurial skill. She stated, 'if you dont have an idea, you dont have a buisness,' so make sure you have a notebook full of ideas. Once you have your idea, you should make sure that there is a market for your product. Find out where your customers are through online communities and research. Ensure you pay close attention to your research. You also need to know if there are enough customers to market your product to. Applying the fact only a percentage of this market will actually buy the product.

She emphasised, that without the use of marketing, no one will know your product exists. Putting money into marketing will get you more customers. Although it is possible to not market a product, sometimes you need a marketing campaign and sometimes a large launch to get known. The lecture ended with a reminder to always think of the overlooked things such as premises for buisness, costs of everything as well as sorting out appropriate funding. People will help you if you ask, but you need to already have breakeven cashflow as this is extremely important. Also keep an eye out for competition.

Review

A general view of entrepreneurship with many informative parts that I can take from it. Although not overall specific to any of my possible creative areas, this is useful information if I intend to turn my work into a product. Within the lecture, I would have liked to have seen the information related back to a form of creative industry, to see how to connect it together, but I'm sure I could take the information I find useful from it and apply it myself. The fact this was not industry specific probably did weaken its effectiveness. Because of this, I feel although useful this only expanded on what I had previously learnt in buisness studies rather than providing me with new information.