The purpose of this essay is to evaluate and reflect personally on the entrepreneurial journey of an individual entrepreneur and the opportunity development process of a venture. This individual essay should be 1,500 words (±10%) in length. This assignment is due on Friday, May 2, 2025, on Moodle by 1:00 pm.
Each student is required to find archival, secondary sources about an entrepreneur who has started and operated at least one new venture, either currently or in the past. These can be memoirs, non-fiction books, magazine/blog interviews, YouTube interviews, podcasts, radio interviews, TV interviews, etc.
Students may select any entrepreneur of their choice in this activity. Entrepreneurs who have established social enterprises may be included. Serial entrepreneurs are also appropriate interviewees. However, students should not select individuals who have taken over the running of a family business, have bought a business, or are franchise owners – it is appropriate to select individuals who have been creating new value.
While there are many angles to explore in the essay, you are asked to think about the following through the lenses of the various concepts, theories, and frameworks learned in the unit.
Note: Each entrepreneurial journey evaluation essay will be unique. How the essay is written will depend on the information collected, and everyone will have collected a different range of information from different entrepreneurs. I would also like to enable some flexibility in terms of how the essay is written to encourage you to be creative.
However, here are some pointers for how to write your essay:
- You need to discuss both the entrepreneur and his/her venture. The content of the reflective essay does need to cover issues that are addressed in the scholarly literature: e.g. are entrepreneurs ‘different’; attitude to risk; motivation to start a business; background factors (e.g. education, family, work), opportunity identification, access to resources, raising finance; aspirations for the venture; the challenges of growth and the transition from ‘entrepreneur’ to ‘manager’.
- You should conclude the essay with a section on the insights that you have learned about developing entrepreneurial projects as a result of your research into the entrepreneur’s journey and your reflection upon it.
- All sources need to be referenced using APA or Harvard (Bath) referencing style (see University of Bath). The essay should include an appendix with a bibliography of the archival materials used to inform your research into your entrepreneur.
Marking criteria and policies
The assessment of your essay will focus on the following aspects, each with the following marks:
- Person (20%) – Identifies and evaluates entrepreneurial agent(s), or key individual(s) who have played significant role(s) in entrepreneurial project(s).
- Opportunity (25%) – Articulates and evaluates the entrepreneurial opportunity.
- Process (25%) – Identifies and evaluates early exploration and growth of the entrepreneurial project through the lens of development
- stages.
- Context (20%) – Identifies and assesses the external environment and circumstances that influence the development and success of an entrepreneurial project.
- Structure and style (10%) – Organisation, clarity, and referencing.
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The marks for each section will be based on:
- Identification of meaningful issues for discussion
- Illustration with relevant facts
- Integration with class concepts, theories, and frameworks
- Analytical rigour
A detailed rubric with descriptions of each dimension is available on Moodle.
The lecturer will give general feedback. Each coursework will be graded individually using the rubric/matrix (see Moodle) but the feedback will be general, indicating the characteristics of the works that achieved high grades and the characteristics of those that did not perform so well.
Submission requirements
The word limit is 1,500 words for the individual essay. The word limit refers to the main body of the text. You can exceed or lower this word limit by 10 per cent only.
Footnotes that have been produced by you should be counted within the overall word limit. Tables in the main body of the assignment that contain text should be counted within the overall word limit. Appendices, diagrams, figures and reference lists and bibliographies should not be counted within the overall word limit.
If you do not adhere to the word limit, the assignment will be returned to you to amend and resubmit within 5 working days. The resubmitted coursework will not gain a mark of more than the pass mark (40). If you do not resubmit the work within 5 working days, you will receive a mark of 0 (zero) for this piece of work.
If you are having technical issues with the submission, you can email me the essay before the deadline has passed, and the submission will not count as late. If you submit a piece of work after the submission deadline (and no extension has been granted), the maximum mark possible will be the pass mark. If you submit work more than five working days after the submission deadline, you will normally receive a mark of 0 (zero), unless you have been granted an extension or a panel has agreed that there are Individual Mitigating Circumstances (IMCS).
Common questions and answers regarding the assessment
Q: If someone is a co-founder of a business, is that also suitable?
A: Yes!
Q: I was wondering if it would be acceptable to do the assignment on a charity, or would this not be classified as a company?
A: You can certainly do the assignment on a charity or social venture, as long as you can focus your research on the person who founded it.
Q: I would like to ask you whether the entrepreneur and interviews/articles with them have to be in English/international.
A: The entrepreneur can be of any nationality, and the interviews/articles do not have to be in English. Any articles about them do need to be cited and referenced using APA or Harvard (Bath) referencing style (see University of Bath).
Q: Are there any additional criteria when choosing an entrepreneur, such as the number of their projects/the industry of the start-up/how big their start-up/organisation is now, etc.?
A: No, there’s no additional criteria. Choose whoever you would find most interesting to analyse and reflect upon.