BE-253- Creating and Managing the New and Entrepreneurial Organisation 

Individual Essay (100% of the total mark)

You are expected to write an Essay of no more than 2,000 words on the following topic. You can take necessary assumptions to answer the question.

All submissions must be presented in typescript (MS Word format), 12pt, 1.5 line spacing.
Block chain technology, machine learning, and the emergence of quantum computing have created many challenges towards traditional entrepreneurship. In addition, pandemic, Ukraine war, geo-politics, and climate change have made sustainability and growth of a business ever complex. Considering the above entrepreneurial environmental context, being a graduate entrepreneur, whether you will follow traditional entrepreneurship or lean start-up process for keeping business growth as the key objective of your business.

Your answer should focus following issues:

1. Provide a critical discussion on Traditional entrepreneurship and Lean Start-up process based on the design thinking. You should clearly distinguish both start-up processes and give your preference in the context mentioned above. (40% weight).
2. Explain your Business Model development and link it with the start-up process you follow (30% weight).
3. Envisage the growth of your business based on the position you explained in requirement ii. Critically explain the business growth following a growth model (30% weight).

You can use real life data and take necessary assumptions to develop and support your arguments. You should critically discuss your own ideas/opinion on the topic by reflecting on the related module materials, discussion in the class room, and on the context provided here.

An Indicative Guide to Essay Writing

• The Purpose of the Essay

Essays allow us to judge your understanding of course material covered. The essay is designed to evaluate your ability to understand, analyse, organise, and communicate. It constitutes, therefore, a key element of the learning process.

• Writing an Essay

In writing essays it is important that you develop good habits. We do not want to unduly influence your writing style but good habits are likely to be developed if your essay adheres to the following broad guidelines.

1. Use the introductory paragraph(s) to indicate you have correctly identified the main theme(s), and briefly outline how you intend to tackle the question.
2. Use later paragraphs to deal systematically with all the relevant points.
3. Use a new paragraph for each new aspect of the question and, to ensure continuity of the argument, provide some meaningful link between each paragraph. Always make sure that you explain and define any technical terms. Diagrams can be a useful way to get across your points concisely and precisely. Make sure that diagrams are integrated into the essay discussion. Also, ensure that they are properly labelled with each diagram having a title and/or number and appropriately cited (i.e., refer to the relevant page numbers of the textbook or the lecture notes from which they are taken, if relevant).
4. Tables can help summarise important factual information and should be integrated into the essay discussion. In addition, ensure that they are properly labelled and/or numbered, and appropriately cited.
5. Include a concluding paragraph that summarises your argument(s). You may also include some comments as to the limitations of the principles, concepts or techniques utilised in answering the question, and any practical problems facing potential policy recommendations made.
6. The concluding paragraph also provides scope for you to check that everything included in the main part of the essay is relevant to your conclusions. If it is not contributing, why include it in the essay? Remember that essay questions will not be of the following kind: “write all you know about ….”.
7. Get into the habit of reading your coursework essay thoroughly before submitting it. Essays riddled with errors are not looked upon favourably by markers. Check and remove all typos and redraft parts that do not read quite as well as intended.
8. Close the loop. Re-read your coursework when you get your written feedback from your tutor. If you are disappointed with your mark, the comments should help you diagnose where you went wrong and how you can improve. If you are surprised and delighted by your mark (and we hope that this will be the case) there is still scope for learning and improving so that you can be surprised and delighted next time too.

• Broad Structure

A standard way to think about the planning of the structure for an essay is based on four main sections. This, of course, is a general description, but can be helpful in organising the context. Hence, the inclusion of the following sections can be a good starting point:

1. An introduction, which should be clearly denoted by a sub-heading. The introduction has two purposes. First, to tell the reader briefly about the topic and why it is important. Second, to define up-front any key terms used and guiding the reader about your position in the essay.
2. A background section detailing the background of the company context related to the question, how others in the field (experts) have considered related issues and set the broad context of how you tackle the question. If you think you are contributing something new in the existing literature, this is where you describe in brief where your contributions lie.
3. A main section that shows how you have approached the question, what your findings are and what inferences have you drawn, which can answer the question above. This is the most detailed section of your essay and carries the most weight.
4. A conclusion which should briefly summarise your key findings and identify any of the limitations of your essay (perhaps by reference back to how others have dealt with such topics) and how these may be overcome in more advanced literature.

• Evidence and References

In general you should give necessary references to the sources for:
a) Assertions of fact that cannot be presumed to be common knowledge.
b) Direct quotations or paraphrases of other writers’ statements.
c) Opinions and generalisations derived from other writers.
d) Borrowed tables and diagrams (for which the source is usually given underneath the table or diagram).

• Footnotes and Endnotes

You can use either footnotes or endnotes in your essay. Regardless of which you use, be consistent throughout your essay. Remember that footnotes or endnotes are subject to the overall word limit and, as a general rule, should be used sparingly. 

• The Bibliography

It is essential that you include in your essay proper citations to all academic works or other source materials used in support of your argument(s). Having an inappropriate bibliography can result in the deduction of marks. As a general point, do not cite for the sake of citing, but to give emphasis to, or provide evidence for, a particular point or argument. Each citation, irrespective of source, nature, length or importance, must be fully acknowledged using an accepted convention for doing so. The Harvard system is extensively used in economics for this purpose. This method relies on a short citation in brackets in the text, which the reader can then check against a bibliographic entry at the back of the essay. This method always requires a bibliography, which should be listed alphabetically and consist of the author`s surname, initials, the year of publication, and, where relevant, the publisher`s name. Any book title should be in italics and any journal title should be underlined.