ENTI 674 Self-Reflection
I recently took the course ENTI 674: Technologies of Innovation, which is part of my Master of Management curriculum. I was unsure what to expect for this course, as I had only taken one entrepreneurship in the previous semester. I also was not very familiar with the University of Calgary and its course offerings, so I went into this course with an open mind. After looking at the course outline, I was most excited to learn about different digital technologies and tools that can be applied in a variety of ways to support a business. I wanted to learn about these technologies as I have been getting more into Shopify, Facebook Ads, and other tools, so I was excited to expand my knowledge and build upon it with new tools.
At what point in the course did you feel most engaged?
Throughout the semester, our class had the privilege to listen and speak with six guest speakers from come from a variety of backgrounds and bring an array of knowledge with them. It was great to be able to learn by hearing from industry experts, as well as be able to ask them questions. I especially enjoyed hearing from guest speaker, Benny Giang, who is the co-founder of CryptoKitties and NBA Top Spot. It was great getting to learn more about his background and how he started his companies. It was also inspiring to learn about his starting days, where he had basically no money, no job and no degree, yet he hustled and worked hard to eventually get his foot in the door. It was also cool to hear more him speak about cryptocurrency and learn more about CryptoKitties, as we have been learning about FinTech in our finance class. It was great to be able to connect learnings from different classes together.
Which assignment did you most enjoy completing?
My favourite assignment was Lab 1 where we had to create a Weebly landing page for a new business idea. I really enjoy hands-on learning and creative thinking, and this assignment allowed me to experiment with design and entrepreneurship. It was fun creating the layout and finding photos and products for the page. Weebly also made it easy to create a website by providing templates and themes to use. I have no experience with coding or programming so it was great that I could create the site without needing that knowledge It was also great to learn how to use Zapier to create an automated email for subscribers. I enjoyed learning about these processes as well as being able to be creative in my work. I do wish, however, that it was worth more than 3% of the final grade, as it was a lot of work but also one of the most useful exercises.
What skills, abilities and concepts will you take away from this course?
From this course, I have learned a variety of new concepts and tools that I can apply outside of this course. One main concept that I enjoyed learning about was Rapid Prototyping. A few weeks ago, I wasn’t even aware that rapid prototyping was a thing, but it’s super cool! Rapid prototyping basically means building many prototypes within a short period of time to find one that works (Harrington, 2015). This can be done with cheap materials to make many versions. Harrington (2015) explains in his video that firms should invite the whole organization to take part in rapid prototyping in order to build more prototypes but also to increase collaboration and build value for the business. In addition, the video Rapid Prototyping: Sketching (Shaikh & Powel, 2016) showed how to use sketches and paper to create interactive prototypes as well, which I thought looked super cool to design, create and play around with. It really helps visualize the prototype in a cost-effective way.
An additional tool that I will take away from this course includes building a Twitter bot. It was interesting to try and create a Twitter bot as that was something I hadn’t done before. However, it was surprisingly straightforward and fun to set up. It was cool to see my bot working and producing tweets passively. It could get a bit frustrating with some of the setup and glitches, but in the end, it was rewarding to learn the tool and see it work!
References
CryptoKitties. (2021). CryptoKitties: Collect and breed furever friends! https://www.cryptokitties.co/
Harrington, D. [Daniel Harrington]. (2015, April 14). Design thinking 2 rapid prototypes HD [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpd7uov5UM0
Shaikh, M. & Powel, M. [Google for Startups]. (2016, August 8). Rapid prototyping: Sketching [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMjozqJS44M
