Recap Week 1

1st week of new trimester...Kudos to ICEMS team, they managed to fix the bugs and at least students can register their subjects. Thanks also to FOM's people downstairs who help the lecturers with verification for manual registration. Kak Lin , Murad, Fiza, Halim and Kak Ju, you guys deserved two thumbs up!!.

As for me, just managed to install Office 2010 on Wednesday morning after my hard disk decided to crash ..but just I thought that I can continue with my work, my monitor then decided not to allow power to come to the screen...I am lucky no 7 to be in the list of malfunctioned monitor..Wow this Dell's batch really really not up to standard.

To recap, there were  altogether 6 sections of BEN2010. Some sections with many students and some section got less than 40 students attended the lecture.

After some discussion with FOM's officer, I agreed to increase the seats allocations for each sections. So, now the sections were all increased by 150 pax. So I expect this sem the number of my students will be around 850-950 students.

I guess, that is for now, need to do my Lecture Week 2 slides in a short while.

ICEMS finally revolt!!

It is a first day of a new trimester....It is a normal scene where students were queing in front of FOM counter to do manual registration. However, it is not a normal scene where large number of students queing at the corridor...I came at 11 am today to my office and within 20 minutes of my arrival, I already signed bout 30 manual registration forms!! Hmmm..this is unusual. How come the sections were full...After the students subsided from my room, I finally switch on my PC and check my email...ooo now it make sense...ICEMS system is having a glitch. No wonder...pity me and pity students and pity the admin staffs....

After quite grueling overtime data processing of MMU's examination schedules, graduation lists, key-ing in exam marks, processing and sending results to respective students, finally i would say..if ICEMS is a human like us, he/she finally revolt, if he/she can scream, he/she will say " Guys, give me my much deserving trimester break"

Well oh well, hopefully ICEMS can get rest and operate as normal tomorrow...Till then tomorrow I will have my first 3 lecture classes for this new trimester. I am very much in high spirit to deliver my sharing session.

Can entrepreneurship be taught???

This question is quite tricky.....

I did my lit review on this subject matter on the earlier part for my now concluded MPhil Thesis. Very much debatable topic, but it is worthwhile to continuously exploring this area.

Some scholars said NO, you can't teach a person to become entrepreneur because not everyone has the entrepreneurial traits. Over years, many scholars proved that entrepreneurs have common traits like: high locus of control, high need of achievement, independent person, brave, risk taker etc....

The real evidence to support this argument is that a successful entrepreneur is not necessary a successful person in their academic performance...basically, you don't have to score As for your entrepreneur or business subject in order for you to become a successful business owner. Some of leading examples are; Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Lim Goh Tong and Syed Mukhtar al Bukhari.

On the other hand, some said YES, entrepreneur is a system that can be taught. If you can imitate the system and behavior of entrepreneur, then you can become an entrepreneur. What you need is to follow the disciplines correctly. The things that you can learn in entrepreneurship courses are quite generic in nature. Such examples are like scanning for business opportunities, preparing market research, thinking creatively and innovate products and others.

One of the evidence to support this argument is why this entrepreneurship courses become popular in universities and colleges all around the world? That means it is proven that entrepreneurs can be taught in the higher education institutes.

For me, as an entrepreneurship educator, I would like to take the middle path. You yourself must possess and sharpen certain entrepreneurial traits and at the same time learn various entrepreneurship skills and knowledge to develop yourself as an entrepreneur. With the combination of both worlds, I am pretty sure you will be able to see thing clearly.

The key word here is Iqra' or Read.... You have to read yourself (personality) and you have to read your surrounding (environment, family, society). By reading and reflecting the 2 dimensions, slowly but surely you will discover your entrepreneurial spirit.

Nevertheless, I would like to share my insight about universities' entrepreneurship undertaking in a book chapter i wrote based on my MPhil in the link below. Enjoy!!

http://www.intechopen.com/books/entrepreneurship-born-made-and-educated/university-s-entrepreneurship-education-creating-meaningful-impression-for-new-generation

Intropreneur Studio: Foundation, Mission & Vision

Well...to start with, I am an avid audiophile junkie. Listen mostly  to rock songs. From the early days of 80s malay rock songs during primary school; to 90s Seattle grunge songs during teenage angst time, to millenium dosages of post-grunge rock songs and as years passing on I became more technical in listening to the details of the audio. I became very selective with my music. Always looking out for the combination of the rock bands and their albums' producers and sound engineers.

When come to the perspective of entrepreneurship, I always like to equate business incubator (dedicated place to breed enterprise) with music studio (where song or album being produced), where both places offer a creative and innovative setting to produce their respective output that will be enjoyed by their respective customers/listeners.

When I combined my idea of dedicated place (studio) and the subject of Introduction to Cyberpreneurship, therefore the name or brand "Intropreneurship Studio"  was popped in my head.
Well, deep inside I accepted that my time in composing and recording songs already over almost a decade ago; but I'm pretty sure with my position as Entrepreneurship Educator at MMU, I will be able to facilitate my students to become entrepreneur in the future or at least become enterprising in anything they do.

So the mission of this blog is pretty simple. To become a nexus where I share my insight about Entrepreneurship with my students and public followed by the vision of empowering my audience with entrepreneurship resources from my own insight and reflection, my entrepreneurship educators networking and other means.

From ideation to action, from basic musical composition to full length album and from basic business idea to fully functional commercial business flagship..

Welcome to my academic blog studio...

Well, it is 3pm, 21 Oct 2012. It is an eve of new academic trimester...it has been a hectic trimester break...marking papers, keying-in marks in ICEMS, convocation duties, my enterprising little brothers big wedding day, short trip to Cameron Highland and finally come the last weekend of the break...However, likewise other careers,life goes on...as academician, life is always challenging especially in balancing academic, research and administrative duties. With the true indipendent spirit of entrepreneurship, I got to stand up and undertake these responsibilities assigned to me with optimistic mind, with motivation to serve the society in my capacity as entrepreneurship  educator.