Assignment
Case Study:
Aki's Entrepreneurship Journey and Their Creation of NaturVention (now Naava)
I worked as a high school teacher for some time, and the as a university teacher for one year, and there I realized even though I was quite fun, and enjoyed the work, the feedback from the teachers' work wasn't enough.....I was kind of dissatisfied with my normal routine work or being an employee. I always had high ambitions, and it wasn't good for me if I managed to get a class working really great or not great, because I get the same end results, and there were only a few feedback that I got from that work, so it wasn't fulfilling for me. I am the type that always try to have new ideas and think differently all the time, which wasn't a good thing in normal school like where I was teaching and the faculty of Sports and Health Sciences where I was studying, and even though I had new ideas I haven't applied them as much it does in business, because if you have new ideas you can make a product or new service, or new way of thinking about a company, so I understood my traits were better suited to the business environment, and decided to enroll in minor business studies in my university, and there I met few same or like-minded people and that was also greatly encouraging. I started my entrepreneurial journey by organizing the biggest adventurous sport race in Finland. For me, this was a kind of an entrepreneurial thing, even though it wasn't a company.
Next, I started to sell clothes in the university - they were faculty of Sport and Health Sciences branded T-Shirts. This too was a kind of an entrepreneurial practice although I didn't see it as an entrepreneurial venture and neither did I see myself as an entrepreneur, and then a lot of entrepreneurial things that I did back then which I didn't think were entrepreneurial until now, so that was how I started. These entrepreneurial practices developed my entrepreneurial confidence and opportunity recognition skills. With these, towards the end of 2007, I was able to act on an opportunity I had been seeing for many years by creating my first actual business venture of 'Coaching Services' whilst I was still a student at the faculty of Sport and Health Sciences in the university of Jyvaskyla. I was coaching students who wanted to apply for positions in the Faculty of Sports and Health Sciences.
I was coaching them on how to go about the sporting activities they were going to be engaged in and also how to prepare for these positions they were vying for so that they could win. It was just one afternoon it dawned on me to act on this opportunity I had been seeing for long. Prior to creating this business, I had to have discussions with a few leaders of the university to look at ways to make the business really happen including how to do it in a less bureaucratic way, because there were some problems with the sport club that was already existing and so we looked at it from that perspective as well, so we just set up a company that could more professionally also deal with the problems of the sport club and create more expected value. And in 2010 we sold this company to another company that is now called Mobra Finland, and I became a partner to two other entrepreneurs in this company, and we continued with the Mobra Coaching Services and developed this company to the next level, which is now doing coaching services to business-to-business customers and making great progress right now.
Being part of the creation and running of these companies was kind of change in my life in a more professional way. Then in December, 2010, I met with one Mikko, and after accidental deliberations on new business ideas including a 'green wall' idea that he introduced to me with a picture of it from France we agreed to start a business as partners. After series of discussions of the 'green wall' concept with professors in the field of science with rather discouraging feedback that it wouldn't be possible to do such a thing, and also discussing the idea with some business professors and entrepreneurs, we got some encouragement from a few of them that the idea would work. With this momentum, we started prototyping a 'green wall' to Mikko's apartment.
We discussed our idea with a lot of people, discussions that centered on not the basic stuffs but the high level stuffs of our idea about what to do . Our team went to the 'Global Venture Lab' (GVL) and Protomo who have helped with building our ideas further by allowing us to do presentations where we got a lot of feedback and new ideas from our colleague students, company representatives, entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, and our business professors (some of whom were visiting scholars and guest lecturers). GVL gave us a lot of links to some people and fortunately we got a mentor who is a seasoned successful entrepreneur to help us get along. In fact, our university itself has been quite bad in terms of help but GVL was the biggest help. In other parts of the university we had discouragements from some lecturers who said to us that we wouldn't be able to do what we wanted to do so we had better done something else, and that was unheard of. We braced ourselves against the 'idea killing' and discouraging comments, and after further testing and experimentation, and building the feedback into the next iteration, Mikko and I finally launched NaturVention.
Going through all these entrepreneurial practices have now transformed me into a kind of opportunity-driven person, and so, I always take the first step and then a lot of steps further or backward, so I have always been taking the risk to try new ideas and this has proven to be a kind of trait that I have, which has helped somehow. I have also realized I have traits like "heuristic thinking" and rules of thumb, trial and error approach to things, which are always good things when you try new things. But if you just think all about the risks involved in whatever you want to do, then you don't get anything done, so you have to be somewhat optimistic and take calculated risks or determine the rules of thumb of how you make something happen.
Source: Excerpts from Emmanuel Ossom's Dissertation Data, 2016-2020
Critical Thinking Questions (provide solutions in power point)
A. What was the turning point for Aki to start the journey of entrepreneurship? Do you and/or others have similar experiences that could be a turning point for something, especially in line with entrepreneurship? What is your critical analysis of Aki's decision to start the journey of entrepreneurship? Do you agree with Aki or disagree? Present your argument.
B. Critically analyze what it took Aki to eventually become an entrepreneur. What would you have done different?
C. What external forces helped or hindered Aki's journey of becoming an entrepreneur and how? How did he overcome the impediments (if there were any)?
D. What was the idea that led to NaturVention according to the story? (Google and read more about this company). Discuss how that idea was developed and then finally into NaturVention.
E. State, justify, and discuss how you would apply any EIGHT entrepreneurial traits demonstrated by Aki (and together with his partner).
F. Discuss any FIVE constructive lessons you have learnt from this case that align you're your entrepreneurship interests.