Late yesterday, 19 October 2010, at a casual gathering with some industry experts, a question was raised: what sort of benefits accrue to Capetonians from CPUT’s department of Entrepreneurship and Business Management? I tried to understand the reason behind the question and the answers I got seemed interesting. Firstly, in Gauteng, both Wits and University of Pretoria are consulted on a regular basis by both established businesses and burgeoning ones. I also gathered that both universities run, independently, advisory centres (free of charge) for the upcoming businesses. I am aware that this might be too early, but how about giving this a thought from our side here in Cape Town? How about providing this sort of service to burgeoning businesses? I also picked up from the conversation last night that aspects that could lead to a more productive support service to burgeoning entrepreneurs might require an investigation into the following:
· Educating entrepreneurs
· Quantifying business opportunities
· Reviewing entrepreneurship literature
So, do we have the capability to provide some service to the community? How do we get the community aware that we can and do have the capability? How can this be run/managed? And very importantly, what benefits might this serve the department and by extension, the university?
Let’s share thoughts on these.
i think its a great idea to have a service like that not will it help entrepreneurs at CPUT but also the community at lage. one way that this service could be ran or manager, it will have have to include first the entrepreneurship student to run it as a project from 1st year to Btech. i think the likes of reddoor and the NYDA would also be part of this great service which at the end will the community of CPUT
ReplyDeletei honestly think that this idea will make some noise for the dept, beef up students experience and even earn the students an opportunity to figure out that 'big idea'. someone said we might be duplicating the services of the likes of red door, seda and so on. and my answer is we can't have enough of these centers- the more the better for enterepreneurs. again our location in the city is even a good competitive edge. we have to get the HOD to buy into this and we must deliberate on it as a department. any ideas on how it can take off the ground can be 'supplied' here on the blog
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