Assignment 1:
1. What are the factors that contributed to the success and failure of Steve Jobs as a technopreneur?

ANSWER:

After watching the movie “Pirates of the Silicon Valley”, one thing that comes up in my mind is that being or having a business is not that easy because along the way of managing your own business there are some problems and trials you are going to face.

Just like in the case of Steve Jobs in the movie that is the founder of the Apple Computer and lately became the first company who become successful in the field of Computers. But then, there are some factors that contributed to the success of Steve Jobs becoming the successful technopreneur.
As Steve Jobs said “I want to put a dent in the universe”. From the Apple I to the Macintosh and to the iPod, he has become virtually close to achieving his goal, managing to make a name for himself in all of the business, entertainment and technological world. And what did it take for him to get to the top and become successful? Well here are the factors that contributed to the success of Steve Jobs.

Faith: Jobs didn’t always know what he was doing in life. A college dropout, many gave up on him and had little faith in his abilities. But, Jobs didn’t give up on himself. He continued pursuing avenues that he found interesting, trusting that in the end it would be more meaningful and even perhaps useful. He soon learned that everything in his life, even the most terrible things, seem to happen for a reason and he is now able to place a certain amount of trust in the uncontrollable.

Passion: “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work,” says Jobs. From his first days working at his father’s workbench, Jobs knew that his future lay in the creation of things. It wasn’t until he met Wozniak in 1968 that he knew what those things were – personal computers. Despite failures such as Apple III and being fired from the company he helped found, Jobs managed to come back out on top because he knew that he didn’t want to devote his life to anything but his passion.

Courage: After being diagnosed with cancer and facing the threat of death, Jobs made a recovery and vowed to make the most of the second chance that he was given. He kept his eyes and ears open and had the courage to seize new opportunities as they came along. Whether risky or outright foolish, Jobs was from then on out determined to follow his intuition in guiding his business decisions. And, at a net worth of over $4 billion, it paid off.

Innovation: When other CEOs were focusing on sales and financing, Jobs was concerning himself with the next big thing. Personally meeting with suppliers and suppliers’ suppliers, Jobs made it his top priority to keep on top of the next frontier. By filling his company with only the brightest of people, Jobs continues to work towards ensuring Apple a place at the top of the market for years to come.

Vision: An open mind and the ability to put new twists on old techniques was one of the key distinguishing factors between Jobs and his competitors. From cute and utilitarian ads to those that appealed to counterculture rebellion, Jobs’ vision was integrated into every aspect of the company’s strategy. If you dreamed of changing the world, then Jobs was out to prove any way he could that you needed an Apple computer to do it.
From being thought of as a one-hit wonder for his role in founding Apple Computer in the 1970s to rebounding with Pixar and once again rejuvenating Apple, Jobs has time and time again demonstrated resilience in the face of adversity. And, he shows no signs of stepping down any time soon. “I think we’re having fun. I think our customers really like our products. And we’re always trying to do better.” He said.

Likewise if there is a success in your business, well there is also a failure. If Steve Jobs become successful, still he has experience failures also along his way of becoming a successful. So here are some of the factors contributed to the failures of Steve Jobs.

Karma: After Steve Jobs stolen the product from XEROX which is called mouse which made him becomes the powerful and the leading technology-based businessman in the society in that time. But then again it is stole by Bill Gates which made Steve Jobs lose his career and bestow down from his thrown. Well it is the term KARMA about the cycle of cause and effect because it involves what happens to a person, happens because they caused it through with their actions. Maybe it is just a punishment or reward. I think it just makes people feels responsible about their life and how they treat the others.

Forgotten when he started: As he reached the highest point in his life, he had forgotten the things that made him on the top. He forgotten most especially those people shared their ideas and knowledge to the business he make.

Today, Steve Jobs is undeniably an extraordinary man by any standard. He has left his mark on no less than five industries: personal computers with Apple II and Macintosh, music with iPod and iTunes, phone with iPhone, and animation with Pixar. The middle-class hippie kid with no college education that he was built a computer empire and became a multi-millionaire in a few years, was fired from his own company before coming back a decade later to save it and turn it into one of the world’s most influential corporations, with millions of fans around the world. He has also contributed to the creation of the new leader in animated movies for decades to come. He has been called a fluke for years, but is now widely acknowledged as one the world’s most eminent business executives and an unrivaled visionary. He has changed millions of lives by making technology easy-to-use, exciting and beautiful.

Reference:
http://www.allaboutstevejobs.com/rss/feederRSS.xml

2. How do you see yourself as a technopreneur?

ANSWER:

Me, myself as a technopreneur, I think I can do it. Because in Technopreneurship it does not need a good IQ instead if you have a good emotional quotient (EQ) and good adversity quotient (AQ) then you can be a technopreneur. And me in myself, even though I am not that have a good IQ but only thing that I can be evidence for is my good emotional quotient. It is proven and has been seen in the reality that not all technopreneur are smart neither intelligent but the great skills and abilities are the good thing you need to be a successful and globally competitive technopreneur.

Technopreneurship is the key to earn money through the use of technology in your own business. As what have said by our professor about what is Technopreneurship all about, Technopreneurship is the combination of the word technology and entrepreneurship, where it means business.

In order to be a richest man in the world someday first you must go to school, get a high grades, and you graduate. Second, be an employer not an employee, be the boss in your own company. A good example of Technopreneurship is the internet; there are lots of offers in the internet, ranging from advertising to affiliate business to freelance writing. There are really lots of stuffs in the web that you can earn from, or anything that is a masterpiece made of technology. Especially in our country Philippines, we have a job inflation or jobless people. That’s why being a Technopreneur really helps in this kind of situation. Because through this, when you start a business, you could hire your fellowmen as your employees and you can give them a job. So you help yourself and the other people to have a financial freedom at the same time.

When I heard the word technopreneur, one thing that comes up in my mind is that, what it is the difference of technopreneur from any other businessman? …Now I know,” What differentiates a technopreneur from any other businessman is the way of a technopreneur operates his business, the way of a technopreneur to assess his understanding to his business as well as his readiness and ability to manage his proposed endeavor. As “Steve Seah says, his business is generally with a high growth potential and high leverage of knowledge and intellectual property. And there’s more, he always has a viable exit mechanism.

This is what has said by our professor, If you are thinking to be a technopreneur, you need to have a characteristic of being a hardworking, self-confidence, builds for the future, ambitious, profit oriented, goal oriented, persistent, responds to feedback, demonstrative initiative, willing to listen, sets own standard and last that I have copied in my notes is copes with uncertainty. And there is also called a SEED Role which means Self mastery, Environment mastery, Enterprise mastery and lastly Development of the business plan which is also very important factor to be a successful technopreneur.

As what Steve Seah says in his article WHO IS A TECHNOPRENEUR AND A MINIPRENEUR? ” So, if you want to be a technopreneur, start with assessing yourself, if you are really for it. And be very honest about it. You can’t cheat yourself. What are your interests? Are you really interested in being a technopreneur or are you joining the bandwagon? Do you have the aptitude to be a technopreneur? What are the relative advantages and disadvantages of being a technopreneur?”

Nowadays, technologies have been useful in our today’s generation. Even in the some universities, they already have the newest and latest technology offers. Traditional university programs, however, lack the teaching methods to turn today's students into creative, innovative, visionary global leaders who understand the importance of technopreneurship. Recent technological advances and global competitiveness have changed and broadened the nature of liberal arts to embrace humans and machines. The answer is not creating new liberal arts or soft-skills courses, but integrating them into the general technical curriculum. These changes take time. Also, what about present and past universities' graduates? The solution is to increase in site training and development at all levels of a corporation.

These programs should focus on what workers and professionals should be able to do. These include functioning on multidisciplinary teams, communicating effectively, acquiring updated knowledge of technological developments, and understanding the basic technical concepts and there new applications and improvements.

As defined by Manuel Cereijo of what is Technopreneurship is, on his article entitled Technopreneurship, He defined it “as not a product but a process of synthesis in engineering the future of a person, an organization, a nation and the world”.

High-tech and entrepreneurial skills are driving our economy back to prosperity. Technopreneurship-merging technology prowess and entrepreneurial skills- is the real source of power in today's knowledge-based economy. A technopreneur distinguishes logic from tradition, tradition from prejudice, prejudice from common sense and common sense from nonsense while integrating a variety of ideas from diverse groups and disciplines.

Creativity is breaking the conventional mental blocks and playing with imagination and possibilities, leading to new and meaningful connections and outcomes while interacting with ideas, people and the environment. Technopreneurship is the only source of long-run sustainable competitive advantage. In an era of man-made brainpower industries, individual, corporate, and national economic success will all require both new and more extensive skills sets than have been required in the past. By themselves skills don't guarantee success. They have to be put together in successful organizations. But without skills and Technopreneurship there are no successful organizations. A combination of skills and knowledge will lead to a better future.

Maybe, someday after I finished took this subject Technopreneurship it would definitely help me in my chosen career and somehow can lend me a hand into the world of bachelors. I will set my goals and strive very hard to achieved it, conceive my vision and passion over it and lastly I will take all the risks to be a well-molded, refined and skillful technopreneur.


References:
http://www.entrepreneurship-education.com/studentfeedback4.html
http://www.tasyo.org/2008/07/technoreneurship-redefined.html


3. Would you take the same career path that Steve Jobs took? Why or why not?

ANSWER:

As I have research and read an article in the internet of what is “Pirates of the Silicon Valley” all about. Pirates of the Silicon Valley were a movie about Steve Jobs and how Apple got started and also about Bill Gates an how Microsoft got started. The movie is called “Pirates of the Silicon Valley” because it is about the piracy in the computer world in the early to mid of 1970’s.

Steve Jobs was the co-founder of the Apple Computers, at the age of 20’s became the richest and wealthiest man and makes a greater career in his life. Wow! From a college dropout and didn’t know what he was doing in life became like this. Unbelievable…..

In the movie Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak “Woz” were friends and had a fun making or working on a mainframe computer. But then lately they got famous because of their first product called the Apple 1 and were the first commercially available computer in that time. While Bill Gates, he is a typical computer nerd, who leaves the Harvard education to start working in Microsoft with his friend named Paul. What many people don’t know about these revolutionaries is that they worked together until Steve Jobs realized that Bill Gates developed Windows from software Apple had designed for their computers. The irony of this situation is that Apple stole the “windows concept” from
Xerox.

Just what I’ve heard in the movie “Good artist copy, great artist steal”, a very inspirable line that I would never ever forget. It made me think that every person of us has a strategy of its own, on the way how they deal on their life challenges and obstacles. Like Bill Gates, he has also its own strategy on how to be with Steve Jobs in order for him to steal the Macintosh.

For me, my answer is yes but it doesn’t mean that I would follow all he has done in his life. I would rather to choose the same career like Steve Jobs made because of his faith in his abilities, his passion and his creativeness but not his arrogant attitude. I like the way he manages his business and also a technopreneur and the way he handles his people in his company. Steve Jobs was very strict in implementing his rules in terms of job’s discussions and wise enough in making business negotiations. And I appreciate him on how he treats for his people in his company.

Relating it into reality, I WANT TO BE RICH. I want to be like Steve Jobs, at the age of 20’s became a wealthiest and richest man. But before I’ll be in that position, I should finish took my course right now living being an IT student. Even despite the fact that they say that this course is a very tough course, but in spite of of what they say I would try my best to be an IT graduate. I know that there are lots of opportunities waiting along the way in my life and challenges to go beyond.