The first part of the heading of this blog post was the topic which we we dealt with the last couple of weeks. As we already wrote, the first lectures of the management part of the course were quite promising, and we can say now that the rest of this part was great as well!
We learned a lot about the challenges of start-ups and entrepreneurship, how important business model innovations are, what role stakeholders play and what corporate social responsibility is. If you want to become an entrepreneur, it is crucial that you apply the famous “blue ocean strategy”. The aim of the strategy is to find the “sweet spot” where you cover the needs of your customers in a way that your competitors cannot. One typical Swedish example is “VÄDERSTAD”, a company which developed innovative farming machinery. During the course, some fellow students developed now innovative ideas in their minds – maybe you will get inspired as well? 😉
At the end of the course we had to write a paper about an organisation in the agricultural sector. The task was to analyse the organisation regarding its sustainable business model and strategy and how well the sustainable business model is integrated within the company and its environment. Also, we had to do a short presentation at the end which was really interesting! We got to know various organisations, from small scale to large scale, and it was exciting to discuss to what extent are they doing real sustainable business or greenwashing.
We learned, stay always critical! 😉