In its first three months, Grad2Director helped eight graduates found their own companies and with financial support from York St John University and local Solicitors Rollit’s LLP they have gone one step further, to become incorporated as Private Limited Companies.
The programme is now in its second year, with 40 company founders undergoing coaching and mentoring to start their own business via Grad2Director or via the new Grad2Freelancer programme to work part time as a freelancer to develop the career skills and experience to go into business full time or kick start their future career.
https://www.yorksj.ac.uk/careers-placements–opportunities/2018-graduates/grad2director-and-grad2freelancer/
Using Venture Creation to learn Enterprise skills!
Both Grad2Director and Grad2Freelancer provide students with the opportunity to start their own business, but it is about way more than that. The coaching and mentoring for both uses an online programme that was designed to help corporate professionals accelerate their careers.
“Building Business Opportunities with Technology” is an online course that helps people learn how to develop innovative technology products and services for their employers.
As an ex-corporate recruiter with Procter & Gamble and PepsiCo International I have recruited literally hundreds of gradauates, mostly by running and establishing graduate internship programmes in both of these companies. One of the harsh realities many students face is that their degree programmes do not teach them some of the most important skills that employers are looking for. Even the highest potential graduate recruits have to learn them early in their corporate career.
I designed this programme in such a way that to progress through it participants simply have no choice but to learn critical enterprise skills.
Leadership, Creativity and Innovation, Working Effectively with Other, Communication, Priority Setting, Initiative and Follow Through, Thinking & Problem Solving and finally Technical Mastery.
I don’t “teach” these skills in Grad2Director and Grad2Freelancer, I don’t have to. The participants learn them as they progress through and extremely well structured coaching and mentoring programme. I often make quite a controversial statement that I don’t and won’t teach Entrepreneurship in a classroom. And that holds true today. My approach is to develop a coaching programme that will make participants more entrepreneurial without them even realizing it is happening.
A Structured Coaching Programme
The online programme is supported by tailored mentoring programme that involves five stages. The onus is on the prospective founder to move through the five stages at a pace they are comfortable with. But the structured programme makes it extremely easy to understand and navigate. The five stages are,
- Finding a business opportunity that you have the skills to deliver and that you will really enjoy.
- Identifying customers and building a value proposition around them.
- Building a business model that will satisfy your customers and make a healthy profit.
- Getting the legal foundations in place.
- Creating a marketing and sales campaign to secure your first customers.
It is amazing watching people progress through this programme. The rate at which they develop is truly breathtaking. They face challenges they never really encounter during their degree programmes and this takes them out of their comfort zone. It helps them learn to adapt to changing situations and take control of their own skills development. It is not just about developing skills, it is also about developing self confidence.
About the Author
Dr John Park is a proven leader in product and service innovation. His career spans corporate giants e.g. Procter & Gamble and PepsiCo, Higher Education, Consultancy and his own successful media production companies, Energy Music Ltd and DisrupTek Ltd.
Dr Park is obsessed with finding new ways to build business opportunities with technology. He is pioneering the use of digital education, building an on line programme to coach individuals and organisations to develop better products and services in both new and existing businesses. This can be conducted 100% online via an online Learning Management System or App for mobile devices. Courses can also be facilitated by workshops and personal mentoring by Dr Park and his extensive network of entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs and coaches.
If your organisation or business is facing challenges developing products and services to compete in todays ever changing global market, please call +44 (0)7850 739652 or email john.park@disruptek.co.uk