Personal Assignment #1

Building Entrepreneurial Teams

Post this assignment to cuLearn before class on Week 3

1.1 Self assessment: Myers-Briggs personality test

Myers-Briggs is a common tool for classifying personality types. Professional testing for
determining your profile would yield the most accurate classification, but there are free
online tools available which are good enough for class use. We will use your result to
help guide team formation.
Take the following free online test and note your result for posting (e.g., ENTP).
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp

1.2 Entrepreneurial self assessment

Follow the link below to the 'BDC entrepreneurial self assessment' and note your
result.
Note: Occasionally this BDC link seems to have problems; if that happens to
you please don't get alarmed. Just be patient and try again a short time later. It
sometimes helps to use a different computer (e.g. other than a mobile phone), or
try using Google to find and click the link. Resist the urge to panic/email the
instructor, it will not be of any more help than this.
http://www.bdc.ca/EN/advice_centre/benchmarking_tools/Pages/entrepreneurial_self
_assessment.aspx

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1.3 Harvard Business Review: Building effective teams

Read over this post from HBR's Doug Conant:
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/04/consistently_building_highly_e.html?awid=490580180
4594059320-3271

1.4 Optional Self assessment: "What's your Entrepreneurial Personality type"?

This activity is particularly recommended for those in Sprotts Entrepreneurship Minor
or Concentration programs. If you are interested in further personal assessment, there
are many resources that attempt to link personal traits to entrepreneurship. For
example, read over the following typology from entrepreneur.com:
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/84134
Consider which of Wagner's seven entrepreneur types most closely match your own.
Note, there is no need to buy the book, just decide which one you believe best describes
yourself. You many enter your result in the survey in Section 1.5 below if you wish.
This exercise is optional but may be of use to you, as well as helping us better fit you
into a project team in this course.

1.5 Posting:
a) Help us form your team by completing the 5 minute survey below, including the data
from exercises 1.1 (and 1.4 if completed) above.
http://fluidsurveys.com/s/entrep/
b) Commentary from the first exercise (1.1). Do some research into what your own
Myers-Briggs personality type might mean in entrepreneurial practice (i.e. a new
venture scenario). Were you surprised with what was indicated? What do think this
would predict about your strengths and weaknesses in performing with a team? What

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personality types do you think would most effectively compliment your own in a team
setting?
c) Commentary from the second exercise (1.2). Copy your results from the BDC quiz
into your assignment posting. What did you learn from this that might apply to your
current, or future startup?
d) From the HBR post (1.3), summarize in 3-4 sentences which of Conant's suggestions
are most important and how you intend to put them to work in your future team.
e) Some believe that entrepreneurs are 'born' rather than 'made'. Do you believe
entrepreneurship can be taught? Why or why not?

1.6 Discussion board posting: This week, for those students with last names beginning with
the letter "A" or "B" only:
Post some separate, public commentary relevant to entrepreneurship to
the class discussion board on cuLearn: General Discussions on
Entrepreneurship. (Please don't use the news forum at the top of
cuLearn for this). It could be a link to something topical on
entrepreneurship along with some remarks about why you chose it, or
some insights of your own. Good places to look for articles include
entrepreneur.com, fastcompany.com, forbes.com, techcrunch.com,
inc.com, wired.com, bdc.ca, globeandmail.com, strategy-business.com,
hbr.com, or anything else you think is appropriate and worth sharing with
your peers.

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(c) Tom Duxbury