Moving into the final week of our first month in VB18, the pace continues to pick up across the various projects that we have undertaken. As we continue in our endeavours to further crystallize our action plans and commercialize our dreams, each of us have continued to delve deeper into many pertinent issues facing budding entrepreneurs.
For some, it was yet another week of a continued in-depth push into specific knowledge spheres.
The week starts with further research and examination of what DLT as a tool provides to what we want to do. Different applications derived from DLT were explored, with applications such as Smart Contract, SSI, DID and others. — Sherman
Others took a more process-centric approach and tried to keep their morale high by focusing on the end goal and not external distractions, or things not within their control.
One thing that I have learnt is to not take things at face value, keep your head down and enjoy the process. Ignore how others are enjoying your life and dictate how you want to live yours. The time spent looking at how others are doing can be used to working on your craft or even doing things that you love. Get off social media and do what makes you happy. — Fadzil
Finally, continued consistent interactions with the NTUitive mentors enabled us to see problem “pain areas” in a new light, which gave us a new stirring to approach a traditional problem from a novel perspective.
We should redefine willingness and ability of consumers to purchase a good with a human touch and look into the pain-points and problems that consumers are facing. Society has evolved such that many people are unaware or apathetic to others, only putting themselves in the first position and seeing what they have to gain. Yet, ironically, in the mercenary world of capitalism, to be a successful entrepreneur, you must first feel the pain of others, then create simple solutions that users can apply. So it routes back to the question — what is the problem that others are facing? — Dawn
As we learn more about the entrepreneurial landscape and the need to quickly expand our knowledge on specific subject matter, we also inadvertently discover more about ourselves as well.
A key feature of this week was the start of online Zoom “Master Classes” hosted by NTUitive. These specially-curated courses were part of a larger “ideasinc.veni” programme enrollment, which aimed to equip budding entrepreneurs with the necessary skills and thinking caps to act upon their novel inklings. The content this week included exploration of interests with corporate entities, introduction to analysis tools and of particular interest, “Inner Engineering”.
Touted as “a 21-day programme to super-charge your brain capability”, the “Inner Engineering” workbook was first published in 2012 by none other than NTUitive’s very own Interim CEO, Dr. Alex Lin, and Dr. Fred Then. Intended as a quick go-to methodology to increase work effectiveness via honing of self-awareness and increasing our brain’s and observation capabilities, we were treated to Dr. Lin himself walking us through the first 2 parts of his book.
The first part was called “Observation & Description Capability”, which was to train us to “throw away excuses, let go of burden, and start afresh to attain the goal”.
A seemingly simple exercise of describing an object using the following 3 rules ensued:
- Describe in detail
- Use the 5 senses
- Use a first person narrative
Participants described anything from paper to pens, to glass mugs and their computers. We realized we are usually overwhelmed by what we see and feel, whilst neglecting the sensory inputs from our “weaker” senses such as smell and taste. We learned the importance of interacting more with people and objects with all parts of our senses.
Often, we also miss the first person perspective. This creates a dissociation between what we are describing and how we are feeling.
The exercise illustrated keenly how much greater an impact we would have in observation if we could combine our conscious mind with our subconscious instincts and attitudes to create a greater impassioned pitch, grounded in humanity and keen observation of human behaviour.
The second part of “Inner Engineering” was “Imagery Capability”, which was a step-up from the description exercises of Part 1.
In Part 2, participants had to describe a scene of a café, whilst using the skills previously learned, as well as keeping mind mental imagery and projection.
This simple but empathetic exercise brought to light the many key factors in projecting one’s image onto others, which would prove very useful during a market pitch.
We learned to push the limits and see more things others would not, simply by “stopping to smell the roses”. Intellectually ,we realize we are capable, but often neglect enunciating the details. For e.g. we mention an edge is “short”, but exactly “how short?” And how much shorter is it compared to something familiar we know, or a competitor’s product? Empathy — the great bonder between people, can be best transmitted via shared memories and experiences. To elicit the greatest empathy, one needed astute observation and accurate and effective projection.
Through this course, we are confident that our critical mental observations and enhanced imagery capabilities will be honed.
Capping off the week was the pulsating finals to ideasinc 2020, where the top 10 innovative teams from around the country battled it out for cash prizes totaling SGD$35,000.
Teams came with confidence a-brimming and élan a-flowing for that one final pitch to our judges. The innovations ranged from telehealth infrastructures to business data analytic storage, to micro-jobs platforms and even curated romantic date plans.
A full opinionated recap of ideasinc 2020 can be found in Adriel’s medium: https://medium.com/@adrielfonggl94
Congratulations to the winners this year — Magorium, a novel initiative about recycling plastics and turning them into road additives.
Until next week, this is VB18 signing out!
