Venture Centre
Opportunity Knocks Workshop
A diverse team with a wide range of skills and backgrounds is the key to innovation. According to the first principle of Effectuation, you first look at what resources you have available and then what opportunities and goals go with them. It is therefore about 'rowing with the oars you already have', rather than finding the means to achieve your goal. This involves exploring what skills, attributes and other resources you already have as a team/individual, as well as who you know with additional resources. Opportunity Knocks is specifically designed to enable participants to proactively identify and seize opportunities within their field of work. It encourages creative thinking, ethical decision-making and a mindset of seizing opportunities when they arise.
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HOW DOES IT WORK?
The workshop is divided into several steps, including assessing resources, analysing opportunities, exploring networks and brainstorming rounds to generate actionable ideas. Using a workbook provided by Venture Centre HvA, the student teams map out what skills, resources and network they have within their team. Based on these insights, they look for an opportunity in the form of an idea for a product/service.
In the two brainstorming rounds that follow, this idea is further developed on the basis of trends they identify and insights from user interviews with people in the area; finally, the teams share their final solution with each other in the form of a short pitch. In a half-day session, participants are guided through the different steps at high speed, so that they can use these newly acquired tools to identify opportunities throughout their careers.
WHAT ENTREPRENEURIAL COMPETENCES DOES THE OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS WORKSHOP FOCUS ON
- Recognising/signalling opportunities
- Acting sustainably and ethically
- Learning through experience
- Taking initiative
- Analysing and valuing ideas
- Self-awareness and self-reliance
- Creativity
AFTER THE WORKSHOP
The insights gained by participants from the workshop often prove to be of great value later on. Students learn things about each other that they did not know before, providing more clarity on the different skills/resources that teammates possess. Also, during the workshops, findings regarding new technologies and social/political developments are made that are taken into account in the rest of the course that the workshop is plugged into.
PARTICIPATE OR ORGANISE
The Venture Centre HvA offers Opportunity Knocks in various ways:
- Programmes and minors can use Opportunity Knocks to have their students work on these (entrepreneurship) skills within the curriculum. The workshop can be given as an activity at the kick-off of a course, but also later in the course to let students iterate on their already existing idea.
- Professorships can use Opportunity knocks as a team to look for answers to issues within their professorship, e.g. in relation to Lifelong Development.
- Centres of Expertise and research centres can use Opportunity Knocks to make the connection between their (research) themes and education by having students think about new creative solutions and sustainable innovations.
- External partners can organise an Opportunity Knocks event around a challenge that is important to them in cooperation with the Venture Centre HvA.
- Student associations can organise an Opportunity Knocks event with and for their (prospective) members that specifically focuses on their field of study.
- Individual students (teams) can use the methodology to search for an innovative and sustainable idea themselves.
CURIOUS ABOUT THE POSSIBILITIES OF THE OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS WORKSHOP FOR YOUR PROGRAMME?
Are you curious about how we can integrate the Opportunity Knocks Workshop within your programme or do you have further questions? If so, please send an e-mail to r.slikker@hva.nl.