FACULTY OF BUSINESS STUDIES B205A – EXPLORING INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP 2018/2019 SEMESTER II.
FACULTY OF BUSINESS STUDIES B205A – EXPLORING INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
2018/2019 SEMESTER II – spring 2018-2019
B205A -TMA- Semester II– 2018-2019
Completing and sending your assignments
Please read these instructions carefully and contact your tutor if you require any further clarification.
When you have completed your TMA, you must fill in the assignment form (PT3 form), taking care to fill all sections correctly. A soft copy of your TMA with the PT3 form filled must be uploaded to the university Moodle within the indicated cut-off date, via the turn-it-in upload link.
You might be asked to submit a hard copy of your TMA to your tutor as well. Use standard A4 size paper for submitting the hard copy. Your name, personal identifier, course title and code and assignment number must appear at the top of each sheet. The hard & soft copies must be identical.
If you feel that you are unable to meet the cut-off date of the TMA because of unusual circumstances, please contact your tutor as soon as possible to discuss a possible extension to the cut-off date. Late submissions require approval from the branch course coordinator and might be subject to grade deductions as per applicable AOU policy. All assignments are treated in strict confidence.
Plagiarism
The Arab Open University Definitions of cheating and plagiarism
According to the Arab Open University By-laws, “The following acts represent cases of cheating and plagiarism:
Verbatim copying of printed material and submitting them as part of TMAs without proper academic acknowledgement and documentation.
Verbatim copying of material from the Internet, including tables and graphics.
Copying other students’ notes or reports.
Using paid or unpaid material prepared for the student by individuals or firms.
Utilization of, or proceeding to utilize, contraband materials or devices in examinations.”
Penalty on plagiarism
The following is the standard plagiarism penalty applied across branches as per Article 11 of the university by-laws:
Awarding of zero for a TMA wherein more than 20% of the content is plagiarized.
Documentation of warning in student record.
Failure in the course to dismissal from the University.
All University programs are required to apply penalties that are consistent with the University bylaws.
Examples of Plagiarism
Copying from single or multiple sources, this is where the student uses one or more of the following as the basis for the whole, or a good part, of the assignment:
Published or unpublished books, articles or reports
The Internet
The media (e.g.TV programs, radio programs or newspaper articles)
An essay from an essay bank
A piece of work previously submitted by another student
Copying from a text which is about to be submitted for the same assignment
Introduction
The TMA is weighted 20% of the overall B205A course grade. It is marked out of 100 marks.
The TMA aims to assess your understanding of the core concepts of innovation and entrepreneurship covered in blocks 01 and 02 of B205A. This assignment tackles different dimensions of the concepts of entrepreneurship and innovation.
You are advised to use the AOU e-library to locate additional relevant resources, which can support your analysis and argument.
For this TMA you need to select a local entrepreneurial or innovative venture with which you are familiar (i.e. as a client, employee, family connection, social involvement etc.).
You need to share your selected venture for the TMA with you tutor. Your tutor needs to approve your selection before you start working on your TMA.
It is recommended that you finalize your selection of the venture during the first 4 weeks of the semester to avoid delays in preparing your TMA and submitting on time.
You are strongly encouraged to talk to someone in your selected venture (owner, partner, employee) about their business, to be able to better answer some of the questions below (e.g. 6. and 7.), unless the information is openly accessible online.
Guidance on company selection
You can select any local company ( business venture ) which provides goods or services to a local population, regardless of the industry or economic sector. It can be a locally owned business, a franchise, or a multinational corporation operating in a specific area or with multiple locations.
The size of your selected business and the type of its ownership do not matter.
Therefore, your selected business venture may be solely owned (a sole proprietorship), or a partnership or a small corporation (a small Business Entrepreneurship, a scalable Startup Entrepreneurship, Large Company Entrepreneurship, Social Entrepreneurship).
Examples of types of possible business ventures include:
Tax Preparation and Bookkeeping. …
Catering Services. …
Laundromat & dry cleaning. …
Retailer shops (food, electronics, patisserie etc.). …
Website Design. …
Business Consulting. …
Courier Services. …
Hairdresser Services. …
Beauty salons. …
Cleaning Services. …
Tutoring services online and face to face. …
Warehouse Storage. …
Logo Design & other design work. …
Real Estate Brokering. …
Property Maintenance. …
Technology Repair Services. …
IT Support. …
Marketing Services. …
Personal Training. …
Food Truck
Legal Services. …
Gardening. …
or any type of service, manufacturing, or a tech business.
The TMA evaluates the following:
Your knowledge and understanding of the basic course concepts covered in blocks 01 and 02, in relation to innovation and entrepreneurship (types of innovation and or entrepreneurship, type of values created by entrepreneurship or innovation i.e. economic, social, and environmental; entrepreneurial and innovation growth process, the role of networking and personal networks, sources of financing, and role of negotiation).
Your ability to select a relevant business venture to be the subject of your TMA case study, and application.
Your ability to search for and identify relevant information related to the case study, to present your venture and to justify your selection.
Your ability to use relevant academic/course concepts in your analysis of the selected venture and your ability to relate theory to practice.
Your ability to communicate ideas clearly, and to follow good academic practice in citing sources of information properly.
Answer all the below questions
Name the venture and describe its activities. You can provide hard or soft copy of visuals about the selected venture to illustrate what they do (up to 100 words; 5 Marks).
Justify your selection of this venture (up to 100 Words; 5 Marks).
Discuss the type of innovation or entrepreneurial activities they are pursuing (up to 200 words, 10 Marks).
Evaluate the type of value this venture is creating (economic, social, environmental) in the local community/market (up to 400 words; 20 Marks).
Describe the growth process of the selected venture (entrepreneurial growth process, or innovation growth process (up to 400 Words; 20 Marks).
Briefly describe the role of personal contact networks in ventures performance (up to 100 words, 5 Marks), and assess how your selected venture is managing its network relationships (up to 100 words, 5 Marks).
Briefly explain the importance of finance and the sources of finance for entrepreneurial ventures (up to 100 words, 5 Marks) and discuss the sources of finance available for your selected venture (up to 100 words; 5 Marks).
Communication and negotiation are important skills for entrepreneurs. Assess your negotiation skills in interviewing the “employee” from your selected venture (up to 100 words max, 5 Marks).
Reflect on the experience of working on your TMA and assess how it has developed your understanding of the course concepts (up to 300 words, 15 Marks).
General Mark’s deductions of 20% as follows
PT3 Form: failure to complete the PT3 form correctly, (deduct up to 5% marks) .
TMA Presentation and Structure, and word count: untidy presentation, work way below or above the word count i.e. 15% more or less than the word counts, not displaying of word count (deduct up to 5% marks).
Referencing and in-text citation: poor referencing/poor or lack of bibliographical list, and or poor in-text citation without plagiarism, (deduct up to 10% marks).
TMA Guidance to students
In tackling the different sub-questions, you are required to draw upon concepts learned in B205A, block 01 & 02, in order to analyze what is asked. Please remember that for each question you need to provide a clear theoretical discussion/foundation, and then explain how those concepts are related to the selected enterprise.
You are strongly advised to use your own words to discuss the concepts, as you understand them. Do not copy material from the books since it will have a negative impact on your grade, and very importantly do not get consumed in a purely theoretical analysis without assessing how these concepts are applied in the venture you selected to be the subject of your TMA .
In your reflection (Q9), you need to focus on yourself and your work and discuss how your learning and understanding have developed as a result of working on this TMA.
You should not simply describe/list the topics covered in the module or repeat/reproduce the course syllabus.
Instead, you need to talk about the challenges you faced, how did you deal with them, and what new insights you gained from working on the TMA.
