4 Reflecting on your learning and identifying next steps
Throughout this course, you have developed a better understanding about what it will take to bring a business idea to market. Part of this understanding relates to the skills you’ll need to develop your idea, make connections with your stakeholders and networks and access and build the resources to make it happen. You’ve also learned some of the ‘softer’ skills that support success, such as communication skills. Another important ‘soft skill’ is being able to reflect on your learning and using that reflection to identify next steps and future actions.
Far from being purposeless ‘navel gazing’, reflection on learning can provide you with specific directions for action, such as how to integrate what you’ve already learned into what you are currently doing, and what else you need to learn to progress an idea. Sometimes this reflection is done very quickly in the moment, for example, a quick change of direction in a drone’s flight path based on new information emerging in the moment. MIT Professor, Donal Schön called this type of in-the-moment reflection, ‘reflection-in-action’ (Schön, 1983). Born in 1930, Schön’s ideas continue to influence the way we understand learning and innovation. Importantly, building your reflection-in-action skills can also help to spur innovative thinking as you not only apply what you know and what you’ve learned, but you develop skills in creating new ideas.
Other times, reflection takes place after something happens, what Schön (1983) called ‘reflection-on-action’. With this type of reflection, you consider what happened, or the actions you have taken, and think about how you might do things differently. For example, if a drone component stops working, you might want to do a systematic, post-flight review of the component and how it communicates with other parts of the drone to identify how to fix the issue.
Similarly, in developing a business idea, you might have momentary inspirations of innovative thinking leading to a great example that you come up with (via reflection-in-action) while pitching your idea to a new group of funders based on their initial response to your business idea. Then, when you have some time after the meeting, you sit down to review how the pitch went, what you could do differently at the next pitching session, and how this might improve your desired outcomes (reflection-on-action).
Although an arguably simplified description of Schön’s reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action, you can use these two types of reflection to develop innovative thinking and to identify next steps for learning and action. In Activity 4 you will use these to reflect on next steps for developing your business idea.
Activity 4
This activity will support your preparation of a plan for next steps in developing your business idea. You will be asked to reflect on the key takeaways and learning you have achieved in each of the weeks of this course. Then, in Activity 5, you will identify a set of next steps in the short and medium term.
You have now reached the end of eight weeks of study. Spend some time reviewing each of the weeks of the course – its content and any outputs you may have created. Use the table below to record up to three takeaways you have gained or achieved in your study of each week. You may want to review the learning outcomes (reproduced here) to help you reflect on your learning. You may also notice that some topics, such as presenting your business idea, have come up several times in the course. In these cases, identify how your thinking has changed or evolved with each revisiting of the topic.
Week | Key learning |
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Week 1
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Week 2
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Week 3
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Week 4
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Week 5
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Week 6
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Week 7
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Week 8
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Comment
You could approach completion of the table as simply a checklist of what content was covered in each week. That approach can be helpful in keeping track of the different information, such as where links to different resources might be located. You might also use the table to note where you found the material challenging or where you may want to further develop your skills. A third approach might use the table to also take notes of how your thinking has changed as you’ve learned new ideas, applied them to your business idea, and reflected on how they work in practice.
This kind of reflection may have brought up new questions for you or stimulated your thinking about what you want to do next. In the final task in the course, you’ll develop an action plan for developing your business idea.
In the final section of the course, you will look at the next steps for your business idea by creating an action plan.