Education

Reflection

My education, Currently I’m studying “international Business and Innovation Studies” at InHolland university of applied sciences in Diemen. The study is made because there is a lack in the market of business innovators. The study gives us an opportunity to become future business innovators, The study believes in reflecting, so I have to reflect on myself each term. We have to develop 5 Skills, the Meta-Skills. The skills are Define, Design, Execute, Learn and Lead. I’m going to reflect on my first term at Ibis.

Before I am going to talk about the insights of my journey I want to give you a brief description about IBIS, the programme I am studying.

Define

Define, In my opinion my favorite meta-skill. To define the right problem to solve or opportunity to pursue and frames it in a way that invites creative solutions. I think this is my best meta-skill at the moment, I’m able to find the needed information very fast. And understand it in a short period of time, I’m also capable of summarizing a big text, into a small summary. And to reason information, and creating connections between information.

In the PSD1 class information skills, I already knew how to use the skills we learned. Especially finding the right information. I already knew how to find the right information within a short time period. I developed this skills through the years, by making summary’s and conclusions for school. And for the class International World of Business I was able to find the needed information about my subject I wanted to, because of my skills.

I also learned about defining in the Reasoning and thinking class. Because of this class I can separate several argumentations in good arguments and bad arguments. I gained more defining skills, I learned to always use the system 2 way of thinking, by preventing the use of biases and making arguments in the right way.

Why? I learned to define my why? In the classes what’s in my backpack, I got to know better about myself. I’m now capable of defining why I want to do things and what gives me a drive. Since I know my strengths and weaknesses, I know how to improve. Now I have the possibility to develop myself through the years.

Design

Designing, one of my favorite things to do. Putting your ideas to something touchable. In the last period we didn’t learn how to improve design, but we did create some designs. For example we made our Business Model Canvasses and we made mind maps. Just to visualize your thoughts. Designing makes it easier to understand things. It also gives you the opportunity to separate things from each other.

In the HTML classes we also learned to design a website. We didn’t focus on the design of the website, but we did focus on the accessibility of the website, which is also important of design. Making and creating things in the right way. The process of making a website is long and hard. But I succeeded. I drew on paper how I wanted my website to look like, and from there on I was able to create it.

The second term we will focus more on design, I’m very excited already.

Execute

School is based on executing things and proving you understand everything by executing it in the right way. I know from myself that executing is my weakest point. I’m more a thinker, I have a hard time to put my thoughts into creating something. Although I always try to.

I had the most experience with executing in the classes IWOB and FOB. By making all the assignments and trials. They helped me getting more access to putting my thoughts into a visual thing. I also learned to execute things within business and making the right decisions, creating new possible ideas and to create strategies. By making the BMC’s I am now able to analyze businesses, and finding problems. Probably I’m now better in analyzing things then before, but I didn’t have the chance yet to use this skill.

Learn

Learning at IBIS, the main reason I chose IBIS was the way of learning we do here. By putting new knowledge directly into practice, instead of the old fashioned way of learning. I really enjoy this method, it’s more fun and you learn the theories better than just remembering them. I can also put them into practice now. We learn by experience.

I learned the most at Reasoning and Thinking. I really enjoyed this class. It helped me developing my way of thinking, which is important. We had to write a blog about it to. Here is the link link to the blog. In the blog you can see how we think. And what we have learned and put them into use. I also learned a lot about myself, and how to improve my future self in the what’s in my backpack classes. I had a hard time creating my future insights but now I am capable of doing it. Summing up the skill learn provided me next to the professional skills I gained a lot of learnings about my personal me that I didn’t know before. With these insights I feel I already grew and I can now use this learnings to build on.

Lead

Some people are made to be leaders, some aren’t. After my first term I am not completely sure if I am a leader or a follower. I believe to feel a tendency of becoming a leader rather than a follower.

In the group works we did nobody took the role as leader, but we all showed some leader skills and characteristics. I know mine, I can communicate in the right way with others, and give the right support. I’m a good listener. And I’m able to take risks, and help people reaching their goal. I can now give feedback to, which I learned during reasoning and thinking. I know from experiences that as leader you are responsible of the achievements of others, I hope that I can show this skill in the future.

Conclusion

Experiencing all this 5 Meta Skills gave me a vision of what I still have to explore in IBIS. The skills will not just help me to become a professional business innovator but will also help me to find out more about myself. Even though I mentioned that I now know much more about myself than I did before I am sure that there are a lot of undiscovered values. I know my strengths and weaknesses now, so I know now where to focus on and what to improve. New strengths, new weaknesses, more likes and some more dislikes. I know that I will make a lot of progress in the future.