Week 4 Reading Reflection

1.) While reading chapter five on opportunity identification/searching for new ideas, I noticed several key points that I found were interesting. In the beginning of the chapter, Kuratko writes about different types of sources that promote innovative ideas. He listed trends, unexpected occurrences, incongruities and process needs as the sources and explained each one in detail.

In the Trends section, I noticed that he put down economic and government trends and it automatically caught my eyes. For me, whenever I thought about opportunities and for ideas that have potential, I only thought about societal trends and technology trends. I never really thought about how regulations, terrorism, and things like higher income can create new potential opportunities. I thought about some of the things that economic and government trends would create and it was tough for me to list things that
have opportunities. I'm guessing it is because its something I never really thought of before. One things is for sure, I will start thinking about these potential opportunities in this trends for sure starting now.


2.) "In their struggle to achieve security, many people also tend to rely on
the theory of probability thinking to make decisions. An over reliance on this decision making method, however, can distort reality and prohibit one from taking calculated risks that may lead to creative endeavors. Probability experts report that the predictive power of probability theory increases in proportion to the number of times an event is repeated. If a person wishes to predict" - Kuratko, Donald F.

One of the things from the reading that confused me is the over reliance on probability. Above is a excerpt from the text. I think I understand what Kuratko is trying to say here but is it not probability that leads you to take a calculated risk? Calculated risk is based on probability no? I understand the keyword is over reliance however, I think more clarification is needed on Kuratkos part. Also, in the end of the text, he says that the power of probability increases in proportion to the number of times an event is repeated. Duh?

 
3.) If I can ask the author a question, I would first ask bout is risk. The reason I would ask him is because he rarely goes into the topic of risk and I believe it is a pretty big principle when it comes taking advantage of opportunities. Even in the principles of innovation, he talks about failures but does not go into risk taking.

 
4.) There was nothing from this text that I disagree with. I think the author is very knowledgeable in his field of work and I enjoy reading from this textbook every week. However, I think I would want the author to go in more depth in to certain topics. It feels like he says just the key points and leaves it at that.

Overall, I think chapter 5 was a very good read. I enjoyed reading about the creative process, the trends, the brain hemispheres, the innovation process.