Thesis Time - by 4th year team coach Ignace
The last semester at the Team Academy is a special one. It is fully focused on writing the thesis and defending it before the examination committee. So completely different from the previous semesters, which focused on personal development and the hard skills of entrepreneurship, such as topics like finance, entrepreneurial core theory, digital skills, etc. All knowledge and skills come together here in coming up with a relevant research question for your own company or for another company that you find interesting enough to dedicate yourself to for 3 months on how this question can best be investigated with the appropriate research model and then carry out this research yourself through interviews, surveys, and data analyzes and then write it down neatly and understandably and defend it for forty minutes to a bipartisan committee.
Yes, that really can be a challenge for some. Most Team Academy students are do-ers and opportunity-oriented entrepreneurs and professionals. And now you suddenly have to think very carefully about an entrepreneurial question and translate it into a research question.
The latter is not an exercise of an hour or so. No, it is a process that sometimes takes several days of chewing and ruminating to get the right question on paper. Because that question contains the keys with which you will conduct literature research and investigate the state-of-the-art knowledge about your chosen subject.
You must then use logical reasoning to arrive at assumptions and hypotheses that you will investigate further. That also brings enough surprises to get inspired or completely confused about what you thought you already knew. For some, this is a process that they have not yet experienced in such a way. Some people write more easily but find abstract reasoning quite difficult, others have a super creative and spontaneous nature that makes this process feel like an uncomfortable straitjacket. In short, for most students, it is a new and somewhat unfamiliar assignment.
Fortunately, some experienced international tutors provide support and wisdom along the way so that the thesis can be refined at crucial moments or the path to successfully completing the thesis can be found again. In the three years that I have been guiding students, there have always been moments of ‘damn, I can’t see it clearly anymore’ to eureka moments with statements like ‘Wow, this is interesting’ and ‘Yes, this gives me energy’ or ‘I didn’t know I could do this’. In short, it is something for everyone, with moments of depth and highlights. But when you have finished, you have truly earned that Bachelor of Entrepreneurship degree and shown that with your personal commitment, your way of reasoning and analyzing and not to mention creativity, you can successfully complete your chosen challenge.
Finally, it is nice to report that everyone I have supervised said afterward that it was an intensive but special learning process that they did not want to miss for anything and that they now really understand that a Bachelor of Entrepreneurship is also a piece of paper with real value. It’s also nice to say that everyone I have guided now has a super fun job or is successfully running their own company.
So Thesis Time is something special, something that facilitates you to grow in a good way, it is something worthwhile and a personal journey you won’t forget easily.
Good luck!
Ignace – team coach year 4
