University International Business Module Reflective Journal

This reflective journal chronicles a student's learning journey through an international business module. The student explores key concepts such as international business transactions, the impact of external factors on businesses, and the importance of reflective learning. The journal highlights the Gohenry case study, presented by Alex Rowe, focusing on the company's app-based payment system for young people, crowdfunding strategies, and US market expansion. The student also reflects on insights from Dr. Linda Hughes regarding business innovation and leadership principles, drawing on Amazon's example. The journal details the strengths and weaknesses of the student's learning process, emphasizing the value of real-world examples and expert commentary in understanding complex business concepts. The student concludes by underscoring the effectiveness of reflective learning in developing a strong foundation for a business career.

Running head: REFLECTIVE LEARNING JOURNAL
REFLECTIVE LEARNING JOURNAL
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Reflections on module learning
The study is a reflective journal on the development of my learning through the module
on international business that was covered, as a part of the course. I had taken part in a module
learning program for better understanding international business. The module was very important
as it helped me to understand more about some of the most important aspects that are connected
with international business. Additionally, I was able to gain deeper understanding of
international business concepts, as throughout the module I got to interact with some successful
international businessmen. The module was effective as it contained some real-life business
development scenarios and case studies. One of the most important business development case
studies that I came across was Gohenry. It was a startup that the speaker, Alex Rowe had
pioneered. The module was greatly helpful for me in understanding some of the aspects that were
intrinsically and extrinsically connected with international business development. I have
undertaken this reflective journal to record my understandings from the entire module. I provide
the details of the strengths and weaknesses of my learning process. Moreover, I also focus on
understanding the importance of reflective learning. The journal would help me in the future to
develop my personal skills and professional competencies.
The module has helped me to learn more than I could have done otherwise. It was a great
learning experience and one of the most important events of the course for me. Business is a
multifaceted endeavour and it is affected by multiple factors. It would have been difficult for me
to understand these factors if I did not take part in the module learning process. Hence, I
understood the effectiveness of reflective learning processes in developing better knowledge of
various study concepts. Previously, I had limited knowledge of international business. I knew
that international business is the trade of capital, technology, knowledge and goods and services
on a global scale. I knew that international business is essentially transnational business that
involves transactions that are cross-border in nature (Cravino and Levchenko 2017). The course
and this particular module helped me to be develop deeper understanding of the international
business processes. The initial stages of the course had helped me to understand that business
processes that involve two or more countries often require the transaction of capital, skills and
various economic resources. International business involve international production processes
concerning physical goods and services. These services range from finance or banking to
insurance or construction. The module helped greatly to understand the complex mechanisms
that are connected with international business based on real-time scenarios. As I understood from
the module, overseas businesses are affect by various external factors. Subsequently, the internal
aspects of these businesses need to be optimized in accordance with the external factors.
One of the important learnings that I developed through the module was in regards to the
international business venture of Gohenry. The speaker who provided much important insight
into this business was the first guest speaker, Alex Rowe. He was an experienced person in the
start-up and has around 5 years of experience in this field. He has also carried out various
pioneering researches within the crowdfunding landscape of UK. Moreover, he has the
significant achievement of raining more than 6 million pounds for 5000 and more investors. He
is currently working for an organization named raising partners. Raising partners is an
investment consultancy that is engaged with start-up businesses, helping them to raise equity
investments. One of the organizations for whom equity investments were raised was angel

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investors and crowdfunding platforms. A London based alumni Investor Company named St
Andrews Angels focused on building better entrepreneurial ecosystems is also co-founded by
Alex. The experience of Alex was a very important factor that worked in favour of my better
learning.
Alex went on to provide essential insights into the business development of an
organization named Gohenry. This was the first phase of my learning development in regard to a
real time organization. The business of Gohenry is based on an app based pay wallet systems.
However, the online wallet Gohenry is focused on youngsters and designed to help their parents
provide them with pocket money digitally. Moreover, the business is focused towards helping
the younger generations understand about money management. This helped me to develop more
effective understanding of the present international business scene. Moreover, I learnt that the
app helped the parents of youngsters to keep a check on the spending habits of their children.
Kids can set their savings goals. Additionally, the kids are also given the benefit of choosing
their own personalized debit cards. I was able to learn further that the organization had more than
90000 international active accounts (gohenry 2020). This included the users in the UK and the
US. It was the eighth fastest growing private tech organization in the UK in 2018 and ranked 44th
in the list of 100 fastest growing privately owned Tech Company in the country in 2019.
However, the business and business model of the company was not the only thing that Alex
helped me to learn. I came to know more effectively about the crowd-finding activities that are
very much important in the context of international business. Around 12 million pounds was
raised through 4 crowd funding campaigns. The funding techniques were very important in
developing better business prospects for any organization. In this case the power of equity
funding helped the organization to expand to the market of the US. The case study of gohenry
further helped to understand how the company was able to gather 5000 investors. The company
chose the US because the country had a share of more than 25% people under the age of 19
considering their entire population. This actually helped to understand how the larger part of
international business development depended on opportunity identification. This was a part
which I personally had a little difficulty in understanding at first. However, the session by Alex
helped me to understand completely the development aspects that are connected with better
business prospects. The growth prospects of Gohenry were further evaluated through the module.
The goal of capturing 15% of the addressable markets of both the UK and the US was very well
explained. Moreover, the goal of having activated child accounts of 6.6 million children
worldwide was very thoroughly explained through the module.
The module helped me to reflect upon the various factors that tend to affect the prospects
of global businesses. One important factor that I was able to reflect upon was understanding the
customers. The module helped me to understand that all global businesses need to understand the
cultural aspects that are related to the markets that they want to address. In this case Gohenry had
to focus much on the development of effective expansion strategies for the US. Some of the
important aspects that they had to focus on were competitive landscape, branding and messaging,
regional marketing, incremental approach, existing competitor products, the boys and girls club
of the US and various other important factors. It was very good to learn about these aspects.
Previously, my limited knowledge only enabled me to make certain assumptions that were
unconfident. However, learning about the business of gohenry helped me to understand how
businesses worked. More so in case of the businesses that have international aspirations. The
module was effective in terms of the learning value that was generated from it. It would not have

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been possible for me to gain a better knowledge of business management through any other
means. It is important to understand that the learning was made quite natural by the commentary
that was provided by the speaker Alex. He was very effective in providing the right information
at the right time.
The larger part of the understanding that was developed was due to the effective insights
that were provided by Alex. Without his knowledge, credibility and effective communication,
the concepts would have remained unclear for me. His active role in Raising Partners was
important in further understanding international business. Raising partners is an investment
consultancy that is engaged with start-up businesses, helping them to raise equity investments.
One of the organizations for whom equity investments were raised was angel investors and
crowdfunding platforms. A London based alumni Investor Company named St Andrews Angels
focused on building better entrepreneurial ecosystems is also co-founded by Alex. The
experience of Alex was a very important factor that worked in favour of my better learning. He
was particularly very helpful in understanding the prospects of investment and crowd funding in
the international business sector. He helped to understand about the various ways in which crowd
funding can be managed for interested entrepreneurship. He helped me to understand that
crowdfunding is a process of raising money to invest in businesses (Kuppuswamy and Bayus
2018). I learnt that crowd funding projects were important in funding start up international
businesses. It also helps the investing public to gain potential rewards and profits. However,
Alex also helped to understand that crowdfunding based on donations need not be returned to the
investors in any form. This learning was indeed very important to be more creative in the later
part of the module.
The second guest speaker was Dr. Linda Hughes. She was the lead of EU health and
safety regulatory intelligence. She helped to make the learning process more interesting by
asking the audiences to apply a framework to enhance their work, life and business. Her session
was very important as it helped me to develop more innovative outlooks for business.
International business is an important area for both organizational and self-development. She
helped to understand more about the implications of innovations concerning any field of
business. She told us about the business principles of Amazon, one of the most successful
ecommerce websites in the world till date. She told us to develop our own innovative ideas
considering the leadership principles of Amazon. The most important elements of the leadership
principles are customer obsession, ownership, invent and simplify, being right most of the times,
learning to be curious and hiring and developing the best people concerning any business.
Additionally, some of the other important elements that were associated with any business
development were insisting on higher standards, thinking big, bias for action, frugality, earning
trust, diving deeper, having a strong backbone and delivering the results (Black and Mischel
2016). I was able to understand that creating an effective business idea in the present times
require people to be innovative in their ideas. Without innovation the businesses would not be
able to survive. Hence, this framework was used by me to develop a unique business idea. All
the aspects that were discussed by her had to be used by the groups to develop effective business
ideas. It was wonderful to witness that all the groups that were attending the module came up
with very good business ideas. This helped to understand that business processes needed to be
very effective and innovative in order for them to be utilized for the betterment of international
businesses. I was able to learn more about international business as a result of attending this
module.

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In conclusion, I can say that the learning process that I went through was greatly effective
in determining my reflective learning process. I found that reflective learning process was one of
the most effective ways of developing strong learning in any field. It is important to understand
that reflective learning processes were effective in the development of better learning strategies. I
was able to develop an essential learning base. This helped me to create a better sense of
learning. The module would help me in the future to develop more effective learning processes.
Learning about international businesses would help me to develop a better business career.
Learning about international business would help me to develop my own entrepreneurial venture
in the future. The reflective learning process has been effective as it has helped to introspect the
subject matter.

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References
Black, J. and Mischel, L., 2016. The Stakeholder Approach to Assessing Entrepreneurship
Programs. In United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship. Conference
Proceedings (p. GE1). United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship.
Chemla, G. and Tinn, K., 2019. Learning through crowdfunding. Management Science.
Cravino, J. and Levchenko, A.A., 2017. Multinational firms and international business cycle
transmission. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 132(2), pp.921-962.
gohenry | Helping millions of kids be good with money | gohenry (2020). Available at:
https://www.gohenry.com/uk/ (Accessed: 28 March 2020).
Kuppuswamy, V. and Bayus, B.L., 2018. Crowdfunding creative ideas: The dynamics of project
backers. In The economics of crowdfunding (pp. 151-182). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Picciotto, S., 2017. Rights, responsibilities and regulation of international business.
In Globalization and International Investment (pp. 177-198). Routledge.