Reflective Journal on The Development

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

REFLECTIVE LEARNING JOURNAL1
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

REFLECTIVE LEARNING JOURNAL2
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