Reflective Essay: Analyzing Business Creativity and Personal Growth

This reflective essay delves into the author's experiences as a travel agent and their learning journey through a series of teaching sessions focused on business creativity and innovation. Utilizing Gibbs' Reflective Model and Kolb's Reflective Cycle, the essay analyzes the author's self-assessment, strengths (communication and research skills), and weaknesses (stage phobia and lack of knowledge about business models). The author reflects on their expectations, the value of the sessions, and the insights gained regarding business models, market segmentation, and innovation. The essay concludes with an action plan for overcoming stage phobia and enhancing learning through improved communication and further research, highlighting the importance of experiential learning and self-assessment in personal and professional development. The essay also includes references to relevant academic sources and online resources, and illustrations of the Gibbs and Kolb reflective models.

BUSINESS
CREATIVITY-
REFLECTIVE ESSAY

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Reflective essay...........................................................................................................................1
Gibb's Reflective Model..............................................................................................................1
Kolb's Reflective Cycle...............................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Reflective essay helps the individual in analysing his own learning own personal
professional experiences. In this reflective essay I have implemented the use of Gibbs model as
it provides proper structuring to reflective essay. This will analyse experience of individual who
has worked as travel agent for 8 years in travel agency. This log will evaluate my experience
from teaching sessions which were focused on 9 activities. The essay will focus on analysing
personal swot, self awareness and academic input of person who has worked as travel agent for 8
years.
Reflective essay
Gibb's Reflective Model
Illustration 1: Gibb's Reflective Model
Source: (Gibbs' Reflective Cycle, 2017.)
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Description
From 9 different topics where I learned about different creativity and innovation skills. In
this I will evaluate my learning as per my experience. Further, in this I will comprise my
achievement and expectation from the session.
Personal Feeling
In my opinion, session helped me in self assessment as with the helps this analysed my
own strength and weakness (Boud, 2013). I learned about various strategies of coordination and
cooperation. During the session, I realized that the success of business idea is not based on
investment instead it is focused on creative thinking. In my opinion, teaching session was good
but I expected to learn about real life examples of business models and innovation.
Evaluation
In the session I evaluated that my major weakness is stage phobia and I feel it is because I
worked in travel agency for 8 years. During the course work I observed that, I need to encourage
my participation in presentation activities. Further, I discovered that my strength which is my
communication skills as I was travel against and used to interact with many people in everyday
which helped me to connect with teachers regardless of my phobia. Apart from this, I was not
aware about my research skills but with the help of this session in analysed that I am good at
researching and making innovation in collected data. Further, I learned about different thinking
such as business models, creativity, lateral thinking etc. which will assist me in my future
personal and professional life. In my opinion session was interesting because it created
interaction between me and educator (Lawton and Brody, 2015). Moreover, the sessions
enhanced by learning over different sources for business ideas which comes out from internal
and external sources. Apparently during the session I was expecting a task in which I will be
allowed to share my learning and experience which I gained over business after working as
travel agent for 8 years. In addition, I learned about different components of business models like
market segmenting which was new to me as I was travel agent from past many years. Therefore,
I was not aware about change in business models and techniques. Apart from this, to make my
learning more effective I researched on real life business theories and their models. This research
helped me in learning about different components of business models like market segmenting,
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value chain etc. Thus, I observed that I lack knowledge about business world and creativity and it
can impact my future growth.
Conclusion
I would like to conclude by stating that participation in teaching session is the best
strategy which helps the person in discovering their own strength and weakness. I will
summarize by stating that the session helped me in discovering my skills of collecting
information from various secondary resources such as, articles, blogs, books and online journals.
Action Plan
In my future I will focus on putting my strategies and view points forwards in order to
overcome my stage phobia and enhance my learning over new things. In future I would like to
communicate with teachers more to analyse my learning and shortcomings.
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Kolb's Reflective Cycle
Kolb's reflective cycle in which researcher focus on individual experience in form of
cyclic adventure which comprise experience in which person perform something. In second step
the person reflects on his or experience of doing something. Then comes conceptualising in
which the individual draw conclusion of experience and actions. Lastly, plan in which the
individual outline learning from experience. In accordance, it can be said that this reflective
cycle is effective for evaluating one's experience in certain situation.
Illustration 2: Kolb's Reflective Cycle
Source: (What is Experiential Learning?, 2017)
Concrete Experience
My experience of teaching session is based on 9 activities which helped me in self
assessment. During the session I discovered that my major weakness is time management and
lack of knowledge regarding business models and innovations. Researching for real life example
of business model was the most interesting part because being a travel agent I enjoy learning
about few things which related to innovation and creativity. In addition, I feel the session was
average due to lack of interaction with teachers. Being a travel agent I was unaware about
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changes in business world but the teacher helps in learning various new things which can be my
future growth opportunities.
Reflective Observation
In session I observed that For business model canvas and innovation focusing on
secondary data is an effective tool because it helps in determining effectiveness of changes. With
this I realized that my major weakness is analysing secondary information because during the
session I was confused about the most useful information which I can share with my teachers as
my learning. I learned about different view on business canvas model and measures of
improvement. However, I realized that when I was travel agent communication was my key
strength but now in session I observed that I am just a good listener. Further, my future goal is to
develop business start-ups for which I achieved that creativity plays an essential role in
managing successful business operations. Also, with the help of session I have done analysis of
Business model innovation for Car 2Go which offers comfortable and convenient mobility to
customers for travelling in city. This activity of session helped me in learning about the interest
of people on the comfortability of mobility services.
Abstract Conceptualisation
In my opinion participating in session was interesting as it helps me in discovering
various new opinions and ideas which can assist me in my future business plans. During the
session I learned about different strategies of business model like implementing of new
technology, innovation and optimum utilisation of resource. I feel that session assisted me in
discovering my weakness which is stage phobia and lack of communication.
Active Experimentation
I would like to conclude by stating that I was expecting demonstration of real life
example which can helps me in my future business plans. Thus, from session I achieved that it is
important for the person to interact with teacher during learning because it is the only thing
which helps in analysing improvement measures.
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REFERENCES
Books and journals
Boud, D., 2013. Enhancing learning through self-assessment. Routledge.
Dochy, F.J.R.C., Segers, M. and Sluijsmans, D., 2010. The use of self-, peer and co-assessment
in higher education: A review. Studies in Higher education. 24(3). pp.331-350.
Davis, D.A. And et.al., 2016. Accuracy of physician self-assessment compared with observed
measures of competence: a systematic review. Jama. 296(9). pp.1094-1102.
Lawton, M.P. and Brody, E.M., 2015. Assessment of older people: self-maintaining and
instrumental activities of daily living. The gerontologist. 9(3_Part_1). pp.179-186.
Online
What is Experiential Learning?. 2017. [Online]. Available through:
<http://www.queensu.ca/experientiallearninghub/about/what-experiential-learning>.
Gibbs' Reflective Cycle. 2017. [Online]. Available
through:<https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/reflective-cycle.htm>.
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