The innobiz DUT Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation recently held a two-day Personal Development and Leadership Workshop at Mitchell’s Park, Durban. This workshop was the first innobiz DUT boot camp held for the entrepreneurs who participated in the first and second Hackathon and have become part of the innobiz programme. The purpose of this session was to challenge the entrepreneur’s perception of the business field and to bring them to understand the importance of their personal development in relation to their business development.

Business Support Coordinator, Mr Xolani Mchunu opened the programme by welcoming the entrepreneurs to the bootcamp and encouraging them to utilise this opportunity to assess their goals, skills and enhance their personal growth. The Centre invited personal development specialists to assist entrepreneurs in discovering their strengths and weaknesses through experiential learning exercises that are tailored to enable collective, critical reflection and learning.

Student entrepreneur and founder of Canny products, Darlene Taylor deemed this session eye-opening and fun.

“Through this programme I managed to recognise my strengths and weaknesses, it was a fun experience that provided us with an opportunity to meet new people and share knowledge,” she said.

DUT’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research, Innovation and Engagement, Professor Sibusiso Moyo commended the Centre for incorporating this boot camp as part of the incubation programme, stating that personal mastery is crucial in the development of well-rounded entrepreneurs.

“Such activities ensure the development of entrepreneurs mentally, spiritually, emotionally and socially; resulting in the production of adaptive and creative graduates as per our ENVISION2030 vision statement,” added Prof Moyo.

Prof Moyo was supported by Business Support Advisor, Mr Thobani Thusi who also added that this is an aspect of business that is usually neglected by most business support institutions.

“These sessions are intended to prepare our entrepreneurs psychologically for the business world. Often, in business, we focus more on the business, and we neglect the person,” said Thusi.

The session concluded off with a reflection session where entrepreneurs reflected on what they learnt from this exercise and how they are planning to implement these lessons in their businesses.

Pictured: Business Support Coordinator, Mr Xolani Mchunu at the boot camp.

Photographer: Khulasande Tshayile

Aliziwe Mbambo