Highlights From The Latest Heavy Chef Entrepreneur Education Report

Heavy Chef Foundation's Louis Janse van Rensburg unpacks the latest insights in entrepreneur education.

When Heavy Chef announced in 2019 that it was setting up a non-profit, Heavy Chef Foundation, to focus on connecting disconnected entrepreneurs, we identified two pillars of our programme of change: Research and Impact.

Our research vision was to develop South Africa's most in-depth data hub on entrepreneur education.

Fast forward a few years and, to date, we have surveyed 9,000 entrepreneurs, conducted over 200 in-depth interviews (with two more added every week) and analysed thousands of learning bites with a diverse set of entrepreneurs including women, township, youth and e-commerce entrepreneurs at different stages of their business and in different environments.

The benefits of our impact research methodology allow us to be responsive, describe variations, explain relationships, hear from individual experiences and outline group norms, supplemented with statistical data on hand.

In the past, we’ve shared insights from our research through our Friday Research Mailers, our Annual Report and presentations to groups around the country. However, as the depth and breadth of data we have at hand increases, the need for us to share this with our community more frequently, with more depth - all in a relatable and useful way - becomes increasingly important.

The 4th Edition of The Heavy Chef Entrepreneur Education Report features deep dives into insights identified in the data, statistics and perspectives from ‘heavy chefs’, implications for entrepreneurs, educators and service providers, as well as an inspirational case study from within our community.

Here’s a little tease of what is featured in this release of the report:

Insight 1:?Entrepreneurs are increasingly finding meaning and identity in the learning and sharing that impacts them as individuals and bind entrepreneurs together as a collective.

Insight 2:?The people and products closest to entrepreneurs top the list of things that motivate entrepreneurs to get up every day and build beautiful businesses.

Case Study:?The hope and positive energy provided by meeting your role model has a lasting impact on how entrepreneurs think about all the sacrifices they made to date.

Insight 3:?Entrepreneurs are critically thinking, assessing and engaging pro-actively with their partners - current and potential.

Insight 4:?Entrepreneurs are yearning for better designed, beautiful and inspiring educational content that they can connect with.

Yesterday, we previewed the new report to all our partners and I was struck by the power insights can have to galvanise powerful collaborations. After all, it is ultimately all about the impact.

The past few years of research are increasingly shaping Heavy Chef and our partners' activities on the ground - from the learning topics on our platform and new in-person learning programmes rolling out, to profitable interactions facilitated at our events and resources offered to our community and beyond.

A huge amount of gratitude goes out to the Heavy Chef team for the time, effort and ideas that went into making the new Heavy Chef Entrepreneur Education Report a reality.

For those not on our mailing list, you can subscribe to get notified of future reports as they get released by going here.

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This article was originally shared with our community as Louis Janse van Rensburg’s Friday Research Mailer.?Subscribe?now to get it in your inbox fresh!