Business Entrepreneurship

You hear a lot of talk lately about entrepreneurship, but have you given any thought to what the term entrepreneurship means? Entrepreneurship is defined in Wikipedia as:

”…the practice of starting new organizations or revitalizing mature organizations, particularly new businesses generally in response to identified opportunities.”

Some people mistakenly believe that entrepreneurs are gamblers, since they are perceived to be risk takers. Often times entrepreneurs are driven by a need to innovate rather than a need for excitement or risk. In reality entrepreneurs take calculated risks. These calculated risks generally that have the potential for significant returns.

Opportunity, innovation, and growth are three key factors to consider. Often times an entrepreneur identifies trends and changes as opportunities before others even notice them. In order to take advantage of opportunities as they arise, entrepreneurs often need to take action with the resources that they have on hand.

Another key theme in entrepreneurship is transforming existing products through innovation. This innovation might be based upon a need to adapt an existing product to a new market. It could be based upon identifying a better way to provide value to customers by making an existing product somehow more useful or valuable to existing customers. It could be as simple as identifying a problem that is solved or mitigated with the product or service that hadn’t been considered previously.

Growth is the third key factor that characterizes entrepreneurship. It is best represented by the continual efforts of entrepreneurs to expand into new markets. This expansion could be to a new type of customer or new geographic markets, both locally and internationally. Entrepreneurs are eager to identify new techniques to help their business grow

These principles are the building blocks that many businesses were, and are, founded upon. Many of the largest corporations can trace their start to one or more entrepreneurs. These organizations often started as small enterprises by people with vision and determination. History shows us many examples of entrepreneurs who took leaps of faith and huge amounts of risk to achieve their dreams.

The internet is a great example of entrepreneurship. Literally wherever you turn, you can see the results of entrepreneurship. People from all walks of life are innovating and quietly amassing huge fortunes because they embraced their entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs are the ones taking the risks, improving their profits, and hopefully the world overall.

Many of the technological advancements available today would not have been possible if entrepreneurs did not invest in the development of these businesses. They in essence came out of their comfort zones to develop the technologies that we enjoy today. I think you’ll agree that entrepreneurial spirit is a necessary ingredient for businesses to provide better and faster products and services to their customers and clients. This entrepreneurial spirit allows them and their organizations to reach greater heights of success. Individuals with vision and the courage to take calculated risks will help organizations innovate, grow, and ultimately succeed. Embrace your entrepreneurial spirit, you might be surprised by what you and your organization can achieve.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” – Albert Einstein

Why is it so important to think out of the box? Without thinking this way there would never be any significant changes in the world. Once you set up a business based on innovation, your action is proactive, instead of a reactive one, which is always passive and “slowed down.”

Here are the main opportunities that become available to you when setting up an innovational entrepreneurial company:

• Satisfying Unrecognized Needs – First of all, let’s contrast the two types of a need, recognized and unrecognized one. The recognized needs, such as need for food, water etc, have got a really meaningful disadvantage by means of building a business based on them. It’s about a really high and already global competition. Therefore, your profit will most probably never go above the “standard” margin, caused by influence of increased competition on pricing. Of course, you can choose and existing product/service and find a way to produce/execute it few times less costly than others do, but still, it won’t give you an advantage in long-term time frame. What if you do something not just better than others, but something that others don’t do at all, just because they haven’t even thought about it yet? That’s the point. Building up your business based on satisfaction of unrecognized need gives you an ability to operate without any direct competitors, until you’ve got a patent for that product/service of course. Even if you won’t make your innovational product/service, you’ll still have ability to profit in short term, much better than in case of already existing products/services.

• Open Innovation Advantage – This advantage will help you to benefit easier, especially if the new product is somehow connected with technology. It can be considered as a supportive one to help you being a first mover to market. In any case, it enables you to be faster to market. 

• Independence – Since there won’t be any direct competitors, you become able to operate freely, building up your marketing plans independently of other companies.

• Marketing Excitement – Be prepared. Your excitement will grow to extreme levels when advertising your new, innovational product or service. Main is to be ready to the challenges ahead, even if it’s world wide.

• Strong Control – Once you build up a business based on innovational entrepreneurship, you get total control over your company and its way of operating. If you take all the details into consideration, nothing’s going to spoil it.

• High Level of Flexibility – Since you’re your own boss in this case, you can plan your schedule the way you want and make your decisions however you want. Main is not to miss the important details.

• Supporting Corporate Strategy – Once you establish up such a company, the innovation is more likely to become the core component of its corporate strategy.

• Boost On Start – What will happen if you combine it all with JIT techniques? That’s right – you get a boost just from beginning of your business operating. By producing to order, you no longer need intensive funding on the beginning stage of your business, since you have no variable cost when there is no request for your product/service. This decreases the commercial risk down to zero.

The thing is that while starting own business most of the people think only of already existing products and services. Main is simply to invest some more innovational creativity into process while being just on the beginning stage. Just be curious!

Giorgi Darsadze.

You can unleash your entrepreneurship potential if you so wish and start a business that you take to super success, but before you can do that, you need to think about certain things. You don’t want to end up like most people who start businesses and then don’t succeed because of various things, mostly because they hadn’t planned out things properly earlier. So that you don’t end up that way too, here are some things that you might want to think about.

Do You Have the Passion and the Knowledge?

One of the most important ingredients for business success is that you should be passionate about what you are intending to do. You might have thought about entering a particular business niche, but then it is important that you feel about it deeply. It is only when you are interested will you be able to carry on with it for the long term.

The best business ideas are those which have some kind of innovation in them. There has to be something special, something in it that other businesses aren’t providing. Now, that can only come with knowledge. Do you know enough about the entrepreneurial venture you are planning to come up with something new? Remember that the biggest business ideas in the world have been the ones that have innovated something or the other.

Are You a Dynamic Individual?

If you need a lot of pushing to do something, you will probably not do well with your business opportunity at all. An entrepreneur needs to be dynamic and self-moving. You have to take initiatives. You have to make decisions. You have to not just plan something out, but you also have to see to it that you can carry it out till the end. If you don’t have this personality trait in you, you will probably not be able to do very well as a businessperson.

Will You Be Ready to Work More?

People who are venturing into businesses should be prepared to work a little more than the average job-seeker. There won’t be fixed hours; you will be expected to put in a lot of extra work, most of which won’t pay out right away. However, if you have an entrepreneurial flair, you will understand that your efforts will soon pay out soon.

Can You Experiment?

You will also have to try out things a lot. Your strategies may or may not work, but the important point is that you have to plan them and implement them. You will have to stick your neck out sometimes and see if things work or not. You may have to invest in places that mightn’t pay out too; be prepared for that.

Do You Have the Capital?

You cannot start an entrepreneurship venture without a sufficient amount of capital to pay for your needs. You will either have to have the required amount of capital with you or you will need to have the eligibility to apply for financial help.

Entrepreneurship: Definition, Types, and Motivational Factors

Definition

The word entrepreneurship has been derived from a French root which means “ to undertake”. It is also called by various names, e.g. adventurism, risk taking, thrill seeking, innovating, etc.

According to Higgins, “ Entrepreneurship is meant the function of seeking investment and production opportunity, organizing an enterprise to undertake a new production process, raising capital, hiring labor, arranging the supply of raw materials, finding site, introducing a new technique and commodities, discovering new sources of raw materials and selecting top managers of day-to-day operations of the enterprise.

Jaffrey A. Timmons has defined entrepreneurship as “the ability to create and build something from practically nothing. Fundamentally, a human creative activity, it is finding personal energy by initiating, building and achieving an enterprise or organization rather than by watching, analyzing or describing one. It requires the ability to take calculated risk and to reduce the chance of failure…..”

According to A.H.Cole “entrepreneurship is the purposeful activity of an individual or a group of associated individuals, undertaken to initiate, maintain or aggrandize profit by production or distribution of economic goods and services.”

Characteristics and Significance

A Function of High Achievement: People having high need for achievement are more likely to succeed as entrepreneurs, according to McClelland. Motive is high achievement and profit  is merely a measure of success and competency.

Innovation: According to Schumpeter, entrepreneurship is a creative activity. An entrepreneur is basically an innovator who introduces something new into the economy.

Organization Building Function: According to Harbison, Organization Building skill means the ability to “ multiply oneself” by effectively delegating responsibility to others.

A Function of Managerial Skills and Leadership: Managerial skills and leadership qualities are more important than financial skills

A Function of Status Withdrawal: According to Hagen,” Creative innovation or change is the fundamental feature of economic growth. He describes an entrepreneur as a creative problem solver interested in things in the practical and technological realm.

Types of an Entrepreneur

Innovating Entrepreneur:

Aggressive in experimentation and clever in putting attractive possibilities into practice.

Adoptive or Imitative Entrepreneurs:

They adopt best practices. Imitative entrepreneurs are revolutionary and important.

Fabian Entrepreneurs:

Drone Entrepreneurs:

Against any change in production method even at the cost of losses.

Forced Entrepreneurs:

They become entrepreneurs on account of    circumstances

Functions of an Entrepreneur

Perceiving market opportunities

Gaining command over scarce resources

Managing human relations within firms

Marketing of the products

Responding to the competition

Dealing with bureaucracy

Managing finance

Upgrading process and product quality

Managing costumer and supplier relations

Introducing new production techniques and products

Risk Taking

Organization and management

Qualities of a good entrepreneur

According to McClelland:

An unusual creativeness

A propensity of risk taking

A strong need for achievement

According to Prof. Tandon :

1. Capacity to assume risks

2. Technical Knowledge and willingness to change

3. Ability to marshal resources

4. Ability of organization and administration

According to more than fifty research studies:

Total commitment, determination and perseverance Drive to achieve and grow Opportunity and goal orientation Taking initiative and personal responsibility Persistent problem solving Realism and sense of humor Seeking and using feedback Calculated risk taking and risk seeking 9.   Low need for status and power

10.  Integrity and reliability

11.  Capacity to work hard

12.  Self Motivation

13.  Vision and foresight

14.  Sound Judgment

15.  Flexibility and sociability

16.  Persistence in the face of adversity

17.  Will to conquer and impulse to fight

Entrepreneurial Motivation Factor

Educational background

Occupational Experience

Desire to work independently

Desire to branch out to manufacturing

Family background

Assistance from Government

Assistance from financial institution

Availability of technology/raw material

Profit margin

Desire for taking personal responsibility

Anticipation of future possibilities

Success stories of entrepreneurs

To gain social prestige

Heavy Demand

Technical knowledge

Incoming search terms for the article:

• motivation definition factors

Entrepreneurship = Innovation = Growth

To define entrepreneurship, we can say that appropriate resources are gathered to achieve a goal. The goals involve certain risks. These risks can affect an entrepreneurs’ wealth and time. The ventures could be focussed towards many different outcomes. These ventures may support philanthropic ideas, environmental initiatives, profit, etc. Examples of entrepreneurship could be starting up a company like Microsoft, or a charity organization. An entrepreneur brings a new product or service to our economy. This means that a new idea or innovation is created.

Innovation determines there are new ways of creating value for consumers. Entrepreneurs strive to impress investors for support on new business ideas, these business ideas aim to add value for consumers. When there is innovation, we find new ways to improve the lifestyle of regular people. Consumers have better options to improve the quality of their lives. The same way Thomas Edison introduced the light bulb, we have entrepreneurs pitching ideas. Entrepreneurs in business want to keep doing this, simply because its the path towards starting out a company. By starting a business, growth and profits can eventually be established. This leads to a successful venture.

A successful business facilitates the internal and external environment. Not only is the company a great source for creating new jobs, consumers and contracting companies find use in the product provided. In other words, better efficiency is created in different places that support the product. This contributes to the gross domestic product (GDP). The GDP shows improvement in goods and services domestically. This is a good indicator of how well the economy is doing. When there is an increased GDP, the economy is doing well. In this case, there are better employment rates and citizens are happy with results. Innovation also helps trade, businesses may send their products out overseas or branch out globally. This is great for building relations with economies from other countries.

Since entrepreneurs contribute towards innovation, they are needed in the domestic system. The entrepreneurial lifestyle should be supported by the general public and the government. To have many entrepreneurs means potential for new ideas, products and services. It means potential for new business start-ups and business engagement. Entrepreneurship should be continuously funded by the government. By funding entrepreneurship, we are investing in future improvement and technological growth. In other words, globalization exists through entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurs lead a difficult task of gathering resources to fulfill a purpose. They not only have to find financial support, there is also the hard work needed in creating a business plan and making the appropriate decisions. Nowadays, entrepreneurs need to be persistent and stay focussed towards their goals. Most ventures don’t succeed, which is why its common for entrepreneurs to try many different ideas. It is important for entrepreneurs to receive all kinds of support during these rough patches. Our economy needs it.

Written by Basim MIrza

Wikipedia. Entrepreneurship. [6st September 2009].http://walmartstores.com/FactsNews/NewsRoom/8437.aspx

Entrepreneurship. Resource Center. [6th September 2009].http://www.entrepreneurship.org/ResourcesCenter/

Innovate on purpose. Invention, innovation and entrepreneurs. [6th September 2009]. http://innovateonpurpose.blogspot.com/2006/10/invention-innovation-and-entrepreneurs.html