MD4044 Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice

Introduction

Creation and discovery are primary elements in increasing entrepreneurial opportunities. In order to gain knowledge and complete the assignment, secondary research and the learning materials were analysed to provide details about how discovery and creation plays a huge role in entrepreneurial opportunity. Feedback from peers and family member was taken in order to have an understanding about some of the entrepreneurial skills that I possess which has been provided in the assignment and has helped me in gaining knowledge about my strengths which I may use in the near future for professional and personal development.

Question 1a

An entrepreneur is considered to be a person who is seen to create a business, bears majority of the risks in the business and then enjoys the profits and the rewards generated from the business. According to scholars, the entrepreneur is considered to be an innovator and a source of different and new goods, business, procedures, services and ideas (Herman 2018). It is important for the entrepreneurs to focus on the entrepreneurial opportunities which help the business in gaining revenue and reaping profits which is the primary aim of establishing the business..

Entrepreneurial opportunities are mostly defined as the situations where the services and the products have the potential to be sold at higher prices that the original cost of the production. The entrepreneurial opportunity is primarily the situations where the entrepreneurs are seen to take actions in order to make profits.

It has been seen that creation and discovery in context of entrepreneurial opportunity play a huge role in the operations of a business and making the business a success. According to scholars, the opportunity creation is considered to be the process where the entrepreneurs focus on creating opportunities for them and also previously unknown means as well as ends of opportunity with the help of the actions taken by the entrepreneur (Goss and Sadler‐Smith 2018). Creating opportunities is an important task for the entrepreneur as this helps in coming up with new ideas and strategies which helps in the growth of the business. It has been seen that there are various ways in which the entrepreneurs create opportunities which is an essential aspect for new businesses.

One of the steps that entrepreneurs are seen to take is emphasizing on the activities of the organisation. It is important to focus on the operational aspects and activities that are within the control of the entrepreneur rather than focusing on external circumstances where the entrepreneur does not have any control of it (Ott, Eisenhardt and Bingham 2017). Working towards the activities within the organisation helps the entrepreneurs in creating opportunities so that they can enhance the service of the organisation and help in gaining competitive advantage in the business.

Reflection is one of the major factors of an entrepreneur which helps in creating opportunities for the business. Reflection about past experiences help the entrepreneurs in gaining knowledge about what are the advantage and disadvantages of an action and helps the entrepreneurs in coming up with effective strategies and ideas which helps in creating opportunities for the business (Bird 2019). These strategies help in ensuring effective change management within the operations of an organisation so that they can perform in an effective manner.

Research suggests that one of the skills which entrepreneurs need to have is being open-mined (Chaniago 2020). This skill is seen to help in creating opportunities for the business which leverages the performance and productivity of an organisation. Being open-minded helps the entrepreneurs decide new for the business, challenge the thinking and also explore various alternative perspectives which helps in creating opportunities for a business (Belousova, Hattenberg and Gailly 2020). Thus, creating opportunities often helps businesses to grow and level up in an unexpected manner.

Apart from creating an opportunity, another aspect which is highly related to the entrepreneurs is discovery. According to scholars, there are various aspects of a business which the entrepreneurs need to discover which they did not before which can help in contributing to the betterment of an organisation and thus, it is the skill of the entrepreneur which is to discover knowledge and other activities which help in shaping the business of the company or an organisation (González, Husted and Aigner 2017). It can be seen that discovery has a huge role to play in the success of an entrepreneur to implement new ideas and strategies in their business.

It has been seen that entrepreneurial discovery method or the process is an interactive and an inclusive bottom-up process where participants or the employees from various environments and domains discover as well as produce information for the entrepreneur in terms of potential opportunities and new activities which will help in increasing the success of the business (Foray 2017). It has been seen that most entrepreneurs focus on this activity in order to discover new aspects which is going to help in the growth of the business. Discovering new activities, trends and various other things is extremely important to come up with a fruitful strategy which makes sure that the business makes changes in their strategy and also ensures that they implement new strategy which helps in the growth of the business.

Entrepreneurs are seen to incorporate firm level capabilities in order to discover and create opportunities for their business which is essential and vital for the thriving of the business. One of the capabilities which the entrepreneurs are seen to have or incorporate is focusing on the ability. It has been seen that the ability to analyse, focus on research and development plays an important role in ensuring the company has the necessary information to make significant changes in the business.

 Research suggests that research and development is one of the areas where the entrepreneurs focus on so that they can have the important information about an organisation which reflects on their strength, weaknesses, the market trends, information about the opportunities, customer needs and requirements, competitors and many more which help in making fruitful decisions which helps in discovering new aspects that can be beneficial for the business and also create opportunities which helps the business in being distinct from other competitors in the market (Amorós, Poblete and Mandakovic 2019). This helps the entrepreneurs in understanding that what are the factors can be helpful for the business of the organisation and thus making decisions which may help in the success of the business.

One of the capabilities which helps the entrepreneurs in succeeding in the market and helps in creating opportunities as well as discover certain aspects which can be beneficial for the business is experience. Experience helps the entrepreneurs in discovering what are the activities which do not work and what are some of the activities which are essential in a business for their fruitful performances (Gielnik, Zacher and Wang 2018). This experience also helps in working towards areas that can help in gaining opportunities for an organisation. It is the experience and the expertise knowledge which the entrepreneurs have which often help in the positive and the necessary changes in the business and also leads to the businesses incorporating various new activities which has the potential to do good for the business in the long run.

Lastly, reputation is considered to be one of the factors in which that the entrepreneurs need to wisely focus on in order to foster innovation in the business which is the primary aim of discovery and creating opportunities in the business. Abeysekera (2019) states that reputation helps in enhancing the performance of the employees and encourage them to focus on creating opportunities for the business and ensure that they contribute to the success of the business which is essential for the thriving of the business in the market. Thus, it has been seen that the entrepreneurs highly focus on ensuring that the business is operated in an ethical manner which will help the business in gaining a positive reputation in the market which will satisfy all their stakeholders from the employees to the customers.

Entrepreneurs are seen to highly focus on the activities and the operations of the business so that they can gain a positive reputation in the market. It has been seen that through discovery of information and their need to create opportunities help the business in being innovative. According to scholars, innovation in a business is detrimental as it not helps in the successful changes in the business but it also helps in gaining a competitive advantage in the business by creating value for the customers (Knox, Crawford and Kelder 2021). This is important in entrepreneurship as the aim of the entrepreneurs is to market themselves and be distinctive from other companies in order to create value and attract the attention of the customers in the market.

Entrepreneurs have a tough time in setting up their business as it is not easy to establish a company in a highly competitive market. It has been seen that the primary role of the entrepreneurs is to focus on discovery and creating opportunities which helps the company or the organisation in making fruitful decisions in the business which helps in creating value for the customers, make the company highly distinct from the competitors, gain certain competitive advantage in the market and also lead to attracting the customers so that they can associate themselves with the business. It has been seen that creating opportunities and discovery is highly associated with entrepreneurship and is considered to be the stepping stone which helps in establishment and later the thriving of the business in a highly successful manner and reap profits.

Question 1b

According to scholars, there are five dimensions to entrepreneurial orientation which are autonomy, innovativeness, risk-taking, competitive aggressiveness and proactiveness (Lumpkin and Dess 1996). Autonomy is entrepreneurship means that the decision rights in regards to the work and the activities incorporated in the business will be done by the founder or the owner of the business (Hernandez-Perlines 2018). Innovativeness is considered to be the tendency of the entrepreneur in order to pursue experimentation and creativity within the organisation in order to help the organisation in gaining a competitive advantage in the market.

Risk taking is basically the capability or the ability of the entrepreneur to make bold decisions and actions rather than focusing on calculative and cautious actions. Competitive aggressiveness is considered to be the tendency of the entrepreneur to directly and intensely challenge their competitors in the market rather than avoiding them (Wales et al 2019). The activities that move competitive aggressiveness in the business market are generally cutting of the cost, increasing the budget in terms of marketing, capacity of the production and their qualities.  

Proactiveness is to mainly anticipate and then act on the needs of the future rather than taking actions after the consequences (Al Mamun and Fazal 2018). It has been seen that a proactive organisation adopts the perspective of opportunity-seeking so that they can meet the demands of the customers and gain a competitive advantage in the market.

I believe that throughout the course and the learning, I have identified that there are some entrepreneurial skills I possess and as per the entrepreneurial orientation dimensions, I would focus on some of the dimensions which will help in managing an organisation and being an entrepreneur in the near future. I believe that risk taking is something I focus on and believe in as in order to come up with new ideas, strategies and implement in the business for their growth and gaining a competitive advantage, taking risks is extremely important as without this the business will not be able to grow or innovate in the process which can lead to the stagnation of the organisation.

Competitive aggressiveness is something I believe I would focus on as the business environment and market is highly competitive in nature as everyday new businesses come up and there is existence of well-established business in the market. Avoiding the competitors will lead to lack of growth of the organisation and thus focusing on being aggressive and making decisions to survive in the highly competitive market is vital and important for the success and the growth of the business of a company.

The other dimension which I would focus on is innovativeness. I believe that I would focus on creating opportunities for the business I will work for in the near future and focus on innovation which will help the business in gaining a competitive advantage in the market and also help in creating value for the customers which is important for an entrepreneur. This will help in leveraging the business and will help in the expansion of the business in the near future.

References

Abeysekera, I., 2019. How best to communicate intangible resources on websites to inform corporate‐growth reputation of small entrepreneurial businesses. Journal of Small Business Management, 57(3), pp.738-756.

Al Mamun, A. and Fazal, S.A., 2018. Effect of entrepreneurial orientation on competency and micro-enterprise performance. Asia Pacific Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Amorós, J.E., Poblete, C. and Mandakovic, V., 2019. R&D transfer, policy and innovative ambitious entrepreneurship: evidence from Latin American countries. The Journal of Technology Transfer, 44(5), pp.1396-1415.

Belousova, O., Hattenberg, D.Y. and Gailly, B., 2020. Corporate entrepreneurship: from structures to mindset. In Organizational mindset of entrepreneurship (pp. 211-233). Springer, Cham.

Bird, B., 2019. Toward a theory of entrepreneurial competency. In Seminal Ideas for the Next Twenty-Five Years of Advances. Emerald Publishing Limited.

Chaniago, H., 2020. The Effects of Entrepreneurial Personality to Competitiveness and Corporate Image: A Study on Chocolate Agent Entrepreneurs. International Review of Management and Marketing, 10(2), pp.21-29.

Foray, D., 2017. The concept of the ‘entrepreneurial discovery process’. Governing smart specialisation, pp.5-19.

Gielnik, M.M., Zacher, H. and Wang, M., 2018. Age in the entrepreneurial process: The role of future time perspective and prior entrepreneurial experience. Journal of Applied Psychology, 103(10), p.1067.

González, M.F., Husted, B.W. and Aigner, D.J., 2017. Opportunity discovery and creation in social entrepreneurship: An exploratory study in Mexico. Journal of Business Research, 81, pp.212-220.

Goss, D. and Sadler‐Smith, E., 2018. Opportunity creation: Entrepreneurial agency, interaction, and affect. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, 12(2), pp.219-236.

Herman, E., 2018, May. Innovation and entrepreneurship for competitiveness in the EU: an empirical analysis. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Business Excellence (Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 425-435). Sciendo.

Hernandez-Perlines, F., 2018. Moderating effect of absorptive capacity on the entrepreneurial orientation of international performance of family businesses. Journal of Family Business Management.

Knox, M.W., Crawford, J. and Kelder, J.A., 2021. Developing authentic leadership and fostering social entrepreneurial innovation. In Reshaping Entrepreneurship Education With Strategy and Innovation (pp. 262-292). IGI Global.

 Lumpkin, G.T. and Dess, G.G., 1996. Clarifying the entrepreneurial orientation construct and linking it to performance. Academy of management Review, 21(1), pp.135-172.

Ott, T.E., Eisenhardt, K.M. and Bingham, C.B., 2017. Strategy formation in entrepreneurial settings: Past insights and future directions. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, 11(3), pp.306-325.

Wales, W., Gupta, V.K., Marino, L. and Shirokova, G., 2019. Entrepreneurial orientation: International, global and cross-cultural research. International Small Business Journal, 37(2), pp.95-104.

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