Becoming an Entrepreneur in the 21st Century - Coursework Example

Becoming an Entrepreneur in the 21st Century Name Institution Becoming an Entrepreneur in the 21st Century Introduction Entrepreneurship plays a significant role in the daily business environments as well as the world economy. In the 21st century, entrepreneurial activities are becoming quite challenging especially with the continuous changes in the needs of the consumers. Therefore, it is important for entrepreneurs to adjust their activities and business ventures with the needs of the potential clients and consequently integrating technological concept in management. Modern entrepreneurship requires development of desired positive behaviors and competencies to assist in identifying the changes in the market trends. The underlying activities might guarantee success or failure of the business, which makes it important for the entrepreneurs to find the essential factors that could assist in ensuring entrepreneurial growth. Business environment is also becoming highly competitive which also contribute to the failures of most entrepreneurial enterprises (Blokker & Dallago, 2008). The current practices require entrepreneurs to focus on realization of discoveries, networking activities, and compliance with the required regulations to operate efficiently and develop a positive competitive advantage. With the current economic growth and liberalization in most countries, there are massive changes in the outlook of entrepreneurial activities and globalization motives. Growth opportunity is most countries is massive and entrepreneurial concept is concept the basis of the take off. Moreover, most governments are also realizing the potential behind entrepreneurial activities. As a result, entrepreneurs are acquiring finances in form of loans or incentive, which also makes the industry highly competitive. It is crucial that the intended activities fulfill the specific needs of the customers to remain operational. The Nature of Entrepreneurship and Its Role in Business In today’s modern society, entrepreneurial development is becoming highly significant as key factor for economic development. Moreover, the aims and objectives of industrial development, regional growth, and generation of employment depend entirely on the entrepreneurial development. Therefore, the entrepreneurs are the seeds for industrial development yielding several opportunities such as employment to the ever-increasing population; ensure increment in the per capita income, higher living standard and increased individual saving, source of government revenue in form of income and sales taxes, export and import duties, and balanced and regional development (Binder & Coad, 2010). From entrepreneurial concept, there are several risks involved in venturing into the business. Thus, entrepreneurship involves a process or actions undertaken to search new ventures for exploitation and accepting all the associated risks and uncertainty with an aim of enjoying gainful opportunities. Several characteristics define the nature of an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship is an economic activity involving creation and operation of the enterprise with an aim of creating value and ensuring effective utilization of the limited resources. Since the creation of value activities occur continuously in the presence of uncertain business environments, thus, entrepreneurship is considered as a dynamic force. There is need for continuous search of new ideas. Entrepreneurship concept often compel individual to evaluation frequently the existing modes of business operations to ensure that the outlined activities are efficient and effective. Innovative systems need to be prone to evolution and adoption to ascertain that the activities carried within the business focus on provision of customers’ needs. In other words, entrepreneurship involves a series of efforts meant to optimize performance within an organization. While developing an entrepreneurship plan, it is important to note the profit potential of the business. Profit potential is the ability of the venture to compensate the entrepreneur for taking the risks in developing an idea into the actual venture (Audretsch, Falck, & Heblich, 2009). Without the profit potential in the venture, the efforts placed by the entrepreneur might only remain an abstract and theoretical leisure of the activities. The main of essence of the whole business is the willingness of assuming the risks that could arise out of the creation and implementation of the newly established idea. Besides, most new ideas are often tentative in nature and the associated results might not be instantaneous and positive as initially assumed. The most important virtue of any committed entrepreneur is patient of seeing the efforts bear fruits. During the intervention period, time gap existing between the conception of the idea and implementation, it is important to assume the risks (Casson & Adamson, 2003). Focusing too much on the risk might demoralize the spirit of an entrepreneur, which could result in omission of important steps. If an entrepreneur lacks the willing of assuming the risks, then it might be difficult for the entrepreneurship to prosper. Teamwork plays an important role in developing an effective business idea. Entrepreneurs should be in a position to share their ideas with others and integrate the view of the others to enable efficient and proper implementation process. Although people steal business ideas, it is important to encourage incubation period of idea development. Developing a business plan as a team might assist in identification of the risks before implementation of the business. As a result, entrepreneurs have the opportunity of making adjustments in their business plans and integrate some of the important elements that could assist make the business more effective (Cantillon & Van, 2015). Most entrepreneurs often neglect the significant of communication skills while developing their business ideas. Listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills are important communication skills that every entrepreneur needs to develop. The manner in which an entrepreneur communicates his/her business ideas defines the credibility of the business and the ability to convince the consumers to have positive taste on the developed product. The market is becoming highly competitive, listening skills is significant to understand the plea, and specific needs of the customers (Chaston, 2009). Creativity is the major factor that defines committed entrepreneurs. With the rising competition, there is need to develop means of ensuring most of the entrepreneurial activities satisfies the needs of the customers. However, the needs are ever changing which requires proper. Important Elements in Formulating and Evaluating an Entrepreneurial Business Plan While a developing a business plan, it is important to ensure the outlined activities aims to meet the business goals. It is inappropriate took at the plans as generic. Besides, an entrepreneur has to define if the plan is meant for investment or support systems. However, for new entrepreneurs, the plans aim to assist in the management of the operations and not presentation to the outsiders. The key elements of a plan include: Executive Summary: This element is important in most startup businesses as it clearly defines the goals, activities, and the desired results of the business operations. Therefore, it should be short, clear, and precise since it only provides a synopsis of the whole plan. Market Analysis: This element illustrates the knowledge of an entrepreneur on a particular industry they wish to operate. Moreover, the element forces the entrepreneurs to be familiar with all aspects of their targeted market and position the business to collect the share of the sales. Market analysis enables the entrepreneur to establish the prices, distribution, and marketing strategies that would allow the business become profitable within the highly competitive environment (Casson & Buckley, 2010). The element also gives an indication of the growth within the industry, which allows development of future estimates. It is important to start the definition of market analysis using the size, structure, prospects of growth, trends, and sales potential. Business Description: This element involves looking at how all the high levels of various business elements fit together. Information here should include the nature of the entrepreneurial activities as well as important factors that the entrepreneur believes that might assist the business achieve its desired objectives. Organization and Management: This element of the plan focuses of the entrepreneurial structure, details regarding the ownership of the business, description of business management teams, and qualifications. Marketing and Sales Strategies: This is the most important element within the plan as it creates the customers who in turn generate the sales. Within the element, entrepreneurs need to define marketing strategies, tactics, and channels created to guarantee business success. Moreover, entrepreneurs should also identify the strategies used by the potential competitors. However, it is significant to update the element on timely basis to ensure the strategies are in line with the desired objectives. Service and Product Line: The element describes the services or products offered by the business. It involves emphasizing on the benefits rather than the feature of the products and services and establishment of the entrepreneurial unique selling position. Therefore, the elements only require the entrepreneur to show how his/her product of service differ and better than others. Funding Requirement: The element requires the business to state the amount of funding required to start the business. The stated funds need to be realistic as the element might involve either the best or the worst-case scenarios. Financials: This element involves development of the financials AFTER analyzing the market and setting the objectives clear. Any good entrepreneurial plan is never written once. Additionally, an effective and committed entrepreneur need to understand that the developed plans often evolves with the changing environment as the marketing campaigns tend to exceed the expectations or fails in meeting the entrepreneurial assumptions. Important Elements of Managing Rapid Growth and Overcoming Obstacles in an Entrepreneurial Environment Generally, rapid growth involves quick boost in the sales, people, costs, and volume of a business with a short period, which could result in some side effects. To manage the rapid growth, it is significant to have proper plans, reinforcement of the objectives, and organizing entrepreneurial activities. In such period, decision-making and management skills are important. The ability of the entrepreneurs to recognize the indications and develop countering measures is an act of effective management skills. The elements include: Identification of the right client for the business: entrepreneurs need to define clearly the clients to be selecting when several opportunities are available and when the time limited to accept all of them. Through understanding the client, entrepreneurs can easily identify them without going through the hustle of filtering and attracting them. Having a specialty: although the entrepreneurs should diverse their business activities which relate to their core businesses, rapid changes require entrepreneurs to specialize to enable efficiency and effectiveness of their operations. Specialty is an area operation for which the business is known properly. Offloading the routine task to the others: With the rapid growth, entrepreneurs need to focus on the strategic elements of the business rather than the daily administrative responsibilities. Offloading the responsibilities involves hiring others who work effectively at some cost for example hiring secretary or accountants to undertake certain specific activities. Provision of the GEMS service: the business might be growing but not all the clients are ideal for the entrepreneur. If the client offers lesser than what the entrepreneur expects, he/she could Go-Extra-Mile for Services through referring them to other ideal business owners. Such activities could generate the impression to the client that the entrepreneur not only cares for the profit but also welfare of the ideal clients. Overcoming Obstacles Every success often comes after obstacles and depends on growth. To be prosperous, entrepreneurs should be able to overcome the entire obstacle encountered. Therefore, an effective business strategy is important to guarantee such success. Entrepreneurs have to utilize their inadequacy to develop business strategies. Past failures often need to serve as instruments of developing effective business strategies. The elements of overcoming obstacles include: Discovering methods of improving products and services: competitors often copy business concepts for similar products or services. To overcome such obstacles, entrepreneurs need to discover methods of improving their products and services with an aim of meeting the changing needs of the consumers. The achievement of such objectives depends on the ability of the business strategy to improve its efforts that might lead to the next level. Seeking the opportunities constantly: every entrepreneur knows how difficult it is to find an opportunity. Therefore, they have to pursue such objectives actively. To improve the products and services, there is need to seek new opportunities that could offer potential growth and take the business on high levels. Significant Sources of Information And Assistance Entrepreneurs often intend to solve most societal challenges. As a result, there is need to be sensitive on the market trend trends to identify some of the factors affecting the economy and develop opportunities that would enable reduction of such existing gaps. Initially, the entrepreneurs identified the opportunities through spotting the market trends to respond to the changers affecting societal performance. Moreover, it involves identification of the niche through noticing the important factors that missing within the market. Entrepreneurs might opt to improve the prevailing conditions or develop new mechanisms or opportunities that would guarantee the solution of the existing problem. The major challenge of most entrepreneurs is few legal frameworks that prevent copying other people’s entrepreneurial idea. Copy the ideas from other countries is another method used by the entrepreneurs to identify the opportunities (Basu, Casson, Wadeson, & Yeung, 2008). Travelling to various localities with different cultures enable the entrepreneurs to pick the ideas and adjust the concept the fit within their market niches. For example, Howard Shultz from Starbucks copied the coffee bar culture from the Italians and adopted it for the United States. Scientific approach is another method used in identifying the opportunity as most entrepreneurs invest their time investing new products. Although the method might take a long duration before production of a product or idea, it does benefit from the short-term niche market before coping by others. An entrepreneur should be in a position to identify the market gaps and turn them into opportunities. Businesses opportunities are available in every place; however, before deciding to fill the identified gap, it is significant to consider the skills required, financial availability, and the market structure from which the product or service will operate. All successful entrepreneurs share one thing in common: to solve societal specific problem (Brown & Thornton, 2014). When they identify the gap within the market, they aim to develop business empires that aim to fulfil them. The current sources of business ideas are the search engines and social media. On the search engines, while searching for particular information but no avail, people often settle on three options including settling on something closer, giving up, and focusing on achieving it personally. Entrepreneurs often believe in solving problems (Congregado, 2008). As a result, most of them solve often opt to be the first solvers of specific problems especially the ones uncovered within the search engines. Such information that is missing might be the great opportunity of starting a business. Social media platforms also offer several entrepreneurial opportunities. Most people within the social media like airing their grievances and in some cases, the updates people put on the media are mundane. Clearly focusing on such updates it might be easy to identify emerging patterns, which, could be the baseline for identifying the required business opportunity. References Audretsch, D. B., Falck, O., & Heblich, S. (2009). Innovation and entrepreneurship. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Basu, A., Casson, M., Wadeson, N., & Yeung, B. (2008). Theories of Entrepreneurship: Historical Development and Critical Assessment. The Oxford Handbook of Entrepreneurship, 17(5), 101-151. Binder, M., & Coad, A. (2010). Life satisfaction and self-employment: A matching approach. Jena: Max-Planck-Inst. für Ökonomik. Blokker, P., & Dallago, B. (2008). Youth entrepreneurship and local development in Central and Eastern Europe. Aldershot, England: Ashgate. Brown, C., & Thornton, M. (2014). How Entrepreneurship Theory Created Economics. Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, 16(4), 125-147. Cantillon, R., & Van B. (2015). Richard Cantillon's Essay on the Nature of Trade in General: A Variorum Edition. Florence: Taylor and Francis. Casson, M., & Buckley, P. J. (2010). Entrepreneurship: Theory, networks, history. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Casson, S., & Adamson, R. (2003). Riding the outlaw trail. Bridgnorth: TravellersEye. Chaston, I. (2009). Entrepreneurial management in small firms. Los Angeles: SAGE. Congregado, E. (2008). Measuring entrepreneurship: Building a statistical system. New York: Springer. Read More