What Motivates an Entrepreneur - Case Study Example

?Entrepreneurship: Interview Analysis Introduction Entrepreneurship is a very broad and relevant term in today’s business environment. The term entrepreneurship can be simply defined as an individual’s thoughtful implementation of talent so as to expand the available resources and thereby obtain social success individually or generally. In order to understand the term entrepreneurship, knowing who an entrepreneur is important. To define, “an entrepreneur is someone who specializes in taking judgemental decisions about the coordination of scarce resources” (Casson 2003, p.20). Referring to this, entrepreneurship can be described as the process of action an entrepreneur performs to develop his venture. James Caan and Steve Jobs are some of the well known entrepreneurs of the world. This paper is about interviewing a real business owner (whom I thought to be an entrepreneur) and identifying his/her good and bad business practices. The paper will suggest whether the chosen individual is a true entrepreneur or just a business owner who is not in fact very entrepreneurial. In this paper, Mr. Vasyl Fenin, a medium business owner from Ukraine is interviewed to obtain a clear view of various factors relating to entrepreneurship. Analysis Fenin is operating a medium-sized medical business in different cities of Ukraine. A rediff business article (n.d.) says that the major factors motivating an entrepreneur to start a new venture include desire for autonomy, aspiration for creating something new, achievement of financial independence, and accomplishment of personal goals. It is observed that Fenin had not been motivated by any of these factors before he started his business, for he says, “I just gave it a try”. Once he realized that this business is a good source of income, he planned to expand his operations. Hence, Fenin’s act does not represent the entrepreneurial characteristics identified by some scholars. According to some, entrepreneurs will have high level of determination and commitment and they will be action oriented as well as result oriented (Kumar et al 2008, p.2). In other words, an entrepreneur should have clear objectives. From the responses documented, it is obvious that Fenin had no specific business plan at the start up time. He admits that he did not even know what a business plan actually is at the time of the business start up. Eventually, Fenin realized the importance of a business plan and today he prepares a specific business plan for each year. However, it is identified that Fenin had better communication skills and hardworking mentality. He takes huge efforts to grow his business. In addition, better communication and people management skills assisted him to develop his business. To illustrate, he says that he had to work with people having different behavioural traits. Despite this, he managed to work with them effectively. Entrepreneurship theories particularly emphasise the significance of communication ability. An effective communication indicates that both the sender and the receiver understand what the other is trying to express exactly. Theories also reflect that an entrepreneur who is able to communicate with employees, suppliers, and customers effectively is likely to succeed in his/her venture. Human management ability is another essential characteristic of an entrepreneur. In order to be a potential human resource manager, one has to acquire skills like good personal relations, emotional stability, and tactfulness (Sharma & Parasher, 2010, p.4). It is the duty of a human resource manager to distribute various duties and responsibilities among employees effectively. Fenin tells that he needed the skill to control his people and to allocate jobs for his different employees. Currently, Fenin’s business maintains a financial department and marketing department and he employs a deputy director, three managers, and a secretary. He also indicates that there is no specific management team. Hence, it is obvious that Fenin directly manages his human capital and assists his followers to do their job right way. Technical knowledge is another quality of an entrepreneur (Sharma & Parasher, 2010, p. 5). The entrepreneur would struggle to understand various aspects of the business if he does not have a reasonable level of technical knowledge (ibid). From the case analyzed, it seems that Fenin lacks adequate medical education. He says frustratingly that his business would have reached more heights if he had acquired good medial education. Despite this weakness, Fenin has high level of self-confidence. From the view point of Fenin, it is essential to “believe in your idea and trust yourself”. Undoubtedly, this high level self-confidence greatly aided Fenin to spread his business across different cities of Ukraine even though he is poor in English and medical knowledge. In the opinion of Viramgami (2007, p. 23), an entrepreneur must be a moderate risk bearer. The author says that successful entrepreneurs will be willing to accept a moderate level of risk. At the same time, it must be noted that taking excessive risk or avoiding risk may put the entrepreneur into troubles. More precisely, an entrepreneur has to be capable of understanding and managing risk elements (ibid). Referring to the interview with Fenin, the risk taking attitude assisted him to reach his goals. Even though he does not like to take risks, he says that sometimes it may not be possible to hit targets without taking risk. It is identified that Fenin makes regular checks for business and competitors and therefore it is clear that he is not gambling in his business. In sum, he is a moderate risk bearer. All successful entrepreneurs are opportunity explorers; and entrepreneur identifies and seizes opportunities which other do not see “and convert them into realistic achievable goals” (Kumar et al 2008). In this regard, Fenin does not effectively identify and seize opportunities. To illustrate, even though the company has a website and catalogues of product lines, it does not really utilize the infinite scope of social media advertising. The company still relies only on catalogues to introduce its new products to the niche market. In addition, the firm is over-dependent on self-advertising because Fenin believes that customer communication through representatives is enough to achieve sales. Admittedly, direct customer communication is better in medical field because it is difficult to convey the features of medical products to end users through traditional advertisement techniques like TV ads. However, today social media like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter can play a significant role in introducing new products and promoting existing product categories. Today more and more customers like to purchase online and hence companies are shifting more towards online marketing. It seems that Fenin has failed to identify the infinite opportunities provided by social medial websites like Facebook. Perhaps, it may be due to his lack of technical knowledge or overconfidence in the current business model. At the same time, he tries to expand his business by particularly concentrating on the medial business. He also plans to enter pharmacy business sector. While compared to some great contemporary entrepreneurs, it is clear that Fenin is less innovative in developing his business. Long term involvement will be a notable characteristic of a good entrepreneur; and an entrepreneur must plan the project by focusing on a time horizon of 5-7 years (Sharma & Parasher, 2010, p. 5). He emphatically says that “no-ninety day wonders are allowed” (ibid). Evidently, the business activities of Fenin were against the ideas proposed by Sharma. Fenin reveals that he was a price taker at the beginning and did not even try to identify and assess the competition. However, once the competition became challenging, he sought new ways to identify his competitors as early as possible and to develop action plans to survive the competition. From the responses collected, it is evident that Fenin lacks the skill of foresight. He let all the events to happen as it comes. Hence, it can be claimed that Fenin does not have a basic idea about entrepreneurship. A major quality of an entrepreneur that Fenin possesses is that he never regrets about the past. In addition, he constantly tries to develop skills that are necessary to expand his business. He expresses his strong desire to study more and learn more languages. Conclusion From the above discussion, it is clear that Fenin is just a medium-sized business owner but not an entrepreneur. He just started his business venture to experiment his luck. Once he identified that the medical business is a good source of income, he expanded his business gradually. Fenin does not have clear objectives and just tries to take advantages of the current market environment. In addition, he is not so intelligent in opportunity exploration, which is one of the fundamental qualities of an entrepreneur. For instance, he is yet to identify the significance of social media in product promotion and business expansion in a cost effective way. However, Fenin has good communication skill, people management skill, hard working mentality, strong commitment, and risk taking attitude. In short, it is not entrepreneurial skills that assisted Fenin to be successful but his hard working mentality, risk taking attitude, and a fair financial background. References Casson, M. (2003) The Entrepreneur. Edward Elgar Publishing. Kumar, A. Et al. (2008) Entrepreneurship Development. New Age International. New Delhi. rediff business. ‘What motivates an entrepreneur?’ [online] available at [accessed 14 Feb 2013] Sharma, K. P & Parashar, P. (2010) Entrepreneurship. FK Publications. [online] available at google books. [accessed 14 Feb 2013]. Viramgami, H. S. (2007) Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship. APH Publishing. Read More