Entrepreneurship Capital and the Firm - Shannon Bennett - Essay Example

Entrepreneurship Capital and the Firm Table of Contents Entrepreneurship 3 Interview with Shannon Bennett 4 Analysis with the help of relevant academic sources 8 Reference List 10 Entrepreneurship According to Schumpeter (1934 cited in Acs and Audretsch, 2010) entrepreneurs takes the responsibility for initiating changes and generating new opportunities. These opportunities help the economy to develop and grow in the long run as with the rise in new business higher revenue is generated. Thus, entrepreneurs help in generating profit not only for them but for the economy. However, according to Peter Drucker (1985 cited in Cohen, Eimicke and Heikkila, 2013; Bhaskaran, 2006) innovation is defined as a specific tool for the entrepreneurs through which they can exploit every opportunity pertaining to different business or services. It is presented in form of discipline that can be learned and practiced (Roffe, 1999). The entrepreneurs have the urge to search for capable source of innovation along with the changes and the symptoms, which indicates scope for successful innovative strategies. However, the entrepreneurs need to understand the policies and principles of entrepreneurship and apply it efficiently so that it can become successful (Cohen, Eimicke and Heikkila, 2013; Gurteen, 1998). There are many entrepreneurs around the world who have encountered success in initiating their innovative business. The entrepreneurs start their new venture on the hope that their business will become large in future by fostering innovation and continued operation. The small and medium sized enterprise (SME) is regarded as the lifeblood of every economy as it boosts productivity, create prosperity and employment. It also revitalizes the communities by providing new opportunities such as varieties of products and services. The main backbone of the large firms is SMEs, which helps the former in assembling raw materials and other operational functions. Without these SMEs the large companies cannot survive in the long run. The SMEs are driven by innovation, which increases the productivity of the economy and also helps in generating employment. One of the successful entrepreneurs of SME in Australia is Shannon Bennett, the proud owner of Vue de Monde, fine dining restaurant situated in Melbourne. Interview with Shannon Bennett It was my great pleasure to interview the well known chef and founder of Vue de Monde, Shannon Bennett. The reason for choosing Mr. Bennett lies in the fact that he is one of the best innovators in fine dining business (Vue de Monde, 2014b). It is quite inspiring to interview such a spontaneous entrepreneur who have brought variation in the way of serving people in Melbourne and introduced a new French style restaurant. He has always encouraged innovation in the course of business and has achieved a number of awards because of his creativity in fine dining business (Talking Heads, 2008). I had a short interview with Shannon Bennett as he had a number of engagements with different associations. The interview was short but I collected a lot of information about the head chef of the Vue de Monde. He is a man full of positive energy. He has a positive attitude towards undertaking risk, which encouraged him to take abrupt decision regarding the relocation of the restaurant to various place. He is never afraid of undertaking extreme risk by introducing some innovative idea in his business; rather he enjoys confronting uncertainty. I am inspired by his positive thinking attitude and feel that he is not only a successful entrepreneur but also a great chef. I got to know about his childhood, family and his dreams, which have triggered him to start the restaurant in Melbourne. Shannon Bennett was born in Westmeadows, Victoria in 1975. He had done his schooling from Peneleigh Essendon Grammer School (Four Magazine, n.d.). Since childhood, he and his friend-cum-classmate, Curtis Stone had passion for cooking. He inherited the hard working nature from his father and mother. In his family, the only good chef was his Nanny (dad’s mother), who loved to cook food for him and Bennett used to spend a lot of time with her in the kitchen. As a child, he got the opportunity to witness the real cooking experience in sophisticated world of restaurants in his uncle, Tom’s restaurant. In those days, he used to cook new food items, which were also liked by the customers of his uncle’s restaurant. Slowly, he gathered confidence of becoming a good chef in future. His desire for becoming a chef became stronger as time passed and he devoted his life to serve people with a number of innovative food items (Talking Heads, 2008). His first job was with the McDonald, where he learnt work ethics and learnt about finance. However, he was not satisfied with the job as he disliked the saying, “money does not buying you happiness” (Talking Heads, 2008). Soon he started to look for jobs and even gave job application to few hotels in Melbourne. At last, he started his actual career at the age of 15 years when he joined Grand Hyatt, Melbourne as a trainee under his trainer Roger Lienherd. After completing the apprenticeship program in Hyatt he moved to Europe and worked in the kitchens of great chefs such as John Burton-Race, Albert Roux, Alian Ducasse and Marco Pierre White (Vue de Monde, 2014a). He returned to Melbourne in 2000 to start his own restaurant. Inspired by the renowned chefs such as Dugléré, Carême and Escoffier’s classic methods of dinning and ingredients, he established his first French style restaurant, Vue de Monde, in Carlton (Talking Heads, 2008; StarChefs, 2014). He introduced his innovative ideas for decorating the new restaurant and did not follow the old traditional dinning pattern that is prevalent in Melbourne. This activity revealed one of his excellent characteristics; he is ready to take up the risk of opening a new style of dinning in Melbourne. This indicated that he is very keen to encounter any uncertainty related to introduction of the new style of dinning in Melbourne; as the population is happy with the traditional way of dinning. Bennett through the interview revealed that he is not only a creative person but is also passionate about his new ideas. He is always eager to try something new, which have triggered him to prepare a number of delicious dishes. He also concentres on presentation of food items as it is significant for fine dining experience. His passion for starting a new restaurant initiated from his childhood, when he realised his interest in cooking and dinning. His desire was triggered when he used to work in his uncle’s restaurant, where he experienced the real sophisticated dining experience in Melbourne. His craze for cooking reached a new height when he joined Hyatt at the age of 15 years and understood the process of work in renowned restaurants (Talking Heads, 2008). He implemented the same strategies in his new restaurants, which he learned from his trainers and also followed the same footsteps of renowned chefs. However, he brought new ideas and innovation in his operation in Vue de Monde. First and foremost innovation is related to the idea of open kitchen (Talking Heads, 2008; StarChefs, 2014). During his interview, I came to know that as a teenager he have defeated top chefs in Australia in open competition. He was named as the enfant terrible in haute cuisines of Australia. He had that added sense of mixing extra element to the dishes, which he serves to the customer. He had given tough competition to the chefs in Europe too, when he used to work in kitchens of several renowned master chefs (StarChefs, 2014). Bennett after returning from Europe opened Vue de Monde in Melbourne, which was situated on a quirky terrace. He was determined to bring something new to Melbourne population and change their taste regarding food and dining habits and introduced French cookery. When he returned from Europe, James Oliver had acquired a good position as a master and the concept of food was relevant to everyone. At that time people in Melbourne did not know how to prepare sauce in a proper manner; and this encouraged him to bring the real taste of food to the population by opening a new restaurant. Though the restaurant was settled at a corner of Drummon and Faraday Street, where he used to park his car and sleep at night as there was no body in the restaurant. During the interview session, he expressed sense of pride at the time of explaining his first experience as the owner of a restaurant. The restaurant had received good reviews during its opening year, which was very important for its success and most significantly to gain momentum for continue the operation with same effort. He achieved the chef’s hat in The Age Good Food Guide. Following the initial success of the restaurant, Bennett brought variations in the types of food and introduced new ingredients. He likes French food as the cooking procedure as well as the recipes are quite challenging (Talking Heads, 2008; StarChefs, 2014). In 2003, he was named as the Best New Talent by the Australian Gourmet Traveller. Following the success of the restaurant, Bennett decided to relocate the restaurant to historic Normanby Chambers, Melbourne, which was opulent but still a quirky one. He was quite positive about his activities regarding the frequent relocation of the restaurant. During the interview session he himself emphasised on the fact that people may call him impatient and mad for shifting so often but he has his reasons to do so. He never wanted the customers to queue in front of the restaurant and go back home after waiting for a long time. He relocated very often to get the appropriate space for his restaurant and serve every customer efficiently. He wants to make his customer more comfortable than in their home and thus he promised to serve them the best hospitality in the city (Talking Heads, 2008; StarChefs, 2014). I noticed that he was quite determined regarding the success of French style dining in Melbourne as he stated that the population likes to experience something new, which is related to food as the individuals do not make any effort to cook good food at home. Thus, Vue de Monde was a source of excellent food and dining experience. He possessed all the good qualities of an excellent chef such as creativity, passionate and has the ability to lead a team. He led a team of 65 staffs and chefs in the restaurant. Under his supervision, the restaurant offers new recipes to the customers maintaining perfection in preparation and quality (Vue de Monde, 2014a; StarChefs, 2014). He is a quick decision maker as he had relocated his restaurant for the third time in the 55th floor of Rialto building in Melbourne. By taking the restaurant at that height he challenged the general notion of the people that dining cannot happen at great heights (Vue de Monde, 2014a; Vue de Monde, 2014b; StarChefs, 2014). The new environment of the restaurant was sophisticated and the interior reflected the history of Australia during its glory days of gold rush. The space provided enough space for accommodating about 65 customers at a time along with 85 staffs to serve them. This decision of shifting to the great height was risky for the entrepreneur because of the notion but he was successful in his plan. The population in Melbourne liked the ambience and concept of dinning at heights. The neon art pieces of Joseph Kosuth add elegance to the environment and make the ambience more sophisticated. The whole decoration is supervised by the owner and he had made it in accordance with the taste and preference of the population in Melbourne (Talking Heads, 2008; StarChefs, 2014). Analysis with the help of relevant academic sources From the interview, I have learnt that entrepreneurs should be bold enough to take risk in their life and accomplish their goal. Hence, it is very important for the them to take appropriate decisions regarding establishment of new business in any market (Neely and Hii, 1998; Amabile, 1996). Shannon Bennett had undertaken the risk of establishing something new in the Melbourne market that is related to the fine dining experience in his restaurant, Vue de Monde. Despite the fact that the population in Melbourne prefer traditional style of dining he brought in a new trend and he was successful in doing so. According to Peter Drucker innovation is a specific tool and the same is used by Shannon Bennett to bring revolution in fine dining business in Melbourne. He exploited the opportunity of targeting a market, where the people are fond of new recipes but could not prepare themselves because of the busy work life. Dining in restaurants has become popular in the contemporary world as people are busy with their work life and do not get time and effort to cook food at home. Hence, the restaurants have gained more customers and have targeted their needs and requirements. Shannon has targeted his customers by providing a new genre of dining. Thus, being an innovator he does not have much tolerance to do his routine works rather he is interested in delivering new services and recipes to the customers. He has the tendency of approaching a particular work from an unusual angle. For example, everyone thinks that a kitchen in restaurant should be build outside the sitting area but he has gone beyond this notion and has structured the kitchen of Vue de Monde in open before the customers; so that they can have a look at process of preparing the food items. According to Bennett, it builds a sense of transparency before the customer as they know how the food is prepared. Reference List Acs, Z. and Audretsch, D., 2010. Handbook of entrepreneurship research: an interdisciplinary survey and introduction. New York: Springer Science & Business Media. Amabile, T. M., 1996. Creativity and innovation in organizations. Boston: Harvard Business School. Bhaskaran, S., 2006. Incremental Innovation and Business Performance: Small and Medium‐Size Food Enterprises in a Concentrated Industry Environment. Journal of Small Business Management, 44(1), pp. 64-80. Cohen, S., Eimicke, S. and Heikkila, T., 2013. The effective public manager: Achieving success in government organizations. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. Four Magazine, no date. Shannon Bennett. [online] Available at: < http://www.four-magazine.com/articles/20/shannon-bennett > [Accessed 6 November 2014]. Gurteen, D., 1998. Knowledge, creativity and innovation. Journal of knowledge Management, 2(1), pp. 5-13. Neely, A. and Hii, J., 1998. Innovation and business performance: a literature review. The Judge Institute of Management Studies, University of Cambridge, pp. 0-65. Roffe, I., 1999. Innovation and creativity in organisations: a review of the implications for training and development. Journal of European Industrial Training, 23(4/5), pp. 224-241. StarChefs, 2014. Chef Shannon Bennett of Vue de monde – Biography. [online] Available at: < http://www.starchefs.com/cook/chefs/bio/shannon-bennett > [Accessed 6 November 2014]. Talking Heads, 2008. Transcript. [online] Available at: < http://www.abc.net.au/tv/talkingheads/txt/s2213528.htm > [Accessed 6 November 2014]. Vue de Monde, 2014a. Biography- Shannon Bennett. [online] Available at: < http://www.vuedemonde.com.au/shannon_bennett_biography#2 > [Accessed 6 November 2014]. Vue de Monde, 2014b. Overview- Vue de Monde. [online] Available at: < http://www.vuedemonde.com.au/vue_de_monde_overview > [Accessed 6 November 2014]. Read More