The Attention on Items or Ideas - Research Proposal Example

page BUSINESS PORTFOLIO number: Table of Contents page i Table of Contents ii SECTION ONE 1 Self-reflection at the start and at the end of the module 1 The FACETS and GETS test outcome 2 Reflection from seminar evidence 2 Reflection from the Social website 2 SECTION TWO 3 Introduction 3 Theoretical background 3 Risks related to PESTEL analysis 4 Economic modelling and other theories 5 Conclusion 8 SECTION THREE 8 Influence of the guest speakers and the control strategies 8 Creation of new business and the exit strategies 10 Conclusion 11 References 12 SECTION ONE The owner of such an idea has a bigger role in the business because most entrepreneur ides depends on the framework of the person who came up that idea, so that in case the person fails to take control, the venture may subside. Therefore, it is important for the owner to take control, monitor the enterprise from time to time, and introduce changes that would only enable the venture to remains on its feet. In many cases, a social entrepreneur will depend entirely on the persons who conceptualised the idea so that in case that person fails to take charge of the situation by coming up with viable strategies, the venture may not stand the test of time. Self-reflection at the start and at the end of the module The module offered very important insights related to finding a viable business idea before laying the ground for the implementation. Before the module, i could not relate the problem around our surrounding as a potential business concept. One would think that productive business ideas are big concepts, however, the module emphasised on the need to assess the locality for opportunities. Therefore, the module opened the mind to think locally and act globally. The FACETS and GETS test outcome The five factors of mindfulness referred to as facets involves non-reaction to inner experiences, none judgement of inner experiences, observation, description, and awareness. From the test on FACETS and GETTS, the experience has enabled me to be more open to experiences. These show that I have improved the imaginative, cognitive, and creative dimension required for successful entrepreneurship. It is alluded that if one has open mind, such individuals are likely to make a person develop strategies and even act as educator. In fact, these virtues have played a critical role in starting the social entrepreneurship. Reflection from seminar evidence From the onset, the social entrepreneur is based on innovative idea that not only resolves some social issues but also generates income from the activities, therefore, both aspects must be considered with keen interest. The participant of the seminar provided useful insights on entrepreneurship. The importance of coming up with a plan and support from friends and relevant people with the required entrepreneurial skills and the training was highlighted as the most important receipt for beginning any entrepreneurial venture. Reflection from the Social website Most organisations would lose focus by diverting the attention on items or ideas that may distract the owner. For instance, Stuart, (2000) asserts that when running a social business idea, it is more likely that the owner may lose focus by concentrating on daily activities instead of looking at the bigger picture of the business. As the owner or a manager of a social business with entrepreneurial spirit, it is important to command the organisation destiny through the development of strategies that would help the business navigate through the rigours of the dynamic social challenges and other business uncertainties. SECTION TWO Introduction A business with social orientation requires a solid grasp of issues and concerns that may affect effective implementation of the idea. The idea of helping women by empowering them to learn skills that enable them to acquire employability skills is not different because the challenges permeates across all the social organizations with entrepreneurial origin. According to Onuoha (2007, pp.20-32), “Entrepreneurship is the practice of starting new organizations or revitalizing mature organizations, particularly new businesses generally in response to identified opportunities.” In order to be successful, an entrepreneur should have the right aptitudes and characters to drive them to the desired success. As an entrepreneur it is important the one develops very clear cognitive abilities to identify a market niche and exploiting it to completion (Friday and Utim, 2013). Theoretical background Becker (1993) observed that enterprise would consider two dimensions; these are the input and the outcomes. As far as input is concerned, the thinking style behind the business idea is to enable the most vulnerable people in the community o acquire employability skills and use that to gain some income for their household. Empowering the vulnerable will give them power and prevent men from abusing the group. Although the idea is innovative because it uses the local available institutions to help the local women, it also transforms the surrounding by ensuring there is clean environment and that it creates some job opportunities for women who can take jobs like babysitting, nannies, cashiers, and salesclerks. Risks related to PESTEL analysis There are some factors that one cannot anticipate or plan for while coming up with an innovative idea. For instance, the innovative idea is likely to experience problems related to politics, economic, and the environmental challenges, the legal and social hindrances as well as the technological realities. Any venture is prone to these challenges irrespective of the place or the type of business, as long as the venture aims at making some profits. The political interference is one challenge that is common in environments that do not nurture innovative ideas. One would realize that most politicians have interest in the investment in almost all the major forms of the economy. As such, they would not hesitate to bring down any venture that may act as threat to their business. For instance, this venture aims to discourage the use of plastic bags in carrying out shopping because the materials are a threat to the environment. However, if the manufacturing plants for the plastic materials are associated in any way with politicians, the venture is likely to experience challenges owing to the interest from the political sphere (Bula, 2012; Buttner, 2001). The economic challenge relate to the generation of revenue to sustain the business during its nascent stages. While it is possible to attract and get some stakeholders and investors who may play a significant role in funding the venture, many stakeholders may not be in a position to visualize the prospects associated with the business and the potential that it has in future. Although the venture may not experience environmental, social, and legal constraints, it has the main challenge in the utilization of technology (Arthur, 1959). Technology is the main tenet of this innovation because the materials collected from the environment will need collection and recycling into usable products like making of plastic toys, which makes it challenging to secure technical items to achieve the process. Training of women and funding for such materials require hefty budgets (Arthur, 1959; Arnold, 2003). Besides, it is important to having contingency funding for the business to ensure viability and sustainability. These translate into a major challenge for the realization of the business objective. Economic modelling and other theories The economic theory developed by Knightian, who viewed entrepreneurs as risk takers (Kirzner, 1979), described the idea by asserting that individuals are heterogeneous when considered from a risk aversion perspective. Although most studies assert that individuals possess similar abilities, the differences occur in how they perceive risks associated to business. When an individual becomes optimistic, such persons are likely to be entrepreneurs (Knight and Cavusgil, 1996). However, education play a significant role in shaping entrepreneurial ideas and skills, so that acquisition of education increases an individual’s perception on risks not as a hindrance to trying new ideas but as the channel of learning through when aiming to attain a certain goal (Wilken, 1979). It is from this realisation that the social venture will invest in training the women and empower them to use their skills in generating income. Entrepreneurship is an initiative of a social enterprise. Such organisations use income that has been earned in pursuing a triple or a double bottom line, either together or in isolation. According to Hamid and Wright, (2003), an entrepreneurship should possess close association to the disequilibria situation. For that reason, the entrepreneur must have strategies of dealing with such situations. Organisations that lack strategies are likely to experience challenges in implementing their framework. Stevenson and Jarillo (1990) observe that an entrepreneur must have the ability of effective coordination of the reallocation owing to agents that acts sub-optimally in reallocating the resources in disequilibrium. The five managers of the social enterprise will allocate the available resource across the areas earmarked for revenue generation and evaluate the return. Schultz (1975) asserts that such situations call for making important decisions when allocating the resources. The allocation may involve investing in experiments or in human capacity, even homemakers and students may become entrepreneurs if they decide to reallocate their time for their specified chores. However, the most effective way of augmenting entrepreneurship in by the investments, so that one can analyse the supply and demand chain to identify entrepreneurs using this perspective (Kirzner, 1997). Although the venture hopes to impart skills in women to enable them acquire jobs, they will be trained to make savings and come up with their businesses in future either as a group or as individuals. The business will start as a way of giving back to the society because of the need to empower the most vulnerable group in the society to acquire skills and use that to generate some income. According to Schumpter (1999), who came up with a concept of equilibrium destruction, asserts that entrepreneurs are not imitations but rather innovative strategies that stands out from the existing ventures. The researcher further states that entrepreneurship may be considered as a way of climbing the social and economic ladder but the economic rewards should not be the main tenet of the invention. Schumpter (1999) asserts that entrepreneurs should put a lot of emphasis on the profit, because most entrepreneurship is based on innovations that seek to serve the society. From this perspective, the economy is removed from the static equilibrium. However, Marz (1991), view the entire process in a different perspective from the outlook of the Schumpter. For instance, Marz (1991) asserts that Schumpter should have acknowledge that the entire process leas to the accumulation, which leads to the social prestige and power (Berger and Udell, 2003). The entrepreneur takes the shielding effect by ensuring that all the stakeholders are kept away from the uncertainties associated to the venture. According to Knight (1971), the entrepreneur must assume the three items, that is, profits, uncertainties, and the risks. Besides, Knight (1971), made a clear distinction between the uncertainties and risks associated with entrepreneurship. The risks were described as issues that entrepreneurs could insure unlike the uncertainties, which cannot be insured because they relate to isolated events like changes in the consumer taste for the product, which may affect the profits. Therefore, according to Knight (1971), the entrepreneurs must ensure they shield the stakeholders from the uncertainties by assuming the uncertainties. Besides, Knight asserts that the entrepreneur owns a venture that came because of entrepreneurship. Therefore, they have the duty of claiming profits. Maximization of profit requires that the entrepreneurs initiate innovations and solutions that would change the organization into realizing more turnovers. They must also be in a position to adapting to the dynamic and volatile trends occasioned by the changing trends in the market segment (Murray and MacMillan, 1988). Besides, the entrepreneurs must also take and assume the repercussion that comes from the uncertainties. Many entrepreneurs view Knight’s theory as a purified form of Cantillon theory because they both played a central role in unraveling the concept of uncertainties and risks (Brockhaus, 1980). The social enterprise aims to diversify the skills to minimize uncertainties and increase the employability of the women across several areas of economy like babysitting, nannies, cashiers, sales clerks, and recycling of environmental wastes. Conclusion The entrepreneurship theories describe entrepreneurs as individuals who invent the ideals that seek to solve a social problem. The process of translating the idea into a production stage is most important characteristic of entrepreneurship because it involves taking risks and assuming uncertainties. Although, most ventures may not translate into profits, the virtues of trying and taking the risk is a fundamental aspect too because describe the most important virtue of entrepreneurs. These attributes give entrepreneurs social power and the prestige because accumulation of profits helps in the journey of going up the ladder. SECTION THREE Influence of the guest speakers and the control strategies The contribution by Morgan asserts that a larger proportion of entrepreneurship is inborn as opposed to Marz, who observed that entrepreneurs exist in all facets of social life. Morgan notes that entrepreneurs have inherent characteristics with about 40% of their genetic makeup bearing the entrepreneurship traits. What this means is that some individuals have higher likelihood of taking risks as opposed to others. Such individuals are likely to grasp opportunities at first sight as opposed to the remaining group that lacks the genetic composition. Besides, Morgan attributes the virtue of entrepreneurship to having access to a given form of information, having the extensive work experience across several jobs and the possibility of living in different countries. Morgan believes that entrepreneur skills can also be learned, which means that everyone has the potential of becoming an entrepreneur if they have the passion of gaining the skills through training. These perspectives are similar to previous studies that showed that individuals with high optimisms have a high chance of becoming entrepreneurs as postulated by Meza and Southey (1996). Morgan asserts that the passion and the persistence to entrepreneurship is the main force that would enable those that lack the inherent traits to succeed in the entrepreneurial venture. Meza and Southey (1996) also believe that getting the right information through education and training plays a significant role in shaping entrepreneurial ideas and skills (Schumpeter, 1983). The common agreement between the contributors and the literature is the fact that entrepreneurship requires technical and financial support (Zahra, et al., 1999; Kuemmerle, 2002). The presence of a financial gap leads to an increased cost of capital, which decreases the access to the capital market. Morgan also echoes these values as the most important value to supporting any entrepreneurial venture. The main challenge is getting appropriate individuals to help the entrepreneur realise the production process. Most entrepreneurs would avoid recruiting a financial director, which limits the skills of managing the finances, yet this consideration is important to realising success (Miller and LeBreton-Miller, 2005). However, the contributors and previous literatures agree that most of the challenges associated with financials originate from poor planning of the finances (Kuemmerle, 2002). Entrepreneurship involves taking risk and identifying ventures that could generate revenues. Besides, entrepreneurs must be in a position of identifying the factors that would translate into success. Therefore, prior to making investing, the entrepreneurs must assess the returns from the investment to ensure the prospect translates into good returns. The investors would assess whether the entrepreneurship has the prospect of increasing the value of equity. Besides, investors would also be interested in understanding the exit strategy. Therefore, the entrepreneurs must map out the risks. Identification of risks and laying down strategies would build confidence to the investors knowing that the risks are acceptable. Achieving success would require the involvement of many people. Every person must play a role in the social enterprise. Having the right team in the organisation helps in reducing the risks and uncertainties associated with inexperience and lack of exposure to a business environment. Glenn Bowen described the social enterprise as business venture whose main objective involves generation of surplus that would be invested back into the community of the business. Such ventures do not concentrate on maximizing profits for its owners and the shareholders (Miner, 1990). Besides, Glenn Bowen asserts that such ventures have three main features. These include the legal form of social ownership, the adoption of commercial business models, and the ethical or the social and community purpose. Besides, Glenn Bowen reveals that social entrepreneurship have to target growing and developing through trading, creation of employment opportunities, social ownership and clearing social and environmental issues. Glenn Bowen also introduces another paradigm in form of co-operative principle. The concept revolves around seven items. The voluntary and open membership allows other parties who may have interest in joining the entrepreneurship as long as they have the drive and the passion of making substantial contribution. The second item is the democratic control that allows the players to exercise the democracy. Other tenets described by Glenn include the autonomy, training, concern for the community, and the economic participation. Creation of new business and the exit strategies The creation of business involves taking risks and masking the uncertainties associated with the venture to build confidence to the stakeholders (Brockhaus, 1980). A business that has the prospects solving the social issues is likely to have viable future. Although a new business may face uncertainties, which cannot be insured, the entrepreneur must be in a position to identifying risks that would be insured to ensure the organisation has the prospects for the future. The new business would need a team that would assist the person in charge to implement the idea. Although most entrepreneurs avoid recruiting a competent team, they normally have no choice of bringing on board the required persons as the business grows. Attending training and acquiring the right skills is an important consideration when coming up with a new business (Zahra, et al., 1999). Training helps the entrepreneurs identify risks associated with their venture. When individuals have a better understanding of the business environment they intend to make entry, it provides an opportunity to grasp the impending challenges. However, it is important to note that successful business are not those that start as big organisations, but a small venture that begins small and grows with time. Ventures that grow from small have the advantage of learning the challenges and the opportunities with the growth. Conclusion All ventures must have a clear pathway for exiting the activities when there are no prospects for getting the returns from the venture. Therefore, the entrepreneur must be in a position of identifying the most appropriate strategy because they have the leeway of masking most of the uncertainties and risks (Zahra, et al., 1999). 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