Individual Reflection on Entrepreneurship - Coursework Example

An Individual reflection on Entrepreneurship Name Institution Course Tutor Date Entrepreneurship is an area that involves the discovery, evaluation and exploitation of opportunities as and when they occur. It involves discovering new services, products, production processes, new markets and new strategies. As Cuervo, Ribeiro and Roig (2007) assert, entrepreneurial opportunities are available because different people have special ideas on how to turn resources from inputs into outputs or the relative value of resources within their reach. Therefore, we can conceptualize entrepreneurship as the discovery of opportunities that leads to creation of new economic activity through the establishment of a new organization. In this paper, I reflect on entrepreneurship including an assessment of where I as an entrepreneur. As a matter of fact, I am an entrepreneur even through I do not currently play a significant role in the economic development of my country at personal level. In other words, I have not yet started a new-venture but I have plans to start a new-venture not long from now. Why do I call myself an entrepreneur then? Fundamentally, I have the initiative, skill and motivation to start a business of my own and I am a person who always looks for greater achievements. Therefore, I am very optimistic that very soon I will be starting a new-venture so that I can also contribute to the economic development of my country like many other existing entrepreneurs. I am saying this because I have the potential to be an entrepreneur based on my personal experiences. For the better part of my life when I was growing up, I have had the opportunity to assist my parents in doing the family business which is still operational. Personally, I have to a large extent, played and continue to play a significant role to the functioning of the family business through the support I give, something that motivates me day by day. Therefore, I intend to use the experience I have acquired in working in the family business to start my own venture which I am sure it will be successful. As an entrepreneur, I am always focused in a way that I do not move away from the change I want to create in my life. I do not give up in life, in stead I constantly seek to improve the way of doing things. Besides, I am an opportunistic and therefore, when I see an opportunity, I often want to exploit it. I do not fear challenging everything and how to do things. I must say, at this point, that the module has really helped me and inspired me more to pursue my dream as an entrepreneur. In particular, I have learnt how to evaluate new situations in the environment and adjust them to my favor. Additionally, I have learnt how to organize, operate and assume business risk. I believe these are some of key requirements in business dealings and they will help me a lot as an entrepreneur. As I mentioned earlier, I intend to start a new-venture. I am confident that the experiences I have gained from the family business and the new insights I have acquired from the module will help me dearly. My knowledge in entrepreneurship has drastically improved and I am proud to say that I now have what it takes to start a new-venture. When I decide to open up a new-venture, I will ensure that I have in place a vision for my new-venture and a business idea. This would the first step to make after which I would need to raise enough capital to start the venture in the right location. To succeed, I think I should not give up and loose focus but to develop strong self-belief in whatever that I will decide to do. At this point, the Cantillon’s theory will support me a lot. As an entrepreneur, I would take on risk to start the new venture as this would help equilibrate demand and supply in the economy as explained by Bula (2012). Additionally, the Schumpeter’s theory of equilibrium destruction would be great use to me. As an innovator, I will be happy for serving my society with a new product and I will consider it to be a big achievement in my life. The issue of whether entrepreneurs are born or nurtured has attracted numerous views. Personally, I think entrepreneurs are nurtured. The context in which a person grows can influence an individual to become an entrepreneur. The way a person is brought up may encourage him or her to be innovative and develop entrepreneurial skills. For example, as an individual, I have been brought up in a business-oriented family and this has really influenced me to become an entrepreneur. However, I must also indicate that an entrepreneur is enriched with the inborn qualities which include willingness to take risks and adventurism as supported by Kanchana, Divya and Beegom (2013). Importantly, an entrepreneur should not fear to fail as this is an obstacle. Failure should be taken as a lesson and used as a motivator to pursue a goal even harder. Even when I start a new-venture, I may fail at the first time but I will not give up but keep on pursuing my dream. I understand that raising funds for my new-venture would be somehow a difficult task. However, I will sell my business idea and vision to potential investors in my region so that they can support me financially. Besides, I would request for financial support from the government and this would require that I present to them a strong business plan. My father has been a mentor to me and I have no doubt that he will give me some financial support. In fact, most of the funding will come for the members of my family. Despite the struggle by entrepreneurs to come up with new-ventures, I think they do not receive sufficient support as it would be expected. Most entrepreneurs do not access entrepreneurship education and technical assistance and support infrastructure. Additionally, regulatory environment does not support business to start up and grow, and inability to access capital hinders entrepreneurs from building businesses that are strong, productive and competitive. I think more need to be done to support entrepreneurs. Looking at the UK entrepreneurial scene, I can say that there are significant changes in the incidence of entrepreneurship. Although the level of self-employment is high due to financial liberalization, the proportion of people who are pursuing self-employment seems to reduce. Additionally, given the existence of capital constraints, potential and actual entrepreneurs are not able to start up new-ventures. Talking of social entrepreneurship, I think I am a social entrepreneur to some extent. I say this because I have some mind-set that characterize me as a social entrepreneur. Whatever I do, the social mission is central to it. I believe that wealth is a means to social change and not a measure of success. Although we do business to generate economic wealth, it is important that we focus on the creation of social wealth. In any case, social entrepreneurship activities can also enhance economic growth, reduce poverty and enhance social development, which are essential requirements of the business today. Even as new entrepreneurs like me would wish to start new-ventures, there are various challenges we encounter on our road to success. One of the biggest challenges is to develop the vision and business idea. Many new entrepreneurs find it difficult to trace the right business opportunity or develop an idea in a creative way and without this in place it may not be easy to take off. Another big challenge for new entrepreneurs is the issue of raising capital to start a new-venture. Ideally, it is only the entrepreneurs who know their business ideas entirely. Thus, they may find it very challenging to try and convince investors about what they do not know so that they can provide new entrepreneurs with financial support (Kanchana et al 2013). New entrepreneurs may have a good business idea but the fail to get the startup capital which is quite unfortunate. Still, finding the right location for the new-venture is a big challenge to new entrepreneurs. A good business location is characterized by good road network and other amenities, and rapidly growing population. Even if it is available, it could be very expensive for new entrepreneurs to start up a new-venture in such a location. As a female entrepreneur, it is good news that businesses owned by women currently contribute significantly to the global economy and in fact the number of women-owned businesses continues to grow across the world. As Niethammer (2013) explains, number of enterprises owned by the female is growing at a higher rate that the enterprises owned by the male, and there is no evidence that enterprises owned by the female collapse at a faster rate. This is very encouraging to me as a female entrepreneur. A survey conducted in Asia reveled that women play a leading role in home finances. In South Korea, Vietnam and Indonesia, women’s leadership is evident when making decisions about the education of their children because they have succeeded in business (Niethammer 2013). This tells us a lot about the potential of the female becoming great entrepreneurs worldwide. Given that the new –venture I intend to start up would be product-oriented, it will be important to test the new offering to the target market. Ideally, this would be a tasking exercise given that it would be a new product on the market and there exist various competitors. Nevertheless, this being a digital economy, I would use the digital platform such as Facebook and the internet to test the new offering. Additionally, the use of references would be crucial when introducing the new product to the market. Having said this, I think other entrepreneurs, especially the female, must not give up their dreams because of the challenges they encounter in starting up or even running their business. It is a war that they should continue to fight. I think most entrepreneurs give up when they fail the first time which is wrong. My perception is that failing is not the end of everything. We should keep trying until we make it as entrepreneurs. Conclusively, entrepreneurship plays a significant role to economic development of the country and therefore need to be encouraged. I strongly appreciate the fact that the module has helped me acquire more knowledge in entrepreneurship and together with the experiences I am better to pursue my desired business successfully. Although it will not be an easy task, I belief that the skills and the competences I have acquired will help me overcome the handles on my way to success. I do not fear to fail and I am confidence that failure will make me stronger and it will not in anyway be an obstacle to the achievement my dream. Reference List Bula, H.O., 2012. Evolution and Theories of Entrepreneurship: a critical review on the Kenyan Perspective. International Journal of Business and Commerce, 1(11), p.81. Cuervo, Á., Ribeiro, D. and Roig, S., 2007. Entrepreneurship: Concepts, Theory and Perspective. Introduction. In Entrepreneurship (pp. 1-20). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. Kanchana, R.S., Divya, J.V. and Beegom, A.A., 2013. Challenges faced by new entrepreneurs. International Journal of Current Research and Academic Review, 1(3), pp.71-78. Niethammer, C., 2013. Women, entrepreneurship and the opportunity to promote development and business. Global economy and development. Enterprising solutions: The role of the private sector in eradicating global poverty, p.47. Read More