Entrepreneurial Role in Creation and Growth of the mySmoothie - Essay Example

As far as entrepreneurship processes are concerned, my smoothie has adhered to three major and important concepts and theories of entrepreneurship. These are recognizing opportunities and generating ideas, decision making and planning, and marketing. Diagrammatically, the write-up shall be presented as below:

Firstly, Domenique and for that matter, my smoothie has in place entrepreneurial processes that ensure that the production and operations of the company meet the needs of consumers. According to the International Institute for Management Development, IMD (2007), mySmoothie was started out of the theory of recognizing opportunities and generating ideas in the sense that, Domenique Forsberg took advantage of the absence of winter in Sweden in 2004 to start a company that rightly matched the prevailing weather at the time.

The opportunity was the absence of winter and the idea generated was to start a fruit drink company that would produce chilled drinks to cool the thirst of consumers. This indeed worked perfectly and was a step in the right direction. Indeed, in entrepreneurship, the process of meeting the needs of consumers is paramount in choosing what to deal in. This is because consumers are becoming more and insightful of the need to purchase products that match their needs rather than those that match their wants. It is no wonder therefore that after just two year of operation, mySmoothie was reported to have made €1 million in 2006 (IMD, 2007, p.1).

Such operations of recognizing opportunities and generating ideas have continued to be one of the most adhered theories for mySmoothie in all its business processes. For instance the company has recognized the prevailing health concerns associated with the use of sugar, preservatives and other additive and come up with the idea of eliminating the use of these compounds from its products (BevNET, 2011).

The process of decision-making and planning at mySmoothie is also in conformity with entrepreneurial concepts and theory on leadership. Ashley (2010) opines that “leadership philosophy is a set of beliefs and principles that strongly influence how we perceive ourselves within an organization and those that we lead.” This explanation goes a long way to explain the importance of leadership in any given organization or establishment, of which mySmoothie is not excluded. According to Ashley (2010), one important component of leadership is decision making. In entrepreneurial theories, there are three major types of entrepreneurs as far as decision-making is concerned.

These are authoritarian or autocratic leaders, participative or democratic leaders, and delegative or free reign leadership (Clark, 2006). According to Clark (2006), “a good leader (entrepreneur) uses all three styles, depending on what forces are involved between the followers, the leader, and the situation.” Relating this assertion to mySmoothie, it will be right to say that the process of decision-making and planning is at its best in the organization. This is because, at mySmoothie, decision-making is decentralized as much as possible and covers all areas discussed. In a typical example, authoritarian decisions are taken on issues such as partnership, mergers, and acquisition. Democratic decisions are taken on the daily operations of the company such as recruitment and place whereby the views of all departmental heads are sampled and delegative decisions are taken on issues of daily activities in the company such as employee-customer discretions (IMD, 2007).

Finally, mySmoothie stands out tall as far as marketing procedures and processes are concerned. The strongest strategy that mySmoothie uses have to do with partnering with well-established firms and companies, whose names are well established as trademarks for the market. Typical examples of such markets are mentioned by the International Institute of Management Development (2007) as Lufthansa, Auchan, IKEA, Autogrill, Selecta. Indeed, partnership in marketing is an ideal strategy for maximizing profits. This argument is supported by Koduah, 2004 who holds the view that in such situations, the customers of the partnering company become the indirect customers of the new company. This means that mySmoothie’s marketing strategy is one that ensures that customers of her allies companies use the products of mySmoothie – a situation that has accounted for the rapid growth of the company.

To this end, it is reported that
Its revenues surpassed €1 million in 2006 with sales in the first half of 2007 indicating they could hit €10 million for the whole year – a 10-fold increase over the previous year – and projections indicated an annual growth rate of some 200% for the next three years.

The outcome of mySmoothie’s application of entrepreneurial concepts and theories
The application of theories and concepts of entrepreneurship that determine basic entrepreneurship processes and behavior can never be over-emphasized when talking about business growth and development. It is therefore admonished that various business ventures do not see such theories and concepts as merely ‘cosmetic’ writings that are only good for the classroom but rather see them as workable practices that can be put in place to ensure the growth and sustenance of their businesses just as mySmoothie has benefited from them.

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