The Condition of Facebook in 2011 - Case Study Example

FACEBOOK IN Question People have held various views and believe on entrepreneurship with others purporting that it involves magic, it is mysterious and yet others believe that the capacity of a person to excel in entrepreneurship must be genetically inherited. Nevertheless, while the arguments in support of the claims may be valid, there lacks scientific prove or any kind of justification to the authenticity of these positions hence the position by Peter Drucker that all such arguments about entrepreneurship are invalid and wrong. Accordingly, Drucker reasons that entrepreneurship is more of an art or habit that can always be learnt just as is the case with many other disciplines. While the topic may be argued in support of or otherwise contrary, this section of the paper intends to qualify the position of Drucker, who is celebrated to having contributed much on entrepreneurship and marketing, as would be evident from the case study on ‘Facebook in 2011’. The analysis of how ‘Facebook’ came into being leaves one amazed on how creativity would be merged with opportunity to bring about totally new creations which would not only be fascinating but that would be great business innovations (Horibe, 2003, p. 20). One would cite creativity as main instrument that facilitated development of the initial facebook website in 2004 as a digital directory for the students within Harvard University. Mark Zuckerberg just thought of way that would merge the school’s resources on a common directory platform online from the various pieces of online directories as were in use then. After the initial creation of a personal profile, one would always view other people’s profiles so long as they were digitally friends. As against such believes that people would hold that innovation is about accidental creations, the creation of facebook initially stemmed from the practical need to have such profiles aid in accessing individual profiles through a harmonized online platform as against visiting various platforms for such information that would be easily shared by ‘friends’. Besides, no magic or mystery as would be thought of was involved in spreading the awareness as soon, the idea reached many other institutions through deliberate efforts by subscribers to invite own friends. In fact, it was after the tremendous spread of the idea and the support by various other players that facebook became a company as the brain behind the innovation says the lack of operating funds had restrained the development of the idea into a company or trading venture as it turned to be. It was through this that Mark Zuckerberg deliberately went into Silicon Valley to establish on facebook’s business potential. By the end of 2004, facebook had taken the full shape and structure of a trading company as we have it today with a prelaunch of the website as well as instituting the right infrastructure to have it run as an online social platform. The point of consideration therefore would be on how mysterious was that process or how genetic factors would have caused such an innovation where different ideas are brought together to establish such a venture. High level of innovation and creativity would be sited as the main factor that led to development of facebook, right from a school based idea to evolve into becoming a great social platform as we have it today. In fact, it was not long after that the company became second in rank after MySpace on global ranking of online social platforms. The entrepreneurial spirit behind innovation of facebook has seen the company increasingly innovate and launch more products and services, which has increasingly contributed to its success in the subsequent years. For instance, the company has launched social bookmarking, virtual gifts, social ads, facebook chat as well as mini feed extensions among other innovations, which are sited as great creations in the 21st century. The conversion of these ideas from mere thoughts into practical ventures for business would therefore in best explain entrepreneurship in regard to facebook creations. This therefore supports to a great extent the position by Drucker that entrepreneurship is not the creation of genes, magic or better still mystery as has been purported elsewhere. On the contrary, entrepreneurship can be learnt as is illustrated through the efforts by Zuckerberg to deliberately learn on social business from competitors in the Silicon Valley as well as the deliberate efforts to higher professionals for the development of ideas with the facebook company (Sullivan, 2014, p. 66). Question 2 a. The ideology on innovation carries various distinct disciplines, which are invention, extension, duplication as well as synthesis (Kuratko, 1990, p. 1-42; Modi, 2011, p. 30). While many definitions have been fronted on the various aspects of innovation, some common attributes to business and entrepreneurship can be cited (Lee & Wong, 2006, para 1-5; Sloatman1994, para 1-4). Invention: By definition, invention has been shown to be creation of absolutely new products, processes and or services. It is therefore a unique method through which a product, process or service can be created through not improvement of an existing one but being wholly a new creation and is normally practiced while innovating (Schoen, Mason, Kline & Bunch, 2005, p. 3-10). Extension: The buildup of the idea on the product, process and service as seen through invention is what extension is about. It therefore brings about new use and or application of an existing process, service or product (Ryzhkova, 2012, p. 416). Duplication: The replication or production of similar products, services and processes explains the process of duplication as applied in innovation. The bottom line in the definition is therefore that the process, service and or product must be already in existence before it is duplicated. Synthesis: It is to be defined as incorporation of creativity and innovation for the formulation of new ideas on products, processes and processes. b. From the facebook case study, a number of these innovations are evident and this forms the basis of this section in discussion. For instance, Zuckerberg is shown to have adopted extension type of innovation while coming up with facebook and especially in regard to serving as a social media platforms. The case study in 2011 shows that while Harvard University already had various online resource sharing platforms, Zuckerberg identified the need to have the platforms harmonized in order to ease the process of accessing the information and other resources available online. It is through the creation of a personal profile platform and the capacity of one accessing other ‘friend’s’ profiles that such sharing was to be enabled. The case study shows that after the initial interactions, many students adopted it as a platform of interaction and this is how the social media platform developed and easily spread across the student fraternities and later to the corporate world as we have it today. The product and service idea behind facebook is therefore a furtherance of the initial idea that development of facebook profiles within Harvard University had hence extension. Invention is seen through the latter development of supportive features such as the social bookmarking, virtual gifts, flyers pro, social ads, facebook chats, mini feed extensions, facebook connect as well as the facebook beta among others. The Facebook Corporation hired the services of competent persons in the field of social networking and online services to further the innovation through invention and this has increasingly been pointed out as major boosts to the performance of facebook within the online social service industry. Moreover, duplication as being the replication of a concept or idea already in existence would be seen in the analysis of the overall ideology behind formation of facebook. This is because as one would note from the case study, other operators of similar social websites were already in existence. For instance, in 2002, Friendster was founded; Myspace was established in 2003 as well as the Orkut which was started in 2004. These are examples of the online social networking services as were already operating before Facebook Corporation duplicated and furthered the idea. It is to be noted however that the case study fails to illustrate any form of synthesis as would have been applied by Zuckerberg while developing facebook. Question 3 a. Planning has been shown to be a critical aspect for the success of any business and such an innovation as facebook is. Planning has been effectively used in marketing and entrepreneurial development and as such, this section intends to evaluate the application of the concept within the case study of facebook in 2011. Facebook adopted and applied planning effectively as seen through strategic re-launching and redesigning of its website by 2004, strategically resolving to organically grow in business through targeting employees from other online social networking organizations. Besides, through planning, the company has involved third party developers through the ‘F8’ feature which has enabled the company develop and introduce very competitive services in the industry. The development of the company also had high regard in planning for competition which is seen as the main feature that it had to face while venturing into the social networking market (Tampone, 2009, p. 3). Without proper planning, the company in its early years of operation would have succumbed to competition pressures from the already developed companies operating within the social networking industry. Besides, effectiveness in marketing planning would be pointed to have also facilitated the reception of the social networking platform besides having very effective organizational competence. b. Critique: The analysis of the strategic planning that facebook has had would be pointed as having had high level of effectiveness. For instance, planning for redesigning and re-launching of the website as was done in 2004 must have been very strategic for the reason that the company its popularity increased significantly to reach even the international market. Supportive evidence would be derived from the facts and figures that are in the case study where by 2011, over 770 billion page views would be recorded per month. However, a critique would be pointed out on the facts being only of the company alone without comparing with other companies but it is an evident enough that marketing and effective service delivery has been offered by the company. The hiring procedure that the company adopted targeted well competent persons from other online social networking organizations as well as fresh graduates. This illustrates an effective plan which was meant to ensure that the company would always have the best talent in the market which must have contributed greatly towards the success of the company. However, one would critique the method of recruitment in use as to have focused on already developed talent as against building on the new talent. However, with proper planning, the company is now incorporating fresh graduates right from the colleges and harnessing their skills in the service (Caddick, 2012, para 1-4). Marketing planning has also been successful especially through the online platform. This can be evident through the manner the concept spread across the institution and the later application within the corporate world. The company has risen to become one of the largest social networking companies and has been effective in targeting all people through the various products on offer. The plan employed for the purpose has therefore been very effective and new developments point towards increased improvement in the same. Bibliography Caddick, S. 2012, Facebook shows how university is a startups friend, London. Horibe, F. 2003, "Innovation, Creativity, and Improvement: working the right lever to prosperity", The Canadian Manager, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 20-20: Kuratko D. F. 1990. “Enbtrepreneurship”. Retrieved from: http://www.slideshare.net/bachajee007/innovation-15609833 Lee, L. & Wong, P.K. 2006, Entrepreneurship Education - A Compendium of Related Issues, Social Science Research Network, Rochester. Modi, T. 2011, "living in the innovation age", Baseline, , no. 113, pp. 30-31. Ryzhkova, N. 2012, "Web-based customer innovation: A replication with extension", Innovation : Management, Policy & Practice, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 416-430. Schoen, J., Mason, T.W., Kline, W.A. & Bunch, R.M. 2005, "The Innovation Cycle: A New Model and Case Study for the Invention to Innovation Process", Engineering Management Journal, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 3-10. Sloatman, S. 1994, Multiwave Innovation incorporates Spatializer(R) 3-D audio processor in new line of PC products, New York. Sullivan, J. 2014, "Facebooks OC Focus", Orange County Business Journal, vol. 37, no. 13, pp. 1-1,66. Tampone, K. 2009, "Facebook co-founder offers advice for entrepreneurs", The Business Journal - Central New York, vol. 23, no. 47, pp. 3. Read More