Entrepreneurship and Creativity - Example

Running Header: Entrepreneurship and Creativity Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course Code: Date of Submission: Creativity is the ability or power to bring into or create to existence, invest with a new form to make or bring to existence something new, original, and appropriate. It is the capability to produce something new through imaginative skill either as a new method or as a new solution to a problem. Creativity is the tendency of identifying or creating ideas, possibilities, or options that may be crucial in problems solving and communicating with others. Entrepreneurship is the process by which individuals identify opportunities, distribute resources, while generating value. Generation of value is through the identification of unmet requirements or by identifying any chance for change. It is the process of undertaking an initiative or an endeavor through putting together resources like innovations, business, and finance in an effort towards transforming innovations into economic goods through assuming significant responsibility for inherent risk and the outcome (Venkataraman and Shane 220). Entrepreneurship involves creating and coming out with new ideas, in order to make this achievable, one should be have creativity in order to be able to pursue the initiative. Entrepreneurship is a form of creativity that can be referred to as entrepreneurial creativity as new business is original and useful. Creativity and entrepreneurship are crucial aspects that should go hand in hand towards ensuring the accomplishment of the intended entrepreneurship operation or process. An entrepreneur must be creative and think outside the box in order to come up with better and creative ways of entrepreneurship (Edward and Martin 78). There are certain similarities and differences between creativity and entrepreneurship. Creativity concerns the novelty and value creation while entrepreneurship is concerned with novelty in business, ideas of new business, and reality of positive returns achievement within the market as well as in new and existing business models. They are not limited by existing knowledge or challenge in developing processes, ideas, and application. Both creativity and entrepreneurship benefit from existing knowledge or expertise (Deakins and Freel 98). Agents in both entrepreneurship and creativity require persuasion skills in order to influence others within and outside the firm. However, they are differences between creativity and entrepreneurship. Creativity is the input and a process while entrepreneurship is mainly a process and an outcome. Entrepreneurship benefits from the use of creative thinking techniques concerning generation and creation of new ideas. Both entrepreneurship and creativity can be characterized as being about potential, persuasion, process, product, or person. Entrepreneurs apply creative processes towards the development of new enterprises in the connection between experience, interests, and knowledge. This is towards getting access to relationship with customers and to resources (Peter and Peter 98). M-pesa is a mobile-phone based money transfer service that is offered in Kenya, Africa by Safaricom Limited. This is a great creativity in the mobile industry in Eastern Africa. This creativity has led to the prosperity of Safaricom Limited to being the most entrepreneurial company within this region and world in large. This entrepreneurial aspect has been made possible due to the innovative and creativity of the new technology. This is a clear indication that creativity bears a great responsibility towards effective and successful entrepreneurship. Creativity has created value that assisted towards entrepreneurship (Mas and Morawczynski 60). In the difference between the two, creativity has led to the rise of the new technology in mobile money transfer while entrepreneurship has led to the implementation of money transfer technology within the Eastern African region. The Safaricom mobile money transfer system M-pesa has become the world’s most creative mobile payment system in the whole world. The money transfer program is managed through cell phones. It is a success of SIM/card technology as a contactless system as it happens out of contact interface (WorldPress). Initially, there was no mobile money transfer that had been used in the mobile industry. Therefore, Safaricom found the need to come up with this technology that required no bank or physical machine to transfer money through the phone to another person. This was a noble idea that had never been experienced before in the whole world. Initially, people used banks and other means of money transfer like western Union to transfer money from one region to another. However, this involved machine or a bank for it to become possible. Therefore, this was creativity towards a successful entrepreneurship, which has gained popularity globally (Omwansa 90). Another major notable creativity and entrepreneurship in Africa and the world, is the rise of a building society or a microfinance institution to a regional bank. Equity bank is a regional bank in Eastern Africa region that has received both local and global Accolades due to its special and transformational financial model. Creativity has enabled this bank to become the largest bank with over 57% of all bank accounts in Kenya. This prosperity in entrepreneurship can be attributed to the high creativity of enabling it emerges within the highest competitive banking sector especially in Eastern Africa region. The bank is also operating in Southern Sudan. The creativity is in terms of taking banking services to the society in an accessible, affordable, and flexible provision of banking services (Equity Bank). Equity bank was named the best performing Africa investor and creative investor 40 company in 2010 Africa investor Series Awards at the New York Stock Exchange. In this year, its leader was named among 50 emerging market business leaders in BRIC countries like Brazil, Russia, India, and China. In June 2009, it was the emerging market most sustainable bank of the year in Africa and Middle East. It is the holder of the 2007 Global vision Award in microfinance. This is due to the initiation of a concept of the future that will shape the global economy. Its creativity has led to introduction of point of sale (POS) whereby customers shop; pay and withdraw cash in leading retail outlets. It creativity can be viewed in terms of internet and mobile banking channels. The bank runs on a global Robust State of the art information Technology computer system that is supported by Infosys, Microsoft, HP, and Oracle. The Equity bank creativity has enabled it to undergo a dramatic transformation from a loss making microfinance lender to a fully-fledged and publicly listed commercial bank with its operations in Eastern Africa region. Creativity has led to the success of Equity bank entrepreneurship through influencing the society greatly towards the need of adopting its services. This has been seen as a major transformational and creativity within the society in micro-finance sector. Equity Bank Group is a fast-growing financial services organization in East Africa as well as being the “Best Performing Company in Africa” (Equity Bank). Initially, there were many banks in this region including Barclays bank, Commercial bank of Kenya, Standard Chartered bank, Cooperative bank of Kenya, and Trust bank among others. However, they did not put into consideration the financial status of the people who have less money. They did not emphasize on the importance of micro-credits; this is offering the loans to local people even at the lowest amount. This bank lend as low as US$10 while other were offering a minimum of US$100. These other banks only dealt with employed people while Equity bank emphasized on the need to involve in a great deal people at local levels whether employed or not. It encouraged every person including farmers to invest in their bank and even take the loans to start up new businesses. This creativity led to the thriving entrepreneurship of Equity bank in Eastern Africa region. They are various barriers to entrepreneurship and creativity. They include regulatory, cultural, and social barriers as well as economic and financial barriers. Bureaucratic regulations are usually major barriers towards effective regulation. In order for an entrepreneurship process to be effective, there is need for business environment that is conducive with a broad range of reinforcing and supportive policies. Lack of fiscal and monetary policies crucial for stable macroeconomic environment can lead to unsuccessful entrepreneurship. Lack of knowledge of the market, institutions, environment, and legislations are some of the major barriers to a successful entrepreneurship. Language in most instances leads to difficulty in integrating enterprises and entrepreneurs especially for small and micro enterprises. Another barrier is the lack of information on the available institutions, their role, and missions. The limited access to business and social networks and institutions is also considered as barriers to entrepreneurship. Access to finance is crucial for all entrepreneurs towards achieving their aims and in particular when starting to invest and expand. Creativity is also faced with various barriers towards making its realization. One such barrier is being too busy as well as getting too involved with a problem. When an entrepreneur is too busy in getting solution to various problems, it becomes difficult for such a person to be creative. Another obstacle to creativity is having conflicting objectives or goals. This lowers the creativity of an individual, as he cannot be able to establish or set his goals clearly. Failure to have enough time to relax also acts as a barrier to creativity. Creativity requires enough time for one to think and come up with a concrete ideas. Self-criticism and negative thinking are other barriers towards the creativity of an individual. They are certain requirements that need to put in place to overcome barriers to entrepreneurship and creativity. It is important to encourage creative and critical thinking as a way towards improving creativity and entrepreneurship. Educational institutions, governments, and organizations where people work should initiate this encouragement of creativity. Other ways of overcoming barriers to entrepreneurship and creativity should be through interpersonal and organizational changes. These play a great role towards unleashing creativity and entrepreneurship. Other ways is through creating and acquiring a repertoire of experiences. Associating various experiences is crucial as it results into a useful product. Previous working and education experiences make a great part towards creativity and entrepreneurship. After associating diverse experiences, it is then important to express the idea through communication to relevant people. Evaluation should then follow; this is towards distinguishing the productive from the irrelevant. Trying new methods of acting and thinking without changing who we are usually results to improved creativity and consequently entrepreneurship. These are some of the ideas that entrepreneurs should put into practice in order to increase and encourage his creativity. The individuals should also learn to identify various legislation laws of any country or state in ensuring such political barriers are eliminated (Elizabeth 56). In conclusion, there is need to encourage people at all levels on the importance of coming up with new ideas as a way of enhancing or improving entrepreneurship. It is crucial to emphasize on the need to encourage consolation among the intellectuals, prospered business people, and other academic institutions as a way of encouraging and teaching people on various ways to think and invest. It is important for people to change their perception by looking at various ways of investing at different angles. Thinking in sequence and in a positive manner will play a key role towards encouraging creativity and entrepreneurship in individuals. It is vital to identify areas in society where people usually experience problems in taking various initiatives. It is important to evaluate on the most helpful initiative within the society. It is important to note that the well-evaluated creativity leads to a prosperous entrepreneur. It is important for governments to put in place less unrestricting laws for establishing business towards encouraging innovations and establishments of entrepreneurships within their countries (Robert 78). Works Cited Deakins, D. & Freel, M. Entrepreneurship and Small Firms. New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 2009. Edward, Lumsdaine and Martin Binks. Entrepreneurship from Creativity to Innovation: Effective Thinking Skills for a Changing World. Michigan: Trafford Publishing, 2006. Elizabeth, Rhyne. Microfinance for Bankers and investors: Understanding the Opportunities and Challenges of the Market at the Bottom of the Pyramid. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Professional. Equity Bank. Achievements. 23 Sept. 2006. 6 Dec. 2010. http://www.equitybank.co.ke/about.php?subcat=8 Mas, I. and Morawczynski, O. “Designing Mobile Money Services Lessons from M-PESA.” Innovations 4.2 (2009): 56-89. Omwansa, Tike. M-PESA: Progress and Prospects. Nairobi: Macmillan Press, 2009. Peter, Drucker, and Peter, Ferdinand. Innovation and Entrepreneurship. London: Butterworth- Heinemann, 2007. Robert, Weisberg. Creativity: understanding innovation in problem solving, science, invention, and the arts. Michigan: John Wiley and Sons, 2006. Venkataraman, S. and Shane, S. “The Promise of Entrepreneurship as A field of Research.” Academy of Management Review 25.1 (2000): 217-226. WorldPress. M-Pesa, the most innovative mobile payment system. 6 Oct. 2009. 6 Dec. 2010. http://contactless-world.com/m-pesa-the-most-innovative-mobile-payment-system/ Read More