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ID 82003 - Entrepreneurship and

Intellectual Property

ASSIGNMENT 01

Name : H.P.W. Anupama

Reg No : SEU/IS/14/EG/062

Semester: 08
1. Identify at least five successful entrepreneurs for your choice and list out the key features
of their business along with the factors attributed for their success. At last, narrate what would
you do to become a successful entrepreneur in your life.
There is no clear way on defining entrepreneurship. There are number of definitions has
been made by different persons on the area of entrepreneurship. Stevenson and Jarillo has
explained entrepreneurship as the process by which individuals pursue opportunities without
regard to resources they currently control. Fred Wilson has explained entrepreneurship as the
art of turning an idea into a business. Entrepreneurs develop, design, produce, market, and
eventually sell businesses with the end goal of financial profit. There are entrepreneurs behind
every business in the country, no matter what the size and scope. Entrepreneurship is finding
solutions for problems. It is not the copying someone’s new invention for solve a problem. The
following are the five successful entrepreneurs for my choice.
• Henry Ford
− Founder of the Ford Motor Company.
• Bill Hewlett & Dave Packard
− Founder of the Hewlett Packard (HP) Company.
• Jensen Huang
− Chief Executive Officer of NVIDIA Company.
• Cher Wang
− Co-founder & chairperson of HTC Corporation.
• Jeff Weiner
− Chief Executive Officer of LinkedIn.
Henry Ford
Henry Ford was an American industrialist and business magnate. He was founder of the
Ford Motor Company and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production.
Ford was well off, although not wealthy. Ford was a hard-working man and eventually
completed an apprenticeship with the Detroit Dry Dock Company. In 1891, he met Thomas
Edison and told him about his concept of the automobile. Edison liked the idea and let Ford
use his warehouse to develop and manufacture two prototypes.
Using the prototypes, Ford soon founded the Detroit Automobile Company. The company
was short-lived since the product did not meet Ford’s standards. He went on to found the
Cadillac Motor Car Company which also failed before starting the Ford Motor Company for
which he is famous. His third attempt at a car company made him very successful, and the
company remains a going concern with annual sales of over $160 billion.
Key factors of his success
• Be so good at what he does.
• Failures are opportunities.
• Be strong anywhere.
• Didn’t only be in the business of making money.
− “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business” said Mr.
Ford.

2
Bill Hewlett & Dave Packard
After getting their degrees, Hewlett went on to graduate study at both Stanford and MIT,
while Packard took a job in vacuum-tube engineering at General Electric. In 1939, Hewlett
returned to Palo Alto, and he and Packard quickly renewed their friendship. Encouraged by
Stanford professor and mentor Fred Terman to start a business of their own, the two young
engineers raised $538 in start-up capital, set up shop in the one-car garage behind Packard's
Palo Alto house and Hewlett Packard Company born.
The duo's first venture was an automatic foul-line indicator for bowling alleys. The
product really had no market. From this initial failure, the two began working on a design an
audio oscillator. The two partners were unaware that the development of an audio oscillator
in a tiny garage would be the beginning of a multibillion-dollar personal computing company.
Hewlett Packard has generated $126 billion dollars in sales last year alone.
Key factors of their success
• They had passion about their business.
• They got their failure as opportunities.
• They always focus on products that customer satisfies.
• They had good knowledge in what they are doing.
Jenson Huang
Jensen Huang is a Taiwanese-born American billionaire businessman and electrical
engineer. He co-founded the graphics-processor company Nvidia in 1993 and has been its
president and chief executive officer (CEO) since inception. Huang graduated from Oregon
State University before moving to California. He earned a master's degree from Stanford
University.
In the mid-1990s, NVIDIA almost went bankrupt. Its NVIDIA chip wasn't successful.
The company was forced to lay off half of its employees. Huang learned from the mistakes
and led NVIDIA to launch another chip two years later that avoided the problems of the first
chip.
When The New York Times asked Jenson Huang, what it's like to work at NVIDIA, the
CEO mentioned two core values. First, he said employees needed to have the tolerance to take
risks and the ability to learn from failure. The second core value was similar to the first. Have
intellectual honesty the ability to call a spade a spade, to as quickly as possible recognize that
we've made a mistake, that we've gone the wrong way, and that we learn from it and quickly
adjust.
Key factors of his success
• Got his failure as opportunities.
• Never gave up.
• Execution intelligence.
• Customer satisfaction.

3
Cher Wang
HTC is a renowned name in the smartphone manufacturing industry and is also emerging
as one of the leaders in the field of virtual reality. The company headquarter is based in Taiwan
and was founded in 1997. It was founded by Cher Wang, H. T. Cho and Peter Chou, as an
original laptop and computers, designing and manufacturing company. The company is
known for its innovation, and so is its female co-founder Cher Wang. Cher Wang is one of
the most successful woman entrepreneurs in the world and is successfully breaking into this
male-dominated industry. While pitching the motherboard features in front of the foreign
traders, Wang realized the need of a portable computer system as the desktop computers were
big and wired, so taking them to any other place was not that convenient.
After a lot of brainstorming, she thought of an idea to start a computer manufacturing
business and founded HTC along with her co-founders H. T. Cho and Peter Chou. In the
beginning, the company started with manufacturing Notebook laptops. In 1998, the company
was building one of the world’s first touch and wireless hand-held devices.
Initial years Wang was able to see the upcoming success, hence invested a huge amount
of money in the business. With time, she realized that the laptop manufacturing business is
not working according to the plan, and she decided to switch her focus from building laptops
to mobile phones. So, HTC started partnering with other companies to build Windows Mobile
PDAs and smartphones.
Key factors of her success
• Confidence & expertise in her field.
• Open minded.
• Strategic thinking skill.
• Fully concern.
Jeff Weiner
Jeff Weiner is the CEO of LinkedIn, the world’s largest and most powerful network of
professionals. Jeff joined the company in December 2008, and under his leadership, LinkedIn
has grown from 338 to over 16,000 employees in over 30 offices around the world, grown its
membership base from 33 million to nearly 675 million members, and increased its revenue
from $78 million to more than $7.9 billion.
Before LinkedIn, Jeff was an executive in residence at Accel Partners and Greylock
Partners, where he advised the firms consumer technology portfolio companies and evaluated
new investment opportunities. Previously, Jeff served as executive vice president of Yahoo's
Network Division, a business that generated $3 billion in annual revenue with more than 3,000
employees, and was responsible for many of the company’s consumer-facing products. Prior
to joining Yahoo in 2001, Jeff spent more than six years at Warner Bros., where he helped
oversee the company’s online efforts and developed the initial business plan for Warner Bros.
Key factors of his success
• Great Communicator.
• Collaborate with clients.

4
• Leadership potential.
• Resourcefulness.
• Focus on coaching over problem solving.
What I would do to become a successful entrepreneur.
I always consider myself as having an entrepreneurial mind. I am not scared to take risks.
I have always had the determination and always make sure that I try all my best and get what
I want. I always think something out before taking any action. From above stories inspire me
and give me a big anticipation of the future. I am always optimistic and consider any challenge
as a stepping to success. I am always ready and even eager to learn new ideas and consult on
any new opportunities.
Actions to Improve My Entrepreneurial Competences
The first step in improving my entrepreneurial competences is awareness. I must be
aware of my abilities, skills and level of knowledge. This is crucial in improvement, since it
will enable me to know which areas, I am comfortable with and areas that I need to work on.
The second and crucial action to improve the entrepreneurial competences would be
building up of self-confidence. Self-confidence will enable me to believe in myself and create
self-awareness. This is a vital step in attaining the objectives that I will set in life. I should
craft my future by setting achievable goals and making sure that I initiate proper methods with
the aim of achieving these goals. This means that I will have enough confidence to face the
future and eliminate the fear of unknown. It will also assist me to gain the confidence to
explore new areas without fear of risks.
Essential skills that I want to become success
• Ambition
− It is easy to give up when the going gets tough, but the most successful
entrepreneurs persist because of their ambitious nature. They want to succeed,
and they thrive on reaching small milestones that are stepping stones to their
major goal.
• Willingness to learn
− Some people think that learning stops when we graduate college or earn a
special certification, but this is not the case. Education is a life-long process.
We must stay updated with changes in technology, the evolution of industry,
sales processes and more.
• Ability to listen
− We simply cannot manage a great team or run provide a great customer service
if we are not an effective communicator. Communication is a two-way street.
In order to communicate outwardly in an effective manner, we must pay
attention to others motivations, interests and more.
• Creativity
− If we always do the same thing, we will not enjoy new and better results. We
must try new things to find what works best. We also need to enrich our live
with new experiences regularly.

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• Courage and risk taking
− In order to harness the power of creativity, we must have the courage to act on
our great ideas and plans. While we need to research our ideas thoroughly, we
must also have the courage to take an unknown step and try things that are
unfamiliar to us.
• Time management
− Careful priority planning, defining milestones, execution, and iteration are all
important. None of that would lead toward progress without the right project
management and time allocation methodology that gets the work done.
• Don’t give up try again and again.
− We must try again and again whenever we fail. We must find the reason to the
failure and take necessary actions and try again. We must not give up what we
doing because of the failures.
REFERENCE

• https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0411/6-entrepreneurs-who-built-their-
fortunes-from-nothing.aspx
• https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/197644
• https://www.forbes.com/profile/jensen-huang-1/#66c1d563a6c4
• https://www.fool.com/careers/2017/05/03/what-you-can-learn-from-the-most-successful-
ceos.aspx
• https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/223994
• https://entrepreneur-cherwang.blogspot.com/2016/02/cher-wangs-skills-and-
competencies.html
• https://magazine.wharton.upenn.edu/digital/jeff-weiners-five-tools/
• https://www.sachinrekhi.com/5-leadership-lessons-learned-from-jeff-weiner
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffweiner08/

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