Summary Article

Fahad Ahmad

17U00092

Section A

Introduction

Entrepreneurship is a way of thinking, reasoning, and leading. Successful entrepreneurs identify

a creative way to address a marketplace problem or need. They then formulate an entry strategy,
create a set of experiments to test it, and execute the product development and market entry
activities needed to launch the business. Once the business model has been refined and the
venture gains traction, successful entrepreneurs know how to identify the resources needed to
scale and exploit the full potential of the opportunity.

Person best suited to run a business

No single personality profile/ trait but there are multiple traits needed to run a business. Common
examples say passion, determination, creativity, patience and such other things are needed to run
a business which is right to some extent but there is other thing which is far more important.
Professor Jeffory said that good entrepreneurs can be social or low-key, analytical or intuitive,
charismatic or boring, good with details or terrible, delegators or control freaks which may not
hinder their entrepreneurial abilities but what is needed the most is the capacity to execute what
he/she holds in mind in certain key ways. It is said the idea is only good as long as it is being
executed the way it was thought of or should have done.

Leading the innovation lifecycle

Reading examine the role of entrepreneurship in the business landscape. Using examples of
entrepreneurs such as Amazon's Jeff Bezos, the authors discuss the behaviors, decisions, and
roles of entrepreneurial leaders as they pursue opportunities and pivot to growth. As the Reading
explores what entrepreneurs do, it considers both the activities and leadership skills required in
the life cycle of an innovative business-as well as the skills needed to pursue different kinds of
opportunities.

Amazon

Many research suggest that it is more important to study what entrepreneurs do rather than
attempt to identify common characteristics or personality types. Jeff Bezos was a successful
entrepreneur who not only started but continue to run businesses even after those ventures have
become large, established companies. In 1986, Jeff Bezos graduated summa cum laude from
Princeton University with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and electrical engineering.
Took over the family garage as a laboratory for building gadgets, and rigged an alarm to his
bedroom door to alert him if his siblings tried to enter. High school startup – Dream institute. He
worked as an analyst on Wall Street for much period of time but then he saw an opportunity with
the internet being privatized and increasing use of computer to trade online was being done. He
determined books as minimum viable product (MVP) and therefore launched Amazon bookstore
in 1995.

Leading different types of Entrepreneurial opportunities

Lifestyle or necessity driven business or MVP experiments

The goal is to build a small business that suits personal interests and passion or need for income
and conduct market experiments to test assumptions prior to transitioning to a high growth
business. Risk profile in this is the missed opportunities and risk is managed by scanning
regularly for industry trends and market gaps. Investment options is through personal or
financing banking or incubators. The leadership teams consist of professional or local service
providers.

High growth businesses

Leverage a commercially available platform (e.g. The Internet) to launch a new business rapidly
or purchase a small business and use it as a platform for growth. Leverage positioning and
platform to scale quickly and expand into new products and markets. Risk profile is Strategic
positioning or platform/standards risk and Sustainability risk and risk is managed through
Leverage commercially available platforms or platforms built and tested during Category I
experiments. Identify growth options and assemble resources needed to transition to high growth.
Investment options are venture capital and crowd funding and leadership people are high growth
entrepreneurs.

Breakthrough Discoveries

The goal is to identify breakthrough engineering or scientific discoveries to address a large

market opportunity that could not have been addressed before. Identify significant shifts in
customer needs or demographic trends that highlight new problems or opportunities. The risk in
this is financial risk and uncertainty risk and it is managed through Investment in broad research
streams with a portfolio of different teams addressing the same opportunity or problem space.
Investment options are through strategic investors and government funding. The leadership team
in this is deep expertise in a technical field, extensive networks within scientific and technical
communities

Dumb ideas and mandatory projects

The goal is to Identify and kill or refine an innovation project with faulty assumptions. Embark
on a project that will not provide proprietary benefits or competitive advantage, but is necessary
to comply with a government regulation or to defend against a competitive threat. It also consists
of financial risk and uncertainty risk and is mitigated through ensuring that you have excellent
project management skills on the team to manage the high levels of risk if the project is
mandatory. Investment options are through cash flow streams and government financing and the
leadership team in this is with excellent entrepreneurial skills.

Lessons from founder CEOs

The discovery skills seem to play a crucial role in an entrepreneur’s ability to transition to
growth with their new ventures. The entrepreneurs in the study used these skills in founding their
companies and continued to use them even as their firms grew to become large industry leaders.
While most executives and CEOs of established firms reported that their role was to facilitate
innovation within their organizations, the founder CEOs used discovery skills to innovate and
grow their businesses, spending more time actively engaged in innovation activities than CEOs
who were appointed to run established businesses. Indeed, rather than delegating innovation
leadership and work to others, founder CEOs tended to remain actively involved in the
innovation activities of the firm.

Entrepreneurial team roles

Setting direction is an important step that is scanning the environment to identify external
opportunities and threats; making strategic choices; identifying and allocating resources; and
focusing attention on projects, targets, and milestones.

Executing is the most important and essential part that consists of defining activities that need to
be accomplished and developing and engaging the required talent; designing and aligning
organizational structures and processes to enable people within work units and across
organizational boundaries to achieve shared goals; and ensuring accountability, monitoring
performance, and learning and responding in real time.

Delivering results is what everyone looks for and that is basically protecting the interests of and
creating value for all stakeholders; making tough trade-offs when setting strategy and resolving
conflicts; and balancing short-term and long-term priorities.

Conclusion

Successful entrepreneurs especially those who remain with their ventures after they’ve become
established companies, can be defined not by their personality traits but by their skills and
capabilities, which are honed as they pursue their entrepreneurial careers. They must be both
promoters and trustees, both leaders and managers; they must be focused on both vision and
disciplined execution.