ENTERPRISE AND ENTREPRENEURIAL MANAGEMENT

Enterprise and Entrepreneurial Management



Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurial Management

Introduction

Entrepreneurship involves the creation of new organizations outright or within existing organizations. This innovative activity is undertaken by entrepreneurs who see and understand customer needs, find and combine resources, develop innovative solutions, take risks, and strive to make a profit. The rates of entrepreneurial activity vary by local and national environment, industry, and other factors. Compared to the rest of the population, entrepreneurs tend to have a stronger need for achievement, higher risk-taking propensity, and greater perseverance, more commitment to a task, bigger vision, higher creativity, and more tolerance for ambiguity (Pinson, 2006, 33).

Individuals who want to become entrepreneurs also tend to have more positive attitudes toward risk and independence. Entrepreneurial leadership represents a complex and compound topic. The individual must possess skills and attributes of both an entrepreneur and a leader. The successful entrepreneurial leader must consider the organizational culture as well as the opinions and feelings of the follower population (Nopo & Valenzuela, 2007, 22). This paper will discuss the essential elements of a business plan and the required characteristics for successful entrepreneurship. Lastly, a personal reflection will be presented in the essay.

Business Planning Process

Necessary Elements to plan a Business

Idea Generation

It is necessary to build an idea generation for creating a new business. Other internal sources for ideas include salespeople and other employees. Mans of the employees in a service firm are in customer contact positions. This enables them to get direct feedback concerning problems and to detect problem areas as they perform their normal job functions. This type of information is invaluable in improving customer satisfaction with service enhancements and new services. Some of the external sources for new product ideas are competitors, suppliers, trade shows, and trade magazines.

A firm can produce new product ideas from following the actions of competitors and reading about new developments in trade magazines. These new developments are also the focus of companies attending trade shows, whether they are direct competitors or simply similar firms in other markets. Finally, suppliers can sometimes have a keen insight into firms operations. They deal with many different firms and often generate ideas for improvement based on their own developments. Firms should seek ideas from all potential sources. For example, menu items should be sought that expand, extend or enhance the current menu. Currently, new menu item development appears to be most active in breakfast foods, light and healthy menu items, new tastes in lids such as regional cuisine, foods that cannot be easily prepared at home, foods that lend themselves to take-out, and food that is delivered.

Strategic Objectives

Firms need a strategy, or at least some agreed strategic goals, to give direction to the rest of their planning. Table is intended to help the entrepreneur capture the key elements of the entrepreneur's strategic objectives. A number of possibilities, not all mutually exclusive, are included in the table. There is also space for others. Reasonably or otherwise, some people will find it hard ...