Entrepreneurial processes are activities and processes that an entrepreneur takes during identifying a business opportunity and its subsequent conversion into a business. In Moore’s Model, entrepreneurial processes are stages and events that an entrepreneur follows toward business conception, operationalization, and growth. Four major entrepreneurial processes are: generating a business idea, evaluating a business opportunity, planning and forming a company, and subsequent growth (Fuqua, 2023). In the first stage, the entrepreneur develops a business idea. In the second stage, they assess present opportunities aligning with the business idea. This includes feasibility studies to assess and understand the market. Planning involves preparation to start the business. Activities under planning include the development of a business plan containing financial, operational, and marketing plans. Lastly, the entrepreneur launches the business after putting in a good plan.
The different entrepreneurial processes are different from each other in some way. First, the set activities and tasks for each stage are different. For example, in the first stage, the entrepreneur needs brainstorming and thorough research to develop a business idea that addresses a societal problem. In the second stage, the entrepreneur focuses on identifying the market. The second stage can be costly compared to the first step since it requires some capital to conduct practical and theoretical research alongside feasibility studies. In terms of planning, an expert may be required to enable the business to develop an operational plan that will optimize the available resources. This stage is also sensitive as it defines the business model for the entrepreneur. Upon completion of the planning phase, the entrepreneur implements the plan by launching and growing the company. At this stage, the entrepreneur is actualizing the business idea. While these processes differ significantly, as indicated, they are interdependent.
Importance of entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship plays a critical role in the socio-economic lives of people. There are three major benefits of entrepreneurship. First, it promotes innovation and rewards entrepreneurs for the risks taken. In this case, an entrepreneur can earn a source of livelihood, thus changing their social and economic status within the community. Apart from self-employment, entrepreneurship further creates direct and indirect jobs for the people (Hart et al., 2020). As the number of employed people within the community increase, the people’s economic situation improves, thus raising their living standards. In addition, when a business thrives, other ventures will enter the field, thus creating more job opportunities and improving the social and economic standard of the community. Lastly, entrepreneurship is crucial to the country’s economic growth and development. Entrepreneurship is a very innovative field (Igwe et al., 2020). In this case, the country can identify new businesses and expand to secure more revenues. In the long term, entrepreneurship enables the country to open its market in foreign spaces.
Policy targets entrepreneurship in both positive and negative ways. First, policymakers are interested in supporting entrepreneurs. In this case, they create policies that are friendly to them. For example, they can create policies that provide fair competition for entrepreneurs to support and give them a conducive environment to grow. In addition, they ensure that local businesses are protected from foreign investors to foster entrepreneurship spirit and promote innovation (OECD, 2020). On the negative side, taxation policies are created to ensure that entrepreneurs pay taxes to the government. While taxes are an important source of government revenue, some entrepreneurs may need help for a long time before breaking even. In such cases, it is better if the government protects and gives them policies that will not exploit them.
Entrepreneurship Behavior
Behavior is a crucial success factor for any businessperson. Entrepreneurship behavior enables an investor to implement or make changes to different activities and processes to innovate and improve on present ideas. In this case, good entrepreneurship behavior enables a business to deliver effective service and compete better within the market. Apart from the start-up venture, another behavior is risk mitigation (Stockley, 2021). Successful entrepreneurs can map risks and adopt different mitigation strategies to minimize their impact. In this case, the entrepreneur understands all variables within the business and measures all risk points within the systemic risk space, including competition, the market, operations, and human factors. Risk mitigation improves the entrepreneur’s chances of success by minimizing losses associated with preventable risks.
The second entrepreneurial behavior is the ability to bootstrap. Many entrepreneurs of the capital demand for a new business. In this case, good entrepreneurs have good bootstrapping abilities. In this case, they can reduce overhead and any other unnecessary costs to increase profit margins (Stockley, 2021). High costs are disastrous to the business as they may lead to a massive cost that will take significant time to recover. Another crucial entrepreneurial behavior is the ability to understand affordable loss. Any business involves risk-taking. A good entrepreneur understands the level of risk to take. Taking high risks is dangerous as it threatens to destroy the business’s running ability. In addition, taking no risks gives entrepreneurs no chance to improve and innovate. Therefore, an affordable loss is crucial as it enables the entrepreneur to take risks to some particular levels. The last behavior of an entrepreneur is the ability to pivot where necessary. In business, knowing when a particular change is required is crucial. The ability to have timely and effective change enables the company to innovate and make substantial progress in promoting its growth significantly.
Entrepreneurial contexts
Four different entrepreneurship contexts exist. These are rationalist, humanistic, holistic, and spiritual-based contexts (Miller and Miller, 2021). Rationalist context comprises practicality. In this case, rational business people are motivated by the practicality of things (Yakuel, 2015). For example, they are keen on studying market trends and assessing the competitive landscape in the market before making any significant decision. In addition, rational individuals use data to predict what might happen in the future and take necessary steps to minimize any risk that might come by. Humanistic context, on the other hand, focuses on leadership and management, organizational culture, and ethics (Hartman, 2022). A humanistic entrepreneur uses existing literature to find different aspects of organizational leadership and management and employs such qualities to improve the company’s quality. Their focus is principles and skills, and virtues of the business owners. Therefore, with their humanistic nature, they want perfection in the business.
The third context is the holistic approach. In this case, the entrepreneur focuses on teamwork when dealing with the team. For a bigger organization, a holistic approach guides its departments to work together and jointly address issues and concerns affecting their operations. A holistic entrepreneur’s major motivation is to see employees walking together while delivering timely results. This will enable the team to meet its organizational goals and objectives. The last context is spiritual-based. The spiritual entrepreneur believes and is more connected to their unique skills, belief, and knowledge. The individual uses these attributes to uplift other people within society. Spiritual-based entrepreneur ventures into the business with the major aim of inspiring other people to grow and helping them to succeed in life.
Entrepreneurship courses
A successful entrepreneur requires skills and talent alongside educational prowess. Education is crucial as it provides entrepreneurs with important information and insights to help them make better decisions. The first course is project management. Project management is essential, as the business will engage in different monetary and non-monetary projects as the business grows. The second course is on communication skills. As an entrepreneur, presentation to the outside world is very critical. A good businessperson knows how to communicate with people. A communication skills course will enable entrepreneurs to develop verbal and non-verbal communication while becoming better public speakers. In addition, a course in leadership and management is necessary. As the business grows, firm leaders with good management skills are required. In some cases, a crisis may happen, requiring fast decision-making. Having a good and decisive leader in such situations is crucial. Other courses include business intelligence and analysis of big data using different tools such as machine learning and artificial intelligence.
References
Hartman, E.M., 2022. An Aristotelian Conception of Humanistic Business. In Humanizing Business: What Humanities Can Say to Business (pp. 17-31). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Yakuel, P. March 3, 2015. The Two Types Of Entrepreneurs And Why You Should Be Both. https://www.fastcompany.com/3043018/the-two-types-of-entrepreneurs-and-why-you-should-be-both
Miller, W. C. and Miller, D. R. 2021. Four Contexts of Business Leadership Shaping the 21st Century. https://vcihome.com/sites/PDF_files/PPT_fourcontexts.pdf
Stockley, S. May 5, 2021. Understanding Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Why it is Important. https://masteringentrepreneurship.blog.jbs.cam.ac.uk/understanding-entrepreneurial-behaviour-and-why-it-is-important/
OECD. 2020. Objectives and challenges of entrepreneurship policy. International Compendium of Entrepreneurial Policies. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/fff33142-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/fff33142-en
Igwe, P.A., Odunukan, K., Rahman, M., Rugara, D.G. and Ochinanwata, C., 2020. How entrepreneurship ecosystem influences the development of frugal innovation and informal entrepreneurship. Thunderbird International Business Review, 62(5), pp.475-488.
Hart, M., Bonner, K., Prashar, N., Ri, A., Levie, J. and Mwaura, S., 2020. Global Entrepreneurship Monitor: United Kingdom 2019 Monitoring Report.
Fuqua, D. 2023. The Entrepreneurial Process. https://sites.fuqua.duke.edu/dukeven/selected-topics/the-entrepreneurial-process/
Nassif, V.M.J., Ghobril, A.N. and Silva, N.S.D., 2010. Understanding the entrepreneurial process: a dynamic approach. BAR-Brazilian Administration Review, 7, pp.213-226.
write