WHO SHOULD READ THIS
BOOK?
This book is targeted to
students at academic institutions in entrepreneurship programs and at
small-business management and business schools, their teaching staff, and
researchers in entrepreneurship and small business. Most important, this book
is for entrepreneurs and future entrepreneurs, be they students or people who
are still engaged in corporate jobs. It provides a foundation for those who
want a wider overview of what starting a business means and involves by
introducing the entrepreneurial business phases in different countries,
cultures and sectors of industry, as well as at different levels of success.
The book includes a broad
introduction to the field of entrepreneurship in order to familiarize the
readers with the most well-established terms, concepts and models derived from
research in the field that has contributed to this area with its robust
academic and practical perspective. Each chapter includes references for the
readers' convenience, to expand upon their knowledge on the different topics
discussed and analyzed in this book.
Most importantly, the
book is enriched with a range of case studies of active, real-world
entrepreneurs from different countries based on their narratives.These case
studies are introduced in every chapter, followed by questions for discussion
to allow students and entrepreneurs of diverse backgrounds to learn from
others' previous experiences. The wide range of case studies was chosen to
enable almost any entrepreneur to identify with the stories by spotting similarities
to his/her personal or business's characteristics. As such, the reader will
more easily understand how entrepreneurial concepts can be applied to real
business situations encountered in his/her entrepreneurial realm. The case
studies, contributed by entrepreneurs from around the world, were collected by
the author, who personally conducted all interviews face-to-face, and over the
telephone and Skype.
An annotated list of
internet resources is introduced at the end of some chapters, including sites
that offer useful reference information for the book's topics, thus encouraging
their implementation. The list does not attempt to cover all of the websites
and internet resources relevant to entrepreneurs, but rather to give the
readers examples of such resources, which mav assist them in their search for
others.
INTRODUCTION
ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN A
GLOBAL CONTEXT
Entrepreneurship is the
predominant form of business organization: statistics from the Global
Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) indicate that roughly 60—90 per cent of businesses worldwide are entrepreneurial. In most
countries, entrepreneurship is emerging as the major factor paving the way for
economic development, by having a synergistic impact through job creation,
innovation, helping to increase female, ethnic and minority participation in
the workforce and alleviating local poverty in inner cities and suburban areas
(Kariv et al. 2009; Kariv, Menzeis and Brenner 2010).
Many books have been
published to guide budding entrepreneurs in launching businesses, familiarize
individuals with the entrepreneurial realm, and introduce entrepreneurial
thinking, spirit and know-how to potential and active entrepreneurs. Most of
them portray local economies; alternatively, they focus on the US economy, which
tends to surface in most books as the point of reference for a discussion on
entrepeneurship in many other economies. This book, however, embraces
diversity, and is specifically targeted to expose the differences between
countries and cultures, as well as the core topics in entrepreneurship. There
is a need to reveal the realities of the various entrepreneurial cultures and
economies around the world, and to bring diversity in entrepreneurship to the
forefront of research and practice, especially because books presenting such a
broad perspective are scarce. This dearth led to the writing of this book, in
order to provide a platform for discussions on the main issues of
entrepreneurship through multifaceted and multicultural lenses.
As such, one of this
book's more important aspects lies in its broad international coverage of
activities involved in launching and managing a successful venture. Core
activities of entrepreneurs, be they from Canada, Israel, Great Britain,
Malaysia, Australia, Kenya, the United States, China, or elsewhere, are
illustrated and discussed as case studies and 'at-a-glance' anecdotal stories.
The success stories of entrepreneurs' from twenty-two countries, covering all
continents, are presented: each one emphasizes a different aspect of
entrepreneurial activity, while together they provide an overview of the global
phenomenon of entrepreneurship.
Specifically, this book
traces the entrepreneurial path with different case studies, which are the
stories of entrepreneurs from different countries and cultures, possessing
different backgrounds and human capital (age, educational level,
entrepreneurial experience), having diverse motivations to become
entrepreneurs, and influenced by different environmental and cultural
determinants. Their businesses are from various sectors of industry, in
different phases of development, and varied in terms of their success
experiences. For example, this book illustrates the complexities of the environment's
effects on the entrepreneur and the entrepreneurial business by presenting
the case of Baby-Dalozo, which offers a catalogue, a magazine and a website for
baby products in Hungary; the entrepreneurial culture is introduced in
the story of Shlomi and Osnat Zingler, the Israeli franchisors of Leonidas Belgian
Chocolates, who demonstrate a pure entrepreneurial spirit in their daily
routines; innovation in the entrepreneurial context is presented by
Speak-ing-4-u, Australia, which was launched as a most innovative idea and
business in 1980, before widespread use of the internet for marketing; building
a concept in marketing is demonstrated by FaiYang, the owner of
e-HK.Flowers, Hong Kong, specializing in web-sourcing for delivery and shipment
of specialized flower bouquets, and mentorship is explored by tracing
the road taken by Rutujit Jindal, an active university professor in India who
works independently as a paid mentor, and the very different story of Paterina
Cammarata, of Verona, Italy, the new owner and CEO of Consiglio, a family
enterprise that provides counseling and mentoring services for the business
sector in Italy. These are just a few examples of the book's concept: through
this variation, the book attempts to identify the core essence of
entrepreneurship that emerges in any entrepreneurial business.
The book's overall
perspective is practical, built upon a background of the main theoretical
models and concepts in entrepreneurship — its
ideas and recommendations therefore stem from - odi practice and theory.
BASIC THEORETICAL MODELS
IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP AT A GLANCE: A RESEARCH EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE
Entrepreneurship is the
world's oldest profession, known as a popular employment feature of the
pre-industrial revolution era, which persisted throughout the 100-year
industrial revolution and -las been expanding ever since. A major explanation
for entrepreneur ship's steadfast persistence through the years is its ability
to change and re-change form, renew itself, adjust to the demands of a particular
time and place, and reinvent itself through the development of economic,
technological, social and regulatory conditions.Today, the entrepreneurial
society is still expanding but it is also continually transforming and
redefining itself, such that the market and society as a whole can no longer
imagine a world in which entrepreneurship would not exist.
A quick overview of the
evolution of entrepreneurship illustrates how far we have come and enables us
to envision future developments in the entrepreneurial realm (Churchill et al.
1987; Gavron, Cowling and Westall 1998; Schoonhoven and Romanelli 2001; Von
Bargen, Freedman and Pages 2003).
The evolution of research
into entrepreneurship began in 1730, when Richard Cantillon, a Parisian banker
and economist, introduced the term entrepreneur (literally, 'undertaker'
in French). His pioneer Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en General presented
his first definition of entrepreneurship as self-employment of any kind. He
stated that entrepreneurs buy at certain prices in the present and sell at
uncertain prices in the future. The entrepreneur is a bearer of uncertainty, he
concluded. Following this, the French Jean Baptiste Say (1880), inspired by
Adam Smith's economic theories, joined a group of laissez-Jaire economists
known as the ideologues, who sought to relaunch the spirit of
enlightenment in republican France. Say emphasized the essential nature of
entrepreneurship to society as a whole, and defined the entrepreneur as the
agent who unites all means of production and who finds in the value of
products, the re-establishment of the entire capital he/she employs, and the value
of the wages, interest, and rent he/she pays, as well as profits belonging only
to him or her. Taking this a step further by focusing on the 'central figure'
of the system, Frank Knight (1921), the American economist founder of the
Chicago school and author of the book Risk, Uncertainly and Profit, added
the entrepreneur's attempt to predict and act upon changes within markets, and
emphasized the entrepreneur's role in bearing the uncertainty of market
dynamics. In the long run, Knight stressed, entrepreneurs are required to
perform fundamental managerial functions, such as direction and control.
Joseph Schumpeter (1934),
the Austrian economist and political scientist, argued that perfect competition
would not eliminate profits due to uncertainty, and he was the first to
emphasize the role of innovation in the entrepreneurial realm. In his first
book, Theory of Economic Development (1911), his popular book Capitalism,
Socialism and Democracy (1942), and others, Schumpeter equated
entrepreneurship with the concept of innovation applied to a business context.
Schumpeter said that the entrepreneur is the innovator who implements change in
the marketplace by creating new combinations. These new combinations can take
on several forms: the introduction of a new good or quality thereof; the
introduction of a new method of production; the opening of a new market; the
conquest of a new supply source of new materials or parts; getting a new
organization off the ground. As such, the entrepreneur moves the market away
from equilibrium. In contrast to Knight, Schumpeter consired managers of
already established businesses to be non-entrepreneurs.
Penrose (1959) in The
Theory of the Growth of the Firm (see Penrose 19S9; Pitelis 2005) and her
colleagues Barney (1991a, b), Mahoney and Pandian (1992) and Wernerfelt (1984),
all from a resource-based perspective, asserted that entrepreneurial activity
involves identifying opportunities within the economic system. Like
Schumpeter, thev argued that managerial capacities differ from entrepreneurial
capacities. Later on, the American economist Harvey Leibenstein (1979) claimed
that the entrepreneur fills market deficiencies through input-completing
activities. Entrepreneurship involves activities necessary to create or run an
enterprise where not all markets are well established or clearly defined and/or
in which relevant parts of the production function are not completely known.
Israel Kirzner (1973, 1979) stressed that the entrepreneur recognizes and acts
upon market opportunities, and that an entrepreneur is essentially an
arbitrageur. In contrast to Schumpeter's view, the entrepreneur moves the
market toward equilibrium.
In the 1950s, following
the work of Arthur Cole, attention shifted away from economic functions to more
personal analyses of individual entrepreneurs. During this phase of development
in the field, many researchers attempted to discover common character traits
that might help distinguish entrepreneurs from non-entrepreneurs, including the
former's alleged 'need for achievement', a proclivity for risk-taking, an
internal locus of control, and even one's place in the family birth order
(Hornaday et al. 1985).
Prof. Louis Jacques
Filion, in his research report (1997) 'From entrepreneurship to
entreprenology', presents and discusses the trends in the field's development.
NATIONAL CULTURE AND
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Cultures are powerful
phenomena. They can shape behavior at the individual level and affect
institutions at the national level. However, research in entrepreneurship has
revealed that some cultures 'produce' higher levels of entrepreneurial
activity, in terms of innovation, opportunity recognition and exploitation,
creativity, proactivity, search for business support, and actualization of the
business plan (Busenitz and Lau 1996; Lindsay 2005).
Researchers in various
disciplines are intrigued by the relationship between culture and levels of
entrepreneurial activity, and agree on the considerable and vast effect of
culture on entrepreneurship.
This book aims to
demonstrate different cultures in the entrepreneurial realm (e.g., entrepreneurs
from different countries or different sectors of industry), using different
institutionalized assistance for their businesses, of different genders and
ages. These parameters, among others, represent the differentiation between
entrepreneurs as influenced by national culture, business culture,
gender-related culture and generation-based culture. Although cultural
influences are powerful, it is this book's objective to purify entrepreneurship
and reveal its core attributes, i.e., an innovative individual who launches a
business can be Indian or Israeli, man or woman, baby boomer or GenerationY;
he/she is still an entrepreneur.
Culture is an inherent
construct of entrepreneurship and has significant effects on: (1) institutional
profiles (e.g., cognitive, regulatory and normative dimensions); (2) behavioral
dimensions with respect to business implementation styles, business plans,
management styles, and (3) beliefs (e.g., entrepreneurs' interpretation of the
environment, the economic-structural determinants, potential customers'
preferences). Yet, some concepts lie at the heart of entrepreneurship and
cross-cultural variation, such as innovative ideas, visionary businesses,
opportunity exploitation, and creative processes. These are considered the
constructs of entrepreneurship, its genetic material so to speak, and they
represent the collective meaning of entrepreneurship.
Culture is defined in
many studies as a set of shared values, beliefs and expected behaviors embedded
in the values that shape national institutions (e.g., social, educational,
political and technological systems), all of which then reflect and reinforce
national values and beliets i ~ee Figure 1). A country, community, or
institution's culture is mirrored in many aspects of entrepreneurial life
because these cultures reflect the degree to which individuals consider entrepreneurial
behaviors and characteristics (e.g., innovativeness, risk-taking, creativity,
proactiveness, etc.) as desirable or beneficial. As such, processes such as
problem-solving, thinking outside the box. coping in vague situations,
information-seeking, team management and opportunity identification will also
be affected by the culture in terms of the levels to which they are applied,
the way they are conducted, and the results that they achieve (Hofstede 1980b;
Shane 1992, 1993; Davidsson 199S; Busenitz and Lau 1997; Busenitz, Gomez and
Spencer 2000; Makino and Neupert 2000; Mitchell et al. 2000; Mueller and Thomas
2001; Hayton, George and Zahra 2002).
Many studies on the
microperspectives of entrepreneurship have been skewed toward cultural values
and entrepreneurial behavior stemming from Hofstede's (1980a, 1980b) taxonomy
of significant cultural dimensions for explaining behaviors, preferences and
beliefs of people in the organization (discussed later on in this book). These
studies have stressed the notion that the effects of culture on entrepreneur
sip consist of either boosting or blocking entrepreneurial behavior, for
example, by introducing, via various means (media, schools,.teaching material,
higher education, books, business orientation), the notion that some
characteristics and behaviors (e.g., innovation, creativity, independent
thinking) are attractive and rewarding, thereby prompting individuals to choose
entrepreneurship as their preferred path. This, however, is not enough to
foster entrepreneurship: countries supporting such characteristics should echo
the national, entrepreneurial culture and facilitate engagement in
entrepreneurship by establishing national-based support systems for innovative
businesses: financial support schemes, fiscal incentives, social security
systems, labor market regulation, bankruptcy legislation, media involvement,
and educational institutions (e.g., financial support for studying
technological programs in schools and in higher education; programs and
training courses for entrepreneurs). Such national activities will be reflected
in a growing number of entrepreneurial businesses at the national level.
In their instructive
chapter, Zahra and George (2002) provide a categorization of international
entrepreneurship definitions into: businesses engaged in the international
arena (McDougall 1989; Tiessen and Merrilees 1999), businesses that seek to
gain significant competitive advantage from the use of resources and sale of
outputs in multiple countries (Oviatt and McDougall 1994; Zahra, Ireland and
Hitt 2000), or through a combination of innovative, proactive, and risk-seeking
behavior that crosses national borders (Shane 1993; McDougall and Oviatt 2000).
In all cases, an
Macro: institutions'
support in entrepreneurship
Entrepreneuria activity
Micro-entrepreneurial
spirit, thinking, characteristics Figure 1 The ^retro-verso' relationship of
culture and entrepreneurial activity understanding of national cultures and
hence national markets, especially entrepreneurial markets, is warranted.
At the microlevel,
entrepreneurial-based characteristics and behaviors are the driving forces
behind national institutions' establishment of means at the national level to
facilitate the entrance into entrepreneurship of those individuals who choose
it.
Studies investigating the
behavioral dimensions of entrepreneurship have found differences in motivation
to enter into entrepreneurship, management style, entrepreneurial behavior and
the meaning of success and high-performing businesses for individuals coming
from different cultures. For example, there are individuals who choose
entrepreneurship because of a need for approval, perceived instrumentality of
wealth or a need for personal development, reflecting the entrepreneurial
spirit of their national culture. For others, coming from countries with lower
levels of entrepreneurial spirit, the reasons for choosing entrepreneurship
are: 'I have no other choice,' 'I cannot work for someone else,' 'I have been
unemployed for a while now.' This clearly shows the effects of culture on
entrepreneurial activity from both macro- and microperspectives (Hofstede
1980a, 1980b; Scheinberg and MacMillan 1988; Mitchell et al. 2000; Shane and
Venkataraman 2000; Mueller andThomas 2001 ;Hayton, George and Zahra 2002; Shane
2003;Young, Dimitratos and Dana 2003; Kollinger, Minniti and Schade 2007).
Culture is a most
important topic to the emerging transnationalistic patterns in entrepreneurship.
Acknowledging that culture affects entrepreneurial behaviors will ease communication
between entrepreneurs of different cultures and countries. Many entrepreneurs
develop cross-national relationships (e.g., in strategic cooperations, joint
ventures, acquisitions or entry mode into new markets), and/or maintain
cross-cultural inter-firm relationships with employees and clients, suppliers
and investors, and such relationships need to be effectively managed. A more
thorough knowledge and awareness of cultures has become one of the major
building blocks in ongoing entrepreneurial business activities, as such
knowledge can be turned into a vehicle for learning new skills, fostering new
ideas, reducing risk, and facilitating effective resource-sharing with people
and businesses from different cultures. For example, finding foreign investors
is much easier when the entrepreneur understands what the prospective investor
emphasizes in a potential beneficial investment, while understanding the
cultural orientations and values of target clients may enable a determination
of how to penetrate the different markets, how to structure a business plan or
how to make the pitch (Kogut and Singh 1988; Shane 1994; Steensma et al. 2000).
This book aims to
acquaint its readers with a wide spectrum of cultural variation and to show how
such variation 'paints' entrepreneurship in different colors, thereby promoting
its multiplicity.
ENTREPRENEURS VERSUS
SMALL-BUSINESS OWNERS
For many entrepreneurs,
the launching stage is manifested by the establishment of a small business:
most entrepreneurs cannot afford a bigger business, some prefer controlling the
business's processes in a smaller business format, while others minimize risk
by starting small. Yet, although there is overlap between entrepreneurial and
small businesses, the distinction between entrepreneurship and small-business
ownership is quite apparent: small-business owners are not necessarily
entrepreneurs, even when entrepreneurs are small-business owners (Garland et
al. 1984; Stewart et al. 1998; Miles, Covin and Heeley 2000; Runyan, Droge
and Swinney 2008).
The definition of
entrepreneurship ranges from 'Schumpeterian' individuals — the innovators fSchumpeter 1934), to those demonstrating an
initiative-oriented, inventive behavior; individuals that behave proactively to
achieve a business goal, individuals with a personal value orientation (Gasse
1982), those who are ambitious, growth-oriented, restless (Garland etal. 1984;
Gundry andWelsch-001; Sexton et al. 1997), competitive (Covin and Slevin 1991),
visonary (Filion 2002, 2004), and endeavor to lead and be influential in their
environments. As such, entrepreneurs find ways to make exchanges in which the
stakeholders see how they will benefit from cooperating in return for whatever
the corporate entrepreneur needs by influencing and leading (Cohen 2002;
Vecchio 2003).
Distinguishing them from
small-business owners, entrepreneurs are portrayed as exhibiting a higher
propensity for risk, being more motivated to perform research and development
(R&D) in their businesses, to create new technology and to use and/or
create networks to advance their business's goals (Schumpeter 1934; Vesper 1980;
Miller and Friesen 1983; Covin and Slevin 1989; Lumpkin and Dess 1996).
Moreover, unlike small-business owners, entrepreneurs strive to create value
through creativity and innovation, by exploiting unexplored or undiscovered
niches in the market and establishing a sustainable hallmark for their products
and ideas (Garland et al. 1984; Brush and Chaganti 1998; Cooper 1993; Cooper
and Artz 1995; Stewart and Roth 2001; Runyan, Droge and Swinney 2008).
For the most part,
small-business owners actively manage their businesses; this is a unique and
quite distinctive endeavor, because such businesses are fragile in terms of
market penetration and survival. Unlike entrepreneurs, their main goal is to
obtain money from the business, since initially they perceive it as a primary
source of income, rather than a place for self-fulfillment or for establishing
a sustainable hallmark. Therefore, small-business owners are likely to be
risk-averse and to want to keep their business at a controllable level, thereby
achieving long-term stability in a particular 'comfort zone' and reaching
'acceptable' business performance levels, rather than taking the
entrepreneurial approach of maximizing their business performance or
influencing the marketplace. Studies show that small-business owners have less
of a preference for innovation than entrepreneurs and do not engage in new
business practices or strategies to advance their business performance;
similarly, they are less focused on innovation of their products and
technologies (Vesper 1980; Garland et al. 1984; Stewart et al. 1998; Stewart
and Roth 2001).
This book spotlights
entrepreneurs, and draws their exclusive portrait by tracing the hub of
entrepreneurial characteristics and behaviors, as exhibited by entrepreneurs
from different places and cultures.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP TODAY
Today's definitions of
entrepreneurship are diverse and the topics investigated within this framework
are varied. The following are the main areas in research and practice:
• New venture
creation — highlighting the reasons for venture creation, motivations,
environmental characteristics and the importance of the context, personal and
psychological characteristics of entrepreneurs, managerial characteristics of
entrepreneurs versus managers (McClelland 1961; Gartner 198S).
• Emerging
organizations — focusing on the resources for newly founded firms (Bird
1988; Katz and Gartner 1988).
• Joint ventures and
international research — referring to entrepreneurial firms'
collaborations, including franchises, as well as to country-wide and
cross-cultural studies (Jchanson and Vahlne 1977; Hornaday etal. 1985; Hamel
1991; Lane and Lubatkin 1998).
• Entrepreneurship
and economy — focusing on growth rates, longevity of newly founded firms,
venture capital and financing start-ups (Baumol 1968; Bates 1990; Porter 1998).
• The push—pull
theory — or its interpretation in the opportunity-based versus
necessity-based conceptualization of entrepreneurship — provides an important
point of departure for the development of entrepreneurship theory vis-a-vis
economic considerations.
The opportunity-based conceptualization
of entrepreneurship was developed by Howard Stevenson and collaborators,
echoing Kirzner's (1973) classical definition regarding alertness to
opportunity — defining entrepreneurship as a process by
which individuals pursue opportunities without regard to the resources they
currently control; thus opportunity- is considered the bridge that connects the
unfulfilled market's needs and the solution that might satisfy those needs
(Stevenson and Jarillo 1990).
The necessity-oriented
approach, on the other hand, addresses starting a business because no
better alternative to earning a living exists: it is a matter of survival, and
it is more strongly associated with developing economies than with developed
ones (Timmons et al. 1987;Timmons 1999). Studies on Latin America and Africa
address this basic approach in exploring entrepreneur ship.
Broadly, new ventures
founded by opportunity entrepreneurs are considered to have much stronger
positive long-run effects on the economy in terms of emplovment, innovation,
and growth than start-ups initiated by necessity entrepreneurs.
• New venture
performance — referring to the firms and their performance implications and
the fit between the firm and the environment (Stuart and Abetti 1987; Kaman and
Slevin 1993; Lumpkin and Dess 1996), as well as demographic studies of business
start-up growth and survival.
• Organizational
learning and the resource-based view — focusing, among other things, on entrepreneurial education and research
(Levitt and March 1988; Barney 1991a, 1991b; Conner 1991).
• Social networks — highlighting
the importance and effects of social networks on entrepreneurial dynamics and success
(Granovetter 1973; Larson 1992; Uzzi 1997); inward and outward networking and
transnational networking.
• Entrepreneurial
culture — exploring the unique culture of entrepreneurship (Hofstede 1980a,
1980b, 1980c; Shane 1993, 1994; Mitchell et al. 2000; Hayton, George and Zahra
2002).
Other interests, such as high-technology
ventures, incubators and spin-offs, as well as case studies, are
also part of entrepreneurship research.
In summary, throughout the
evolution of entrepreneurship research, entrepreneurs have often been
considered those who bear risk while pursuing opportunities, and have often
been associated with creative and innovative actions. Entrepreneurs also take
on a managerial role in their activities, but routine management of an ongoing
operation is not considered to be entrepreneurship. In this sense,
entrepreneurial activity is fleeting: an individual may perform an
entrepreneurial function in creating an organization, but later is relegated to
the role of managing it without performing any entrepreneurial function.
Following this, many small-business owners would not be considered
entrepreneurs.
THE BOOK'S APPROACH
This book traces the
entrepreneurial process through the theoretical building blocks of entrepreneurship,
i.e., from the resource-based, process-oriented and output-oriented
perspectives. In addition to grounding the theoretical fundamentals of
entrepreneurship, these can also be translated into entrepreneurial practices for
the conception and initiation of a successful new venture in the marketplace.
The book has been
organized to follow the logical progression of starting a new entrepreneurial
venture so that by the end of the book, students will have a complete and comprehensive understanding
of how to start and operate an entrepreneurial business'. The topics presented
and used in Part I focus on the resources of the entrepreneur and
entrepreneurial business — the
resource-based approach to entrepreneurship, introduced in this book through
the general ruestion 'who is the entrepreneur?'The resource-based approach in
this context can be viewed a a continuing search for competitive
advantage in the creation, acquisition, utilization and management of a
business through valuable, rare, inimitable, or non-substitutable business
resources (Barney 1991a), such as tangible and intangible assets, skills,
competencies and learning mechanisms. In this book's context, the focus is
trained on the entrepreneur's motivation, human capital, psychological
characteristics and creativity, and on education and training for entrepreneurs
Resource-based
perspective
Who is the entrepreneur?
a. Potential entrepreneurs: Motivation Human
capital Psychological
characteristics
Creativity Innovation
b. Active entrepreneurs
c. Identifying potential entrepreneurs
d. Education and training for entrepreneurship
Process-oriented
perspective
How do entrepreneurs
launch their ventures?
a. Creating an idea
b. Opportunity exploitation
c. Launching a venture
d. Business plans
e. Managing the venture: people, tasks, plans,
goals, knowledge, creativity and innovation
How do entrepreneurs grow
their businesses:
a. The firm's stages and demands
b. Support and training: mentorship, counseling,
incubators
c. Networking
d. Spin-offs, national and transnational
expansion, mergers
e. Investors and investments
f. Marketing
Environment -local and
global
Figure 2 The book's
model: the entrepreneurial process
Output-oriented
perspective
How do entrepreneurs
define business success?
a. Measuring firm's success -profitability,
reputation, growth in number of employees, growth in number of clients,
different target audiences
b. Types of entrepreneurial businesses: nascent,
ownership, partnership, technopreneur, multipreneur, self-employed,
intrapreneur, family business
— all resources which are fundamental determinants of die
business's performance (Barney 199 la; Teece, Pisano and Shuen 1997) and
that are perceived to provide a sustainable competitive advantage to
entrepreneurial businesses (Lado, Boyd and Wright 1992). Students and
entrepreneurs who read this book can learn how to enhance their
entrepreneurship-relevant capabilities toward fostering their business's
sustainable competitive advantage.
This perspective is
followed, in Part II, by the process-oriented perspective, which presents the
entrepreneurial venture's creation from the creativity and innovation that spark
entrepreneurial ideas, to exploiting opportunities, testing a business concept
in the marketplace, and implementing the concept through managing the
entrepreneurial business, including marketing, finance and managing sustainable
growth. In reading this part of the book, students and entrepreneurs will
become acquainted with the multiple processes that can be applied bv
entrepreneurs to run successful ventures, as well as identifying die specific
advantages and weaknesses of diese processes in different business and
environmental situations. The focus on the process enables adopting some
techniques and strategies, as well as creating personalized strategies to
manage the entrepreneurial business. Part III is oriented to entrepreneurial
outputs, of both the entrepreneur and the business. This part includes a
discussion on the business's success through the measurement lenses: evaluating
the business's profitability, reputation, and growth levels, among other
diings, will allow students and entrepreneurs to adopt and/or create standards
to monitor their business performance and use processes diat will enhance fheir
business success accordingly. One other main output of the entrepreneurial path
is reflected in die types of entrepreneurial businesses that entrepreneurs
choose: by finding the best fit for his or her entrepreneurial avenue (e.g.,
ownership, partnership, technopreneurship, multipreneurship, entrepreneurship
from the home (e.g., mompreneurship), entrepreneurship with family members as
in family businesses) among others, die entrepreneur ensures a self-fulfilling
experience and consequently, an enduring and satisfying entrepreneurial career.
In one of this book's
more unique features, seventy-one interviews were personally conducted by the
author, in person and by telephone and/or Skype, with entrepreneurs from
forty-five countries spanning all continents. From these interviews, twenty-two
case studies and six at-a-glance cases are presented. Widi a few exceptions,2
details of me business and/or entrepreneur appearing in the case study were
changed to protect the interviewee's privacy and ensure confidentiality.
Tracking down
entrepreneurs in different countries for interviews for this book was an
extremely complex task: the journey included chasing down entrepreneurs via
federal/ governmental and private centers and agencies for entrepreneurs around
the world, web, professional and private networks, recommendations from
colleagues in the area of entrepreneurship from academic institutions
worldwide, as well as from professionals working with entrepreneurs around die
world; there were a few 'walk-ins', that is, entrepreneurs who had heard about
our search for interviewees through word of mouth and were willing to take part
in those interviews. The interviews were executed in two stages: first, the
author introduced herself to die entrepreneur by e-mail and sought the
entrepreneur's permission and willingness to be interviewed; upon approval, the
author sent a one-page questionnaire to be completed and returned by e-mail.
This allowed the author to prepare the questions for the interview. Interviews
were executed via telephone, Skype and face to face, and all interviews were
conducted in English3 — even
diough most of the interviewees and die author were not native English speakers
— and lasted around thirty to forty minutes. Of the included case studies, some
of the interviews were conducted in several sittings and by different means to
obtain additional information.
NOTES
Some personal and/or
business details of the entrepreneurs have been altered in order to protect their
privacy. Only those entrepreneurs who specifically asked to be presented by
their real names and details, and signed a contract to that effect, are
presented accordingly. Many details are imaginary and any similarities to other
existing businesses is random. In a few cases, we were asked, and agreed, to
present the exact details of the business: formal letters to this effect were
prepared and signed by the entrepreneurs. Except for the interview with the
Israeli entrepreneurs, which was conducted in Hebrew.
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