After I analysed the outcomes of my interviews it became clear that there is a big difference in small and larger companies and their way of view in entrepreneurship and their needs. I had interview with people of ING and less known SME’s abroad. I also interviewed two young Dutch entrepreneurs who just finished their master and started a small enterprise. There are a lot of different things on their mind. The needs of these groups are very different. Especially the younger starting entrepreneurs are looking for institutions who can help and advice them. The larger companies have more power and can use this to accomplish their goal. I think it is a nice idea to look differently to our question What do entrepreneurs need? As we did in the beginning a lot of characteristics can be mentioned but you can also answer the questions what the entrepreneurs need to fulfil their jobs there entrepreneurship. I hope this is not to confusing for my grandma who has to understand my essay, but it gives an additional point of view.
I also writing the paper I have a hard time to structure it since we need to mengle in so many things. In the assignement is stated that you should give an overview of this blog and involve relevant challenges which are mostly about strategy, the obligatory article Burgelman and our ques-tion. Since I narrowed thw quest down to the enviromental/governemental needs I find it difficult to mix all these big topics in one essay. And in a way lay-people understand.
Since I started to scan all the blog posts to create an overview its nice to read back the disccusions we had. I hope withinh a few hours I have a better view how to put all the peices in one structured essay.
Now I’m writing the paper and using articles for the literature part of my paper. Here you can see a part of it, it is about the personal characteristics:
‘The first category I would like to define is the personal one. In a paper of Shane, Locke and Collins five important aspects of entrepreneurs are mentioned: needs for achievement, risk taking, tolerance for ambiguity, locus of control and self efficacy.
According to the authors the need of achievement is significant related to founding a company. Secondly, people with a high need of achievement would also easy take risks (McCleveland’s, 1961). The third point, tolerance of ambiguity, means that people see situations without clear outcomes as attractive (Budner, 1982). This is also high in the case of an entrepreneur. The fourth point, locus of control, means the belief in the
extent to which individuals believe that their actions or personal characteristics affect
outcomes These could be internal or external. If it is internal, the person believes that he can control his outcomes. If it is external, he believes that the environment will control the outcomes. Entrepreneurs are highly associated with an internal locus of control (Rotter, 1966).
The fifth point is the self efficacy, which is the belief in one’s ability to muster and implement the necessary personal resources, skills, and competencies to attain a certain level of achievement on a given task (Bandura, 1997). This is highly related with entrepreneurs’.
Hi people
We have the confrontation lecture on monday!
Shall we discuss our questions in the blog so we are well prepared.
1)My first question will be about lay-person writing style.. What are the criteria for the style… Mr wolters gave us the example of introduction of the book, but in my opinion the criteria are still a bit unclear and subjective. Can we wright I and we or do we have to wright it in the 3rd person?
2) What are the specific criteria for the empirical research we have to include?
3) What to do with opposite results and no answer??
If you already have the answers tell me, so we don’t have to bore each other during the confrontation and can try to gain some credits
Finally the last week of blogging is started. Normally the week is very busy whit keeping the blog up to date and making cases for the other course but this week was really busy. Making that short movie cost al lot of time witch I rather had spent on working on my quest. I still don’t have the feeling that I have found the right way to answer the question but ill try to make the best out of it.
After doing the interviews I found a lot of answers witch I already found in the literature. Luckily some of the answers were different but I don’t know if I can use these answers, my comments tell me I rather don’t. I’m pretty sure that I found enough characteristics to use in my quest. Ill try to compare these characteristics and maybe I can find characteristics that always come back by successful entrepreneurs.
I realize that with only summarizing the characteristics the question is not answered. What Mark has written in his post about intrapreneurship, was the first thought of mine when I read the question. Only linking it to the strategy that the company is following is something I didn’t think off. I also think that it is very difficult to establish because it is different in every single company.
Hey fellow students.
I am very happy that all the challenges are finished. After this blog I can finally focus on the essay. Yesterday I had two interviews: one with a barber and one with the owner of a production company. I asked them questions like: what do you think an entrepreneur needs, can you name examples? What are important characteristics of an entrepreneur do you posses them? What do you think of intuition? Do you think strategy is an important aspect an entrepreneur needs? Why? What are the strategic strengths of you organization?
It was pretty obvious that the results of the interviews were quite different. One of the reasons can be because the organizations differ in size and they operate in a different environment with another amount and kind of concurrence. The owner of a production company said that that innovation, change, and making improvements are key functions of the strategy of an entrepreneur. While the barber doesn’t think continuously looking to innovation, change is that important. He said you have to go with the flow and keep techniques up to date if you are the owner of a barbershop. But he is not continuously busy with thinking how he can improve the results of the barbershop by developing a strategy. I hope everybody makes progress with his or her essay!!!
Last week I did my second interview with an entrepreneur out of the telecom sector. When we look to the needs, the first thing this entrepreneur mentioned was money. That he said money, is also because his company deliver the products and get the money later from the provider. This creates a gap between expenditures and receivables.
The second import need that the entrepreneur named in the interview was knowledge. According to him, knowledge is necessary to operate as entrepreneur successful. This is in line with the interview of the other entrepreneur, who also states that knowledge is a very important factor in entrepreneurship.
This entrepreneur had also recommendations at the personal-level. He thinks that an entrepreneur needs to be very positive and also needs an enthusiast way of communicating to others, for example for stimulating other employees or for selling the product to a possible customer. These were the most important things he mentioned.
Now, I’m going to compare the results with the first interviews results and after that compare them with the literature.
And this is something that needs some more attention in my quest. There are two forms of entrepreneurship. I mentioned those in two earlier posts. What I trying to figure out is what the differences and similarities are of the entrepreneur and the intrapreneur. My opinion is that the entrepreneur takes more risk. (s)He needs to invest more and has no influences from a CEO. The intrapreneur has unlimited capital and can make mistakes and it doesn’t hurt him/her financially. The entrepreneur could loose his/her money that (s)he invested or worse her/his house. Does these differences mean that the two forms have different needs? And should I focus on just one of the two? To make it easy, one can make an easy connection with one of the obligatory articles and with strategy when one focuses on the intrapreneur. The connection of innovation and stimulating entrepreneurship and strategy within an organization is easy to make.
This is not a really good movie but intrapreneurship is explained fairly easy. (Nice background music by the way)
Maybe when I have more questions or somethings I want to share I will post something more. But if I don’t, good luck everybody with the management studies essay and exams you might have to do.
Hello everybody the last week of posting and commenting has begun, finally. I have to say that I have learned something the past weeks. At first I thought that it isn’t possible to combine this course with the other one I follow. But it worked out reasonably. This posting and commenting takes a lot of your time and time is something I don’t have. I’m not the only student that has to work next to his/her study to pay the bills. So the thing I really did learn is that I can make a planning. It wasn’t easy but I managed to complete the challenges and the postings and comments on time.
What I’m trying to figure out right now is how to combine the strategy component with the question. I’ve read some posts of students who have the same problem. Maybe we can use some more of the literature of the other course I follow, strategy control and design. The book we use of Goold and Campbell deals with structuring an organization. What I am doing now is try to find out what the needs are for the entrepreneur and what I found was, although the population I researched is way to small, that different organizations require different things of the entrepreneur.
In the interviews I asked the entrepreneurs which category was most important for them and which one was the least important. My findings were that for example a real estate organization, has no need for capital. The entrepreneur I interviewed stated that he only moves ‘boxes’. So money is least important for him. For a wholesaler is capital the most important, the wholesaler needs to buy products and has to store this products. So different organizations and markets have different needs.
How to make a connection with strategy? I think the entrepreneur (or intrapreneur) needs to know what kind of structure and strategy the organizations needs to become successful. That is where the book of Goold and Campbell can be used. It is just a thought and I need to finetune it. So comments and advice are welcome.
CIMO Entrepreneurship Lecturedonderdag 25 oktober 2007
Op donderdag 25 oktober om 16.00 uur vindt de eerste CIMO Entrepreneurship Lecture plaats in zaal C-541 van het W&N gebouw (De Boelelaan 1085, 5e verdieping).
Professor Wim Naudé, Senior Research Fellow aan het World Institute for Development Economics Research, United Nations University, Helsinki, gaat het spits afbijten met een presentatie over ondernemerschap in ‘post-conflict states’, getiteld ‘Entrepreneurship in Economic Development: From Destructive to Productive?’. In deze lezing gaat hij vooral in op de rol die ondernemers kunnen spelen in situaties van ineenstorting van de economie (zoals tijdens opstanden en oorlog) en hun functie tijdens post-conflictsituaties en (oorlogs)wederopbouw.
VU-medewerkers, studenten en overige belangstellenden zijn van harte welkom, de lezing is gratis toegankelijk.
Voor meer informatie kunt u contact opnemen met helen.couwenberg@cimo.vu.nlZie ook www.cimo.vu.nl
Ondernemerschap in ‘post-conflict states’
De rol van ondernemerschap in economische ontwikkeling: van destructief tot productief?
In deze presentatie wordt de rol van ondernemerschap in economische ontwikkeling besproken. Hierbij wordt vooral ingegaan op de rol die ondernemers kunnen spelen in situaties van ineenstorting van de economie (zoals tijdens opstanden en oorlog) en hun functie tijdens post-conflictsituaties en (oorlogs)wederopbouw. Er worden diverse modellen behandeld waarin de rol van de ondernemer wordt verbonden aan economische groei en aan structurele economische verandering. Hieruit wordt geconcludeerd dat ondernemerschap, anders dan vaak wordt gedacht, niet altijd een positieve rol speelt in de economische ontwikkeling. Onproductief en destructief ondernemerschap kan de heropleving van de particuliere sector remmen, waardoor het moeilijker wordt om aan armoede te ontsnappen en waardoor zelfs nieuwe conflicten kunnen oplaaien. Om onproductief en destructief ondernemerschap tegen te gaan wordt een aantal oplossingen aangedragen, zoals overheidssteun en de rol die door immigranten wordt gespeeld.
Korte bio:Wim Naudé is Senior Research Fellow bij het World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER) van de United Nations University in
Helsinki, Finland. Daarnaast is hij hoogleraar Economics aan de North-West University in Zuid Afrika Hij behaalde zijn diploma’s aan de University of Warwick in Engeland en de North-West University in Zuid Afrika. Voorheen was hij researcher bij het Centre for the Study of African Economies van de University of Oxford, Senior Member van St. Antony’s College en Visiting Professor aan de Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia). Bovendien heeft hij gewerkt als onderzoeker op het gebied van het ontwikkelingsbeleid in een aantal Afrikaanse landen, was hij in dienst bij de Board of the International Council for Small Business (ICSB) en was hij lid van de ‘Council of Statics’ van Zuid-Afrika.
