Entrepreneurial Ventures: Growth, Development and Impact

Student Name				ID
Unit Number and Title	Unit 9 - Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management
Academic Year	2020-2021	Cohort	April 20	Year and Block		Year 1 - Block 4
Unit Leader	Joseph Olaniyan	Assessor	Dr Rajini, Ibrahim Adewusi, Shaheed Ayinde, Riaz Bhatti, Muhammad Kamran
Assignment Title	Entrepreneurial Ventures and Exploration of the Entrepreneurial Mindset
Issue Date	11/01/2021
Submission Start Date (Formative)	05/03/2021
Submission Date (Summative)	21/03/2021
IV Name and Date	Rahima Khatoon 13/10/20

Introduction

Entrepreneurial ventures are the organisations that prioritise innovation and uniqueness while doing their business (Malecki, 2018). As a junior consultant of Complete Business Solutions, this report will analyse the growth and development of different entrepreneurial ventures and the economic impact of small businesses. The report will also analyse the character traits of successful entrepreneurs and their skills as well as the different environments that foster or hinder entrepreneurship.

Complete business solutions, a privately held company, was founded in 1890 as a bookstore company, which grew into UK’s leading providers of business supplies and services in 1995. The company serves in 20 locations in the UK and it is headquartered in West Yorkshire. The company employs around 600 employees. The specialities of Complete Business Solutions are business solutions, web and e-commerce, print solutions and others.

TASK 1 Critically examine the scope, development and growth of entrepreneurial ventures.

Scope

Entrepreneurship provides great scope for employment and innovation for the enterprise as well as the economy at large (Burns, 2011). Small-scale service ventures provide the scope wide range of entrepreneurial activities as an entrepreneur gets a better scope of profit by selling service rather than manufactured goods. However, the scope of entrepreneurial ventures gets threatened as the workforce grows, which leads to a complex managerial process and authoritative control.

Development

According to Malecki (2018), the development process helps a new firm to perform better which results in the growth of the economy. Entrepreneurship development involves the process of increasing the knowledge and skills of entrepreneurship through structured training programmes. However, the skills and knowledge that helps to develop a business are not enough to sustain. Sustainability requires new skills, proper delegation and good team management. Unless these parameters are met, business development cannot be achieved.

Growth

Business growth is achieved by improving the revenue of the business or by increasing the profitability of the business. Business growth, collectively, includes growth in revenue, sales, company value, employees and customers (Kraus et al., 2018). However, growth and development in business are often threatened by factors like lack of required intelligence, growing workforce, difficulty in keeping the supply chain running and others. The more a business grows, the more such challenges threaten its survival and profit potentialities.

Different types of entrepreneurship ventures

Entrepreneurship helps to boost innovation, a new way of thinking or delivering things that differentiate it from the rest. Besides, it also gives employment and accelerates the economy. The four types of entrepreneurial ventures are as follows:

1. Small entrepreneurial ventures

The small entrepreneurial ventures in the UK are quite famous as the country offers a healthy entrepreneurial environment. Such ventures are usually created by private individuals independently and general involves grocery stores, travel agency and the like (Kraus et al., 2018). It includes a small number of employees to make reasonable profits.

Peter Grainger, who realised that the coffee sold in UK supermarkets, lacked the authenticity of high street coffee flavour, sets up CafepodCoffee. Therefore, the company set up by him primarily revolves around the idea of serving the genuine strength-based London coffee (cafepod.com, 2021).

2. Scalable start-up entrepreneurial ventures

The motive behind such ventures is to attract investment, not only from the home country but also from abroad. Keeping this objective in mind, the products created by such ventures are unique and attractive, to attract global investment.

Hopin is an event management company that provides the first all-in-one live online events platform where attendees can learn and interact with people across the world. The company due to its unique service has attracted investors from both the UK and USA. (hopin.com, 2021).

3. Large company entrepreneurial venture

Such ventures have the motive to expand largely and make a good amount of profits. The strategy of their business plan depends on the customer preferences and feedback, the latest technological knowledge, growth of the competitors, and others.

Marks & Spencer is a major British multinational retail company, employing 80000 people globally. The company generated an estimated revenue of more than $10000 million in 2020 (marksandspencer.com, 2021).

The British Business Bank is a government-owned business development bank in the UK that provides credit to small and medium business enterprises. The company generated an estimated annual amount of $120 million in 2020 (british-business-bank.co.uk, 2021).

4. Social entrepreneurial venture

The social activists often launch their entrepreneurial ventures to produce goods and services that are socially responsible and sustainable. The idea behind this type of venture is different from the other three types (Cieslik, 2018). The primary idea of this kind of venture is to create a healthy environment to live in and not eliminate the continuous extraction of resources from the planet. JustGiving is an online social enterprise that donates funds to the underprivileged. The enterprise has helped people across 164 countries and rose more than $4.5 billion in funds (justgiving.com, 2021).

Typology of entrepreneurship

The four typologies of entrepreneurship are used to describe the classification of its types regardless of their basis.

1. Survival entrepreneurship: The objective of this venture is to exist in the market and meet the obligations and demands of the clients. The long-term start-ups, which aim to survive in the market for the long run, engage in survival entrepreneurship (Tur-Porcar et al., 2018). The small-scale entrepreneurial ventures engage in such types of entrepreneurship as they aim to exist in the market and establish a brand image before making profits.

2. The life-style of entrepreneurship: Lifestyle entrepreneurship is created when the entrepreneur establishes the venture instead of changing his lifestyle and not for gaining profit (Tur-Porcar et al., 2018). Small size entrepreneurship ventures and the social entrepreneurial ventures may fall under this typology of entrepreneurship as such entrepreneurs have the motive of creating something unique that they are passionate about, regardless of the profit potential of the business.

3. Managed growth of entrepreneurship: Such type of entrepreneurship requires complex managerial sophistication. These entrepreneurs can expand their enterprises and sustain for a long period (Parker, 2018). The scalable entrepreneurial ventures fall under such typology of entrepreneurship as these ventures expand their enterprises gradually by attracting wide investments through their managerial actions.

4. Aggressive growth of entrepreneurship: This type of entrepreneurship consists of strong entrepreneurial orientation (Parker, 2018). They are more innovative, proactive and risk-taking. The large entrepreneurship ventures show aggressive growth of enterprises, as they are more active and possess risk-taking nature.

Similarities and differences between entrepreneurial values

Similarities

The motive of entrepreneurship, of any type, is quite similar, that is to create something unique and make a decent amount of profit. Small entrepreneurship ventures and scalable ventures are more or less similar to the latter begin on a very small scale like the former. Large entrepreneurial ventures are created to make a large number of profits and intend to expand on a wider scale (Kraus et al., 2018). Such companies are usually large and they gradually grow larger with consistent expansion. The similarity between such ventures with social entrepreneurship lies in the fact that both can be large ventures and can grow into a further big venture gradually.

Differences

Parameters	Small entrepreneurial ventures	Scalable start-up entrepreneurial ventures	Large company entrepreneurial venture	Social entrepreneurial venture
Motive	These are created without the intention of expansion and profit.	Created on a small scale but is gradually expanded by attracting investors through media	These are created solely for profit-making objective and the desire to stay in the market permanently	These are created primarily to save the planet and use its resources sustainably.
Size	Small size- employees ranging from 10-50	Small size initially but gradually it is expanded employing 100 people.	Large size- number of employees is more than 250	The size depends on the workload and the range of area the company serves.
Style	The style of entrepreneurs is mainly unique and innovative.	The style of doing business involves innovation and managerial complexities.	An aggressive style of profit-making work, thorough advertisement and the like are followed.	Such enterprises use an advertisement, building public opinion and attract media attention to perform their activities successfully.

Table 1: Differences

TASK 2: Critically evaluate how small businesses have an impact on different levels of the economy (local, regional, national) and in an international context.

A small business is defined as a privately owned corporation or partnership having less number of employees and limited annual revenue than a regular-sized corporation or business. They not only influence the national economy but also influence the local, regional economies and internal contexts of economies.

Impacts of small businesses on the local, regional, national and international economy

The local economy may be defined as the market and the networking systems, which are considered as the part of a particular community. Many small businesses employ local people as they operate locally and this affects the entire community and its people. The small businesses not only provide job opportunities, but they also support other local small businesses for acquiring supplies from them or financing.

Positive impact: There were 1,010,000 small businesses sectors in London and it constituted 99.8% of all the businesses of London and comprised 52% of the total employment rate. The diversity amongst the small business setups across London proved to be advantageous for the economic balance of the city (data.london.gov.uk, 2020).

Negative impact: However due to the COVID-19 crisis, huge changes to the nature of work- from remote working to automation and concerns regarding the retention of employees and therefore there was a decrease in the local economic output.

The regional economy may be defined as the economic activities of the organisations about a particular region of a country.

Positive impact: In 2020 in the South Eastern region of the UK there were approximately 1200 small business setups. There was an increase of approximately 2% in the South Eastern region and the Northern Ireland region 19% increase in the economy was observed. The number of employees for the South Eastern region was 209 and 35 for the Northern Ireland region.

Negative impact: Wales saw a fall in the economy by 6% and in the North-Western region of the UK the fall was 3% (56 employees).

Figure 1: Number of businesses across the regions of the UK

(Source: BEIS, Business Population Estimates, 2020)

The national economy may be defined as the economic activities of the organisations of a nation.

Positive impact: In 2020, there were 6 million small business sectors in the UK, which was an increase of 112, 700 as compared to 2019 statistics. This resulted in the economic growth of the entire UK in the pre-COVID period. The total employment in the small business sector in the UK was 16.8 million accounting 61% of the UK’s total employment (fsb.org.uk, 2020).

Negative impact: However due to COVID-19 there was a huge shortage of employees in every sector of business; many existing employees lost their jobs and there were huge cases of unemployment. As a result, the national economy of UK degraded for a particular period.

The global economy may be defined as the interrelations amongst the economic operations of various companies throughout the world.

Positive impact: Small businesses create competition amongst various peers on a global basis and thereby help in the development of the global economy. The continuous struggles lead to an increase in bringing out the best in the businesses.

Negative impact: Small business setups nowadays use digital marketing mostly due to its abundant usage in recent times. In such cases, international shipping is required, the companies might face troubles while doing so, and this affects customer responses negatively leading to the customers not relying upon buying anything from that particular company.

Importance of small businesses and business start-ups to the growth of the social economy

Small businesses help in growth, new market openings and creation of job opportunities and therefore serve as the pillar for the growth in economy. They play an important role in fulfilling daily requirements as per social and business standards. They also help communities in spreading awareness about education, childcare and women empowerment. Setting up of small businesses benefit the people by providing them with a significant percentage of new jobs which create high satisfaction amongst the people. In the UK and Europe, small businesses comprise of less than 250 staff with a usual turnover of fewer than €50 million. According to labs.com (2018), the UK Parliament identified 5.7 million small businesses making 99% of all businesses in the nation.

These businesses support the economic growth of a country and contributed 51% of the overall turnover generated by the private sector in 2018 (labs.com, 2018). The stability of UK economy depends upon the low unemployment rate; small businesses play a very crucial role in providing job opportunities to people and thereby a group of skilled as well as semi-skilled employees are employed to support the future business growth of the UK.

Economical differences made by small, medium and large businesses

Small businesses possess a smaller customer base, which generally includes the local markets; most of the capital needs are sufficed by leveraging personal net worth. Total employment in small businesses in 2020 was 16.8 million (61% of the total) and the turnover was estimated at £2.3 trillion which accounted for 52% of the total turnover of the UK (fsb.org.uk, 2020).

Medium businesses have limited sources of capital, some of which are quite hard to access; their customer base is also limited to geographical limits. Therefore, as the businesses grow, they focus on extending the business by addition of new products in their categories, some of which might fail to impress the people, leading to economic losses of the firm. The medium-sized businesses in the UK have generated around 13% employment and 16% turnover (research briefings.files.parliament.uk, 2021).

Large businesses have a wide range of funding resources and their markets are diverse (global) with diverse customers. There are 800 large businesses with more than 39% employment and 48% turnover (research briefings.files.parliament.uk, 2021).

TASK 3 Analyse the characteristic traits, skills and motivational drivers of successful entrepreneurs, supported by specific examples

Characteristic traits of successful entrepreneurs

There are various characteristic traits of successful entrepreneurs, which distinguish them from other entrepreneurs. Hence, they become an inspiration and role model for the younger generation (Hachana et al., 2018).

1. Motivation: Hardworking entrepreneurs are extremely motivated and success oriented. Successful entrepreneurs are quite passionate regarding their work.

1. Creativity: successful entrepreneurs have a creative side imbued within them; they love working over out-of-the-box ideas, which can help in the improvement of the organisation's workforce and productivity.

2. Persuasiveness: Entrepreneurs are good negotiators and they give the employees the edge for raise or promotion.

Skills of successful entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs need to develop their skills to become successful. Failure in business comes from the lack of skills (Almahry et al., 2018).

1. Ambition: Most of the successful entrepreneurs remain in the chain because of their ambitious nature, they always have the zeal for succeeding within them, they go on thriving on reaching small milestones, and they consider these to reach their goals.

2. Willingness to learn: Successful entrepreneurs stay updated with the latest information regarding the improvements, which can be done, to the business or any latest changes in the technologies and more.

3. Courage and Risk Taking: To harness the power of creativity, the entrepreneurs inspire the employees on their good ideas and plans. They dare to take risks for achieving their goals.

Motivational drivers for successful entrepreneurs

Motivational drivers are the elements, which work as the influencing factors for individuals; successful entrepreneurs use these motivational drivers as the keys to building up a successful business (Obschonka et al., 2019). The motivational drivers for successful entrepreneurs are listed down below:

1. The most important factor, which acts as the motivational driver for a successful entrepreneur, is the willingness and the courage to take action. Without actions, an entrepreneur cannot reach the heights of success.

2. Successful entrepreneurs need to possess knowledge about specific business issues and keep themselves updated regarding business issues.

3. Successful entrepreneurs always have a mission of achieve more that will bring a difference in the world.

4. Successful entrepreneurs possess the motivation for personal growth and accomplishment. They enjoy their journey and possess the quest for learning and keeping themselves updated.

Zuber and Mohsin Issa are marked as the “remarkable entrepreneurs” by Brian Madderson who is the Chairman of “Petrol Retailers Association (PRA)”. They started their business with petrol forecourt in Bury, Greater Manchester in the year 2001. Their business, EG Group, successfully own more than 5200 petrol stations, mainly in Europe and the US, with more than 33000 employees. They are described as softly spoken and modest and of great personal integrity. They possess a purpose-driven approach to leadership, which has helped them in becoming successful entrepreneurs. They aim at using their success as a force for the betterment of their organisation.

Motivation and mindset

The personality of an entrepreneur plays an important role in establishing a successful business and this motivates them to tackle several problems and risks. The personality traits include the traits, which help the individuals in generating new ideas and applying them in the generation of profit. The ideologies need to serve certain criteria of the demand of the customers and it is the duty of an entrepreneur to generate ideas for maintenance of sustainability.

For examples, Issa brothers added more retailing to petrol stations and that helped them to get success. Transforming a filling station to shopping destination has become possible due to strong motivation of retail chain success and mindset to become a great entrepreneur.

A successful entrepreneur must possess the ability to take risks and set targets and missions of the business. They need to plan strategies in order to achieve the targets and missions. He/she also needs to know the process of generation of sales. Thus, successful entrepreneurs need to motivate and inspire themselves for running a business by tackling the problems properly and possess the mindset for attaining the goals.

TASK 4 Critically analyse how background and experience influence entrepreneurs, both positively and negatively, by comparing and contrasting examples

Background

Background of an individual, financial, family or education has an impact on the entrepreneurs. However, the background can also hinder entrepreneurship as an individual with a backward financial background often avoid taking the risk in his business, fearing loss. A non-business background also hinders the growth of entrepreneurship, as individuals are likely to take up other earning source like the job, research and the like.

Mark Zuckerberg who is the CEO of Facebook was born in an educated family, which played an important role in fostering his knack for computer programming at an early age. Currently his net worth is $78 billion (forbes.com, 2021).

Experience

Having experience in business indicates possession of knowledge about the sector or industry, one is venturing. This helps to understand the needs, demands and the challenges that arise in the sector. However, lacking proper experience in the respective field leads to confusion about the sector, difficulty in handling clients, complex managerial process and others.

Zuber Issa, the founder of Euro Garages, had a previous experience of selling petrol from his parents' filling station. This has helped him to expand the ranches of a single petrol station Bury into more than 5900 branches (dailymail.co.uk, 2020). Similarly, Mohsin Issa cofounder of the company has massive experience in retailing has made to own the retail giant “ASDA”.

Hellen Bowley lived with his sister who had microcephaly. Therefore, she understood the importance of easy techniques to stay safe even at home. Her company Alcove is an internet of things power care technology that pioneers independent and safe living for older and disabled adults (forbes.com, 2019).

Richard Branson, the owner of Virgin Group, did not fare well in school and dropped out at the age of 16. He resided in London where he developed an interest in music. This resulted in the origin of Virgin which is a mail-order company and through that, he gained fund for his Student magazine (medium.com, 2018).

Mark Zuckerberg was quite famous on Harvard campus for his computer programming skills and had created ‘The Facebook’. He was a Harvard dropout and pursued Facebook permanently which has reached 2 billion users by 13 years (businessinsider, 2020).

Positive and Negative Impacts of background and experience on entrepreneurship

Personal background and experience can highly affect a business and can have positive and negative impacts on entrepreneurship. The background of an individual comprises of subsistence from his/her family, friends, and the financial support. If an individual is motivated towards achieving a goal in their business, they can satisfactorily work towards attaining it. This support enhances risk-taking ability and provides the motivation, which positively influences entrepreneurship. Financial background also plays an important role in enhancement of the ability to take risks. Without family support and motivation, an individual cannot walk towards achieving the goal. Prior experience of an individual in a business also influences entrepreneurship. If he/she possesses good experience in a business, then he/she can extend their existing business or set up a new one and this affects positively entrepreneurship. However, if an individual does not possess good experience then he/she might be afraid to take risk while starting a new business.

Successful entrepreneurs mostly get the support in setting up any business and face any tough situations in the course of becoming successful. As stated by Dees (2017), many businesses cannot get through due to inefficient teamwork and deficiency in growth. If the financial background of an individual is strong enough to support him/her till the business gets established, then he/she is inspired to take risk in setting up the business and run that efficiently.

Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg developed a knack towards computer programming from the very childhood, he belongs to a well-educated family and his friends influenced and encouraged him to pursue his dream of building an identity infrastructure for the planet. Even though he was a Harvard dropout, the support from his family and friends to go on with his idea of building up Facebook, made him a successful entrepreneur.

Billionaire Richard Branson struggled with dyslexia in his childhood days and faced quite a lot of troubles in schools. His childhood has negative impacts on his career that had wrong turns and miscalculations prominently impacting his businesses. He was successful in the business of planes and trains and launched Virgin Cars but that was a huge investment was a failure. After overcoming various hurdles in different sectors of business (as he ventured and experimented with many business lines), he finally gained success with the launch of Virgin Records.

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Conclusion

The report has identified the development and growth of entrepreneurship, the wide variety of entrepreneurial ventures and the typology of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship helps to boost innovation, a new way of thinking or delivering things that differentiate it from the rest. Besides, it also gives employment and accelerates the economy. Through the report, the similarities and differences of various entrepreneurial ventures are identified. The impact of small businesses on several levels of economy, the characteristic skills and traits of successful entrepreneurs and the environment that encourages and hinders the growth of entrepreneurship is also examined.

References

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