Developing Entrepreneurial skills

Developing Entrepreneurial skills

Introduction

An entrepreneur can be defined as an individual who can identify any opportunity and create a new business. The person has the ability to take risks and innovate new ideas and goods. They play a substantial role in economic development and have a contribution to the GDP of the country. Entrepreneurship is recognised as a vital activity to bring a change in the economy of the nation and in society. It has an impact on different aspects like political, legal, technological, demographic and socio-cultural. This report will be investigating the different types of entrepreneurs and will analyse the impact of small business on the economy. Further, there will also be a discussion on the differences between medium and large-scale businesses and their impacts on the economy.

Section 1- Different types of Entrepreneurships

Investigate different types of entrepreneurial ventures comparing their similarities and differences.

There are different types of entrepreneurial ventures and they can be classified into:

Small entrepreneurial ventures

Majority of the businesses can be classified into the category of small entrepreneurial ventures. These businesses are usually owned and run by a single person and generally hires locals and family member to support the operations. The primary examples of small business entrepreneurial ventures can be boutiques, grocery stores and boutiques. Marshfield bakery is a small business organisation located in the Chippenham in United Kingdom that manufactures handmade cakes, biscuits and snack bars and distributes it throughout the UK and Europe (swmas.co.uk, 2021). The company has an employee count of nearly 45 and generates a gross turnover of around £2m.

Scalable start-up entrepreneurial ventures

A scalable start-up can be defined as a business that uses an innovative idea and looks for a business model to accomplish higher growth and develop a more reputable organisation. Sendmybag.com is a start-up organisation that has recognised an opportunity of the door to door delivery of the luggage. A large number of luggage gets missing while travelling and this organisation utilised this opportunity to create a new business of delivering the luggage directly to the destination of the travellers. This

Large company entrepreneurial venture

Large-scale entrepreneurship can be defined as organisations that have sustainable innovation and offer newer products into the market. The primary focus is on enhancing the innovation and creativity within the organisation. Utilia energy is an organisation that deals in energy supply. This organisation aims at the innovation of new products and it installed a smart meter first in the UK. This organisation has 782 employees and generates a revenue of nearly $923.42 million (dnb.com, 2021).

Social entrepreneurial venture

Social entrepreneurship can be defined as an organization that aims at solving social issues with their products and services. The primary goal of this entrepreneurial venture is making the world a better place. Their aim is not wealth or profit generation but for a social cause. Charity bank is a social entrepreneurial venture that aims at using the money for a good purpose (charitybank.org, 2021). A savings and loans bank provides loans to the charities, social enterprises and charitable organization from the money of account holders. The organization has an employee count of nearly 60 and generates revenue of nearly 14 million dollars.

Typology of entrepreneurship

Survival entrepreneurship

The survival entrepreneurship can be defined as an entrepreneurial activity where the basic goal is to survive and meet the financial obligations of the ventures. The long-term goal of these types of entrepreneurial ventures is to stay in the business and are characterised by freezing of employment, cost-cutting and layoffs. Small business entrepreneurship falls under this category since they perform with limited employees and limitations.

The life-style of entrepreneurship

Lifestyle entrepreneurship can be defined as a business through an individual aim at changing the lifestyle rather than profit making. This type of entrepreneurship is passionate about the business and mainly focuses on the quality of life rather than growth. Lifestyle entrepreneurship is motivated by survival and the need to maintain a quality of life. Social entrepreneurship falls under this typology since the entrepreneurs are focused on their passion rather than profit making.

Managed growth of entrepreneurship

Managed growth of entrepreneurship can be defined as a venture where the entrepreneur seeks sustainable growth and expansion in business. They have a sustainable business model and over time, they seek for stable growth (Morris et al., 2018). Scalable start-up entrepreneurial ventures fall under this typology since it utilises an innovative idea for business growth.

Aggressive growth of entrepreneurship

This typology of entrepreneurship can be defined as a venture that seeks for more innovative, risk-taking and proactive approach for business growth. Large company entrepreneurship falls under this typology since large risks are involved.

Differences between different types of entrepreneurial ventures:

Bases	Small company entrepreneurial venture	Scalable startup entrepreneurial venture	Large company entrepreneurial venture	Social entrepreneurial venture
aim	Aims at profit-making to support family and lifestyle	They are the opportunist and aims at innovating things that the market demands.	They have advanced professionals and focus on the sustainability of the innovation	Their primary aim is business for a social cause rather than only profit-making
employees	Hire local employees and are usually run by family members	Hire specialised employees and gets funded by venture capitalist	Have advanced professionals	Run by entrepreneurs who want to create business for the social cause

Table 1: Differences between different types of entrepreneurial ventures

Similarities:

The basic goal of all these entrepreneurial ventures is to create a business. They all focus on identifying an opportunity in the market and using it to create business either for profit or for non-profitable purpose. Further, the major similarity of small scale, scalable start-up, large company and social entrepreneurs is their positive attitude and risk-taking ability. All these entrepreneurs aim at converting their vision and idea into a business.

Assess the impact of small businesses on the economy supported by data and statistics derived from local sources

Small business turnover

Small and medium scale businesses figure to approximately 99 per cent of the businesses in the UK. These small businesses are very important to support and shape the economy of the UK. Small businesses can be defined as the ventures that have lesser than 250 employees and generates a turnover of less than €50 million (bionic.co.uk, 2021). Further, all the small businesses in the UK had a combined turnover of near to £2.0 trillion. This figure estimates to around 52 per cent of the overall turnover of the private sector. SMEs are considered as the key to the growth and sustainability of the nation.

Revenue generation

The operations of the small-scale businesses contribute to around 47 per cent of the revenue to the UK economy. They are a crucial part of the UK economy and generates close to 60 per cent of ten entire private-sector jobs. Moreover, innovation and expanding the business into the international market can help to grow the businesses of the SMEs. Moreover, according to the reports of esrc.ukri.org (2021), exporting can add up to £1.15 billion to the GDP.

Employment

There are close to around 5.94 million small businesses in the UK and each of these firms has around 50 employees. Moreover, out of 6 million businesses in the UK, SMEs counts to around 99 per cent of the overall businesses (fsb.org.uk, 2021). These SMEs provides three-fifths of the overall employment opportunity in the UK and provides employment to approximately 16.8 million individuals.

SME by region

In London 3 are close to 1.1 million private-sector small businesses and in the South East region, there are near about 939000 businesses (statista.com, 2021). In addition to this, there are 598000 small and medium scale businesses. They accounts for up to 35 per cent of the overall business population.

Make sure your work shows a critical examination of the scope, development and growth of entrepreneurial ventures.

Scope

Small businesses are the backbone of the UK economy and the government has been focusing on the growth and development of the startups. To support this, the business secretary in the UK has formulated plans to boost the growth of SMEs. Further, the growth in business in the UK is close to around 3 per cent and this is a huge factor for the expansion and growth of the business organization. Moreover, the UK govern net has also defined the national minimum wage, which is close to 1598 EUR per month (gov.uk, 2021). This wage is considerably low as compared to other countries like that of the US. Thus, it will help to increase the profit margin of the small scale, large scale and scalable startup entrepreneurial ventures.

Development

Small business entrepreneurship usually focuses on a modest lifestyle to support the family. There are great opportunities in the UK for business expansion and development. Moreover, the government is also supporting the development of startups. Thus, with the improvisation of effective ideas, a small business can develop into large-scale businesses. Large businesses usually have resources, advanced professionals and cash flow and utilizing all these factors, entrepreneurs can look forward to business expansion outside the UK for maximizing profit. The large businesses in the UK are developing at a rate of 9 per cent annually. There are immense opportunities for social enterprises and other organisations in the UK to collaborate with oversea businesses, develop, and expand their operations in the international market.

Growth

Since small business forms a major part of the UK economy. Moreover, they also account for around 99 per cent of the overall business in UK. Moreover, the growth of the medium scale industries is rapid over the growth of small and micro-businesses. According to the reports of itpro.co.uk (2021), the tech startups in UK have increased by an amount of 16 per cent in the third quarter of 2020. During this period, 3641 startups were recorded to grow. In addition to this, around 9 per cent of the businesses in the UK are social enterprises (gov.uk, 2021). These social enterprises are also growing parallel to the SMEs and generally have a long-term outlook.

Figure 1: Growth of business in the private sector in UK by number of employees

(Source: merchantsavvy.co.uk, 2021)

Evaluate the differences between small, medium and large business and the contribution they make to the different levels of the economy (local, regional, national and international) by applying relevant data and statistics.

Small and medium scale business

Local

There are close to 5.82 million small businesses in UK (merchantsavvy.co.uk, 2021). These businesses usually have 10 to 50 employees. Moreover, UK has nearly 35600 medium scale businesses.

Regional

They provide employment opportunities to the locals in different regions in UK. They support the economy of different regions in UK like London is the fastest-growing region in terms of small and medium scale business. There are nearly 5975000 SMEs in different regions of UK like south-east, north eats North West, England, wales, and other regions.

National

These businesses have a turnover of 629163 million pounds that has an immense contribution to the national GDP (merchantsavvy.co.uk, 2021).

International

Further, with investment from foreign firms, these organizations can grow into large businesses and has the potential to generate foreign currency. Moreover, they have the potential of creating job opportunities and can attract talents form many developing nations. They can create millions of jobs to support the world economy and they acquire the maximum percentage of overall job opportunities globally.

Figure 2: Growth of business in the private sector in UK by number of employees

(Source: merchantsavvy.co.uk, 2021)

Large businesses

Local

There are approximately 7700 large businesses in UK. In each, there are more than 250 employees. Moreover, the functioning of these large businesses can help the small and medium scale businesses to grow and can also fund them.

Regional

They can create employment opportunities in different regions of UK and has near to 10868 employees.

National

The pay scale of this large business is higher than that of small and medium scale businesses. Thus, their revenue generation is around 2077 billion pounds and it can reflect on the higher contribution to the national GDP.

International

Moreover, large businesses can collaborate with international brands and that may bring foreign currency. In addition to this, it can also help to enhance the national economy through government taxes and policies.

Section 2- Understanding Entrepreneurs

Provide at least 3 examples of successful local and global entrepreneurs to illustrate the characteristics and traits of entrepreneurship and the enterprises they have led to success.

Behind the success of the entrepreneurs, they possess multiple character traits. These traits play a crucial role in their success. The major characteristics and the traits that they possess are:

Passion

Creation of a business takes a large amount of time as well as effort. The most important thing in the process of converting the idea into a business is passion. This characteristics trait enables to work for longer hours beyond their working time. This enables entrepreneurs to focus on their dreams and vision. Tania Boler, the founder of Elvie is an example of a successful entrepreneur who was passionate about the health of women. She created the business to ensure women health issues are looked after.

Creativity

Creativity is another characteristics trait that the entrepreneurs must possess. These traits enable them to think differently and uniquely form others. Businesses are generally built on big ideas and creativity enables the entrepreneurs to think out of the box. Richard Branson the founder of the Virgin group is one of the most successful entrepreneurs (virgin.com, 2021). He used his creativity and established Virgin unite which is a non-profitable organisation that united entrepreneurial ideas and people to create and develop opportunities to transform the world into a better place. Mark Zuckerberg is another outstanding example of successful entrepreneurs who recognized the opportunity to develop a social media site that could interconnect the students at Harvard University and this site was later named as Facebook.

Risk-taking ability

Risk-taking ability is the most important characteristics trait of every entrepreneur. Innovation and creating a business on a new idea has multiple risks involved and there are even equal chances of failure. This characteristic helps the entrepreneurs to forgo all uncertainty and risks and work hard for the accomplishment of the goals. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook took the risk of dropping out of Harvard University to give his fullest efforts behind the creation of the social media site of Facebook.

bases	Business managers	Entrepreneurs
Focus	The primary focus of these business managers are on the ongoing operations.	They focus business start ups
Driving force	Their primary driving source are the preservation of status quo	They are driven by creativity and innovation
Decision making	Their decisions are based on calculations	Intuitions frame their decision making process

Table 2: Differences between business managers and entrepreneurs

Explore different lines of arguments for entrepreneurial success and impacts of situational and motivational factors.

Entrepreneurs are the person who has the vision of perceiving things differently and has the ability to recognise opportunities. Using those opportunities, they create a business. In other words, it can be said that "Entrepreneurs are born, not made". It has been identified that different situational variables play a crucial role in decision-making to start a business. The situational factors provide an entrepreneur with the opportunity to start a business and additionally, a positive attitude has an impact on the startup. However, these situational factors have both positive as well as a negative influence on the success of an entrepreneur. The situational factors can be classified into three categories namely: negative displacements, positive displacement and between things. Richard Branson is an example who failed multiple times before achieving success but his failures did not stop him from trying out new ideas.

For the future success of a startup, different factors play a significant role and these factors are financial access, informational access government policies, internal factors like skills, and abilities. Finance ad funding plays a crucial role in many business startups and is the ultimate backbone (Vuong et al., 2020). Mark Zuckerberg was a student at Harvard University and had recognized the importance of interconnection of the students. He had the skill and also partnered with his friends in the development of Facebook. Thus, he had the resources and positive internal factors to create a startup.

Motivation also has an impact on the success of an entrepreneur. Different motivational factors play a significant role and these factors are generally needed for independence, financial motivation and the need for achievement (Barba-Sánchez and Atienza-Sahuquillo, 2018). The factor that motivated Richard Branson is the independency and his love for creating things in which he can pride. This factor motivated him to create the Virgin group after facing multiple failures. At the age of 20, he created Virgin record company that was the independent record company in the world during the time. Mark Zuckerberg is another such example who was motivated by his passion to shorten the distance of communication between people and his creation of Facebook has enabled the connection of millions of people. Tania Boler, the founder of Elvie was motivated the need to focus on the health issue of women and using the opportunity she developed a tech Company for women to have a conversation regarding serious health issues.

Assess the relations among entrepreneurial personality, motivations and mindset.

Mark Zuckerberg is an inspiration and motivation for the upcoming generation. He has several characteristics traits like that of thinking, intuition and judgment. According to Naumann (2017), characteristic traits of an individual tend to have an impact on the mindset and motivation. His intuition helped him understand the necessity of connecting people and that was the basic aim behind the development of Facebook. Moreover, his thinking ability helped him to take proper decisions and helped in the creation of the idea. These personality traits of mark Zuckerberg motivated him in the creation of Facebook and developed a mindset for the accomplishment of his objective of interconnecting the students of the University.

Richard Branson is the founder of the Virgin group and has multiple personality traits in terms of thinking ability, willingness to listen, learn from mistakes and passion. Personality traits have a huge impact on the mindset and motivation of an individual. Richard Branson failed multiple times before achieving success with his Virgin group. His characteristics trait of learning from his mistakes enabled him to develop a positive mindset and that further, led to the development of a never give up attitude. Moreover, his thinking ability and passion for innovation enabled him to achieve success and presently, he is worth around $4.8 billion (investopedia.com, 2021).

Tania Boler, founder of Elvie is an inspiring example of a successful entrepreneur. She has multiple characteristics traits in terms of thinking ability and passion that led her to develop and start a tech company. She never had a vision starting a tech company but her passion and vision for resolving the health issues of women motivated her to start the tech company (babymori.com, 2021). This positive mind-set of Tania Boler led her to successfully develop a platform where women can get connected and discuss issues. This was the result of her passion for empowering and encouraging woman.

Analyze how background and experiences hinder or foster entrepreneurship skills giving contrasting examples critically providing their positive and negative influences on the successful entrepreneurship.

There are different factors like family background, education and experiences, which can have a positive as well as negative impact on the entrepreneurial activities. The influences of these factors have been discussed.

Education

Education plays a crucial role in the policy-making and planning process for the creation of a business. It can be a basic principle behind starting and establishment of a business (Vakili et al., 2016). Education helps in the process of development of skill and develops multiple characteristics like risk-taking ability, decision-making skills, and economic situations. However, tertiary education can have a negative impact on entrepreneurship since it may increase awareness and sensitivity regarding the possible outcome of the activities and this can hinder the entrepreneurial activities (Jiménez et al., 2015).

Mark Zuckerberg was a drop out of Harvard University where his interest in computers led him to drop because of his passion for the creation of a social networking site. Richard Branson is a school dropout without any qualification. This had a negative influence on his career initially since due to lack of proper planning and implementation he failed in multiple attempts before the success of Virgin group. However, being a school dropout forced him to try different ideas and in the process, he leant from his mistakes. Tania Boler holds a master degree in international education policy from Stanford University. During the course, she realized the reluctance of people to talk about sex, HIV and Aids. This motivated her in the development of a platform where these could be discussed and resolved.

Background

Family background has an impact on the entrepreneurship since the family members can have an influence on the decision-making process of an individual, and on venture creation (Nguyen, 2018). Further, they can also be influential in terms of financial support and motivation. Mark Zuckerberg belonged to an educated family where his father was a dentist and his mother was a psychiatrist. Therefore, education of the family played a substantial role in the learning and development process of mark Zuckerberg. This led him to develop an interest in computers. However, an educated family background could have restrained him from dropping out of college. Richard Branson was the son of a barrister and a flight attendant but he was suffering from Dyslexia. However, due to the support and motivation of his family members, he tried multiple times before achieving success.

Experience

Experience plays an extensive role in the success of an entrepreneurial venture. Experience helps them to learn, grow, and confront future entrepreneurial situations in a better way (Lafuente et al., 2019). Before the success of the Virgin Group, Richard Branson failed multiple times and those experiences helped him to learn from the areas of mistake. However, multiple failures could have de-motivated him but he surpassed all those failures and his passion led him to success. Moreover, before the creation of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg had the experience of the creation of computer games and due to this; he identified the areas of improvement. Tania Boler was a doctor of philosophy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (elitebusinessmagazine.co.uk, 2021). During her experience as a doctor and the period of pregnancy helped her to realise that no one wants to talk openly about HIV and Aids and this motivated her to develop a platform where women health issues can be discussed.

Conclusion

It can be concluded from the report that small and medium scale businesses contributed a large portion to the national economy. Moreover, the majority of the businesses in UK are under this sector of SME. UK government is also focusing on the development of policies and regulations that supports the business operations of this sector. Additionally, in the second part, there is a discussion on the characteristics traits and skills of successful entrepreneurs. It has been determined that a positive mind-set, learning abilities, risk-taking ability play a crucial role in their success. Moreover, family background, education and experience also have an impact on the accomplishment of their goals and objectives.

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