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Oct 27 2008

Entrepreneurial task management

Published by at 12:19 pm under motivation and mindset

What are the common tasks associated with entrepreneurship?

Owning Organisations - this can be a very limiting definition. Most economies do have some separation between ownership and the running of a business. Even online there is an increasing tendency to outsource the routine tasks and concentrate on the revenue generating stuff by the owners.

Ownership lies with investors who have outsourced the running of their companies to management professionals. So if an entrepreneur was to both own and run a business they are in fact performing two functions and this has been noted as long ago as 1803 by the French economist J.B Say.

We don’t for example not think of Frederick Smith who started Fed Ex with only a 10% stake as someone who is not an entrepreneur.

Founding New Organisations - This fits with most people’s idea of an entrepreneur although it in itself is by no means a complete definition. There are at least two types of founding entrepreneurs namely those that are “entrepreneurs by default” especially in these turbulent times because they are forced into self employment because they cannot find other employment.

Also there are “entrepreneurs by opportunity” those that see a gap in a market for an innovative product and move on the chance to exploit a gap in the marketplace. If you are looking for some level of success then you should hopefully fit into this second category. A further analysis of the second type of entrepreneur will lead us into the realms of the likes of Ray Krok of Macdonald’s.

WE recognise people as entrepreneurs also who absorb other companies as Alan Sugar did with Sinclair Scientific at Amstrad. Online Google does this all the time with purchase of related products and services.

A more realistic but less specific definition would be that an entrepreneur “makes major changes in their organisational world” - in the IM niche you could ask what would stompetnet do Compete with Dan Thies of Seofaststart.com or employ him.

Brining Innovations to market - Innovation is crucial Schumpeter(1928) saw innovation as fundamental to entrepreneurial process of wealth creation. In the newer era of the larger corporation Peter Druker in “Innovation and Entrepreneurship” published in 1985 has said that “entrepreneurs must do something new or there would be no point in them entering a market.”

We must be careful with innovation here because it can be summarised simply as a new way of doing something or even of delivering a product. So the entrepreneur’s task is much more than inventing, also the role of innovation will not be limited to entrepreneurial establishments because all organisations are continually bringing new product to market.

This will also be relevant in the marketing of new products and services you can advertise with an entrepreneurial style or not there will be a marketing function within your company.

Identifying new market opportunities - Opportunity can be defined as the ability to add value. New opportunities are there always they need to be sought out and acted upon this is the role of the entrepreneur. They should always be scouting for opportunities in the marketplace scanning their environment for holes or gaps left by their competitors and themselves previously.

You must take action - an opportunity is simply the testing ground for the marketplace and the window will not be open for ever.

Application of expertise - This can be any of the above traits ability to spot market opps etc however it could be the application of some other specialist technical knowledge, how to allocate scare resources? How to act when information is limited. It is this type of expertise that makes entrepreneurs valuable to investors.

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