Entrepreneurial Success And Failure

1.Choose three major inventions that have lead to successful products. Who were the inventors? How did they invent the technology? Why do you believe they were the first to invent this technology?

 

2.What is the failure rate of all Entrepreneurs? What is the failure rate of entrepreneurs who choose to be franchisees? What inferences can you make from these numbers?

 

3.Is it a waste of time to detail the firm’s strategy in the business plan when the audience for that plan (e.g., venture capitalist) knows that things are not going to turn out as expected and, as a result, place considerable importance on the quality of the management team?

 

4.Obtain a patent of a technology and come up with 10 creative uses of the technology.

 

5.Choose three different products that you might be interested in purchasing and that are sold on the Internet. For each product, visit three Web sites and go through the process as if you were going to actually purchase the product. Which Web site was the best? Why?

 

 

1.The major inventions that lead to a successful product are-

• Electricity
• Mobile phones
• Computers

The inventors of these products are Benjamin Franklin, Martin Cooper and Charles Babbage respectively. Electricity is a form of an energy that was available in nature. Benjamin Franklin discovered the link between lightning and electricity in 1752. Martin cooper was the employee of Motorola Company who is contemplated to be an essential player in the history of cell phones. He was the one to have used the phone in 1973 and made a call from it. Charles Babbage devised the notion of programmable computers. He had first discovered it in the 19^th century. It is believed that they are the only ones to have invented these successful products is because their experiments have been successful related to the products invented and so they are the ones after whom common people have started using it (Buenstorf and Geissler 2012).

2.Perfect rating of failure of Entrepreneurs cannot be stated though but still from various studies, it was seen that over 50 percent failure found after five years and over 70 percent of failures after 10years. From various studies, it can be estimated approximately that franchises have a rate of success to 90 percent in comparison with the businesses, which began from the very base (Hogarth and Karelaia 2012). The inferences that can be drawn from these rates are that many a times the entrepreneurs are not smart enough to market their ideas. They may have the concept but cannot have the ability to channelize it. Another reason of high failing rates is that they do not have the power to distinguish between friends and their enemies. Major drawback is arranging ample funds for raising the business. Marketing and PR is the essential part and without proper strategies, they are bound to fail.

3.Definitely, it is important for dealing with the strategic plans of the firm because it reflects the pathways of how and what the business wants to achieve. It contours the essential principles that will help with the attainment of the targeted goals. Through this strategic plan the venture capitalist can actually find out the trends and opportunities of the business in the upcoming days and so can they beforehand think about the tactics to deal with the alterations and modifications that may take place in future. It helps creating the vision and guidelines for the firm to follow and this can help the employees to have a clear goal in following certain directions, which will take them towards the organizational mission (Blackburn, Hart and Wainwright 2013). Yes, being a venture capitalist it is important to go through the business plan because as they are investing so it is important for them to know the basics about the business, the costs related to start-ups and operations and lastly the projection of the business. One management team can be accessed from another by recognizing the strengths, potential areas of development of the management team members (Lerner, Leamon and Hardymon 2012).

4.The patent of a technology that has been chosen here to be computers are disk drivers, memory chips, bus architectures and monitors. Accessories for computers like keyboard with an enhanced construction are acceptable for patenting. The ten creative uses of the computer technology are as follows:-

• Run as a geeky projector
• Digital photo frame
• From the parts of the computer an external hard disk can be created
• Can make money by selling the parts that are working
• By offering to someone who can still manage to work in it
• Can be contributed to science where programs are installed like [email protected] and [email protected] and can be run throughout the day
• Using Linux
• File or print server
• Converting it to a router
• Using as a media station

5.The three products chosen to purchase online is Nike shoe, Clinique eye shadow and headphone. The websites visited was Nike official site, Strawberrynet and Amazon among which the best one was Strawberrynet and the worst one was Amazon. The Strawberrynet website was easy to access as compared to Amazon. The displays were easier and were available on the home page easily and thus Strawberrynet was found to be time consuming than Amazon.  The features that a perfect website must have is displaying the advantages that the products would have, gaining the trust factors of the visitors, transparent logo, deals and free shipping of the products, updated news about the popular products and proper shop carts, login options and search box (Curty and Zhang 2013).

References

Blackburn, R.A., Hart, M. and Wainwright, T., 2013. Small business performance: business, strategy and owner-manager characteristics. Journal of small business and enterprise development, 20(1), pp.8-27.

Buenstorf, G. and Geissler, M., 2012. Not invented here: Technology licensing, knowledge transfer and innovation based on public research. Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 22(3), pp.481-511.

Curty, R.G. and Zhang, P., 2013. Website features that gave rise to social commerce: a historical analysis. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 12(4), pp.260-279.

Hogarth, R.M. and Karelaia, N., 2012. Entrepreneurial success and failure: Confidence and fallible judgment. Organization Science, 23(6), pp.1733-1747.

Lerner, J., Leamon, A. and Hardymon, F., 2012. Venture capital, private equity, and the financing of entrepreneurship. Wiley.

McCormack, J. and d’Inverno, M., 2012. Computers and creativity: The road ahead. In Computers and creativity (pp. 421-424). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.