Essay: Entrepreneurship In Engineering: Theoretical Frameworks And Case Studies.

At the completion of this Unit, you will be able to:

Describe and discuss the theoretical frameworks and concepts which have been developed to explain entrepreneurial behavior in engineering context.

Analyse the roles of engineers in creating productive, economic, successful venture in a variety of engineering projects.

Demonstrate evidence of enhanced personal knowledge, skills and competencies relevant to the management of engineering entrepreneurship.

This assignment will explain about the concept of entrepreneur and leaders based on two entrepreneurs from the engineering background. One of the entrepreneurs is the co-founder of the Kepler analytics. Kepler analytics was established in the year 2014 in Melbourne by a group of talented engineers whose aim was to provide solutions that will help the retail store to enhance the customer experience and will also help the organization to manage its operation effectively. Nigel Ang the co-founder and the leader of the Kepler analytics have been working hard to give the organization a worldwide recognition. The organization invested 2 million dollar in their research and development process so that they can come up with better solution for the customer as well as for the organization. Another entrepreneur is Tim cook. Tim cook is the present CEO of Apple inc. He has been the face of the Apple for last few years as during his tenure he have brought some of the revolutionary change and also come up with some technologies that have gather the attention of the worldwide population. Some of the notable technologies that he has come up with in the last few years are the face recognition and the bezel-less display. Nigel Ang and Tim Cook have shown how to lead a company to success. This assignment will discuss the common traits that are necessary to become a successful leader or entrepreneurship and will also discuss how these traits affected these entrepreneurs in achieving success. This assignment will also discuss about some of the recommendation about how these leaders can improve their leadership style.

Entrepreneurship is the process of creating and operating a business or businesses by scaling it to produce a profit (1). An entrepreneur is an individual who creates a business with the motive to earn profit. The main aim of the entrepreneurs is to develop the organization and bring some product which is innovative and will create buzz in the environment.

Tim Cook is an industrial engineer and an American business executive. Tim Cook, the present chief executive officer of Apple Inc. has served as the Chief Operating Officer under the leadership and the founder of Apple Steve Jobs (2). Tim Cook joined the Apple inc. in the year 1998 as the senior vice president. In his tenure as the chief executive officer of Apple he has focused on the political reformation of domestic and international surveillance, corporate taxation, cyber security and environmental preservation.

Common Traits of Successful Entrepreneurs

Nigel Ang is the co-founder of the Kepler Analytic (3). Kepler analytics was established in the year 2014 in Melbourne, Australia by a group of dedicated engineers and former retail executives with an idea that the retail experience can be improved by data collection process. The organization started by assessing all the vital and major approaches taken by all the retail stores and then providing technologies based on that. A technology or a solution will be useful if it is powerful and yet practical and quite easy to implement in the organization. The organization has spent nearly 2 years and a huge amount of 2 million dollars in the research & development process to make the Kepler Customer Behaviour Sensor.

To become a successful entrepreneur an individual should have some of the unique characteristics that will define why they are different from one another and why they will achieve success. Tim Cook and Nigel Ang has become successful for some of the unique characteristics that they have, which helped them in assessing and understanding what is required to be a successful entrepreneur. The common traits that these two leaders have in common and with all the other entrepreneurs are:

• Risk taking ability: Both the entrepreneurs are not afraid to take risks, which can be seen by their activities in the organization (4). Every entrepreneur should be risk takers and should be ready to dive in the future of unexpected outcomes. Under the tenure of Tim cook Apple have come up with many technologies that was seen as a threat for the organization and got many criticism from its competitors and the critics. When Apple removed the fingerprint sensor from their device and added the face recognition software it was said to be disastrous move by the Apple Inc., but now it has proved to be revolution in the technology world (5). Similarly Nigel Ang has also come up with an idea that will change the retail experience in the market. The solution or the software that the organization provides has helped many organizations in managing their inventory and increasing the customer experience. An entrepreneur should not be afraid of failure and if they fail they should start again from the beginning.
• Adaptable and flexible: An entrepreneur should be adaptable to every situation in the business organization (6). While taking risk the organization might face a number of failures, however the entrepreneurs should manage the situation and his employees so that they do not get demotivated. An entrepreneur needs to be very flexible in every situation. He should be able to take complex and hard decisions (7). Tim Cook and Nigel Ang both are very flexible in the tough situation and are quick at making decisions in the organization. They have taken decisions for example introduction of the bezel-less display and many other difficult decisions that have changed the company’s image and helped them in gaining a brand image.
• Effective planning: A good leader or an entrepreneur should come with effective planning for the products and other important operational function (8). Effective planning will help the organization in making huge revenue in the organization without much failure. An entrepreneur should forecast the future and should make decisions according to that. The entrepreneur should assess what changes can happen in the industry and what needs to be done so that the any major failure can be avoided. Tim Cook has highly focused on the security of their devices and has made Apple a most secured device in the market (9). However, nowadays the level of cyber crime has increased and Apple has proved to be the key for the corporate world.
• Product and Market knowledge: Entrepreneurs should have a great product and market knowledge. Understanding the trends in the market and what the customer is wanting from their products is a key to success (10). An entrepreneur should research about the market in which they are operating. They should understand the market statistics, their rival competitors, and all the different environmental, social and economical factors that will affect the organization. They should research and bring something new in the market that doesn’t exist in the market. They should incorporate some features in their product which will prove to be the unique selling proposition (16). Remaining unaware of the competitor moves, changing in the market needs and other external factors may even lead the great products to failures. Nigel Ang and Tim Cook has a great product and market knowledge which helped them in staying with the changing trends in the market as well as helped them in managing the needs of the customer.
• Strong money management: Apple Inc. and Kepler analytic are great in managing the cash flow in the organization. Apple has been in the highest grocessor’s list. They earn huge revenue from their sales, which helped them in expanding their business globally. Poor money management can lead the organization to surplus. This will affect the organization badly and lead them towards shutting down the whole operation. This requires a good knowledge in the money management. The money management skill should be accurate fir the new entrepreneurs. One of the main reasons behind the success of Kepler analytic is that the money management skill of Nigel Ang. Nigel has invested a huge amount in the research and the development process, which has proved to deliver good results and also improved the product of the organization (11).

Nigel Ang is selected because of his great leading skill and how he has helped Kepler analytics to get a huge reputation in the market in such a short period of time. Apart from this Kepler analytics is based on Melbourne, which is one of the key requirements of this assignment.

Tim Cook has done extremely well in leading the organization with his innovation. The main motive of choosing him is to understand how innovation can help an organization and how he managed to lead so well.

Both Tim Cook and Nigel Ang have applied the democratic approach towards the organization, which has led them to success under different situation (12). The democratic leadership style can also be said as the participative leadership. In this approach, the leader gives the opportunity to the member of the organization to share their values and ideas, which motivates them in attending the goal of the organization. Researchers have seen that the most effective types of leadership style among all other leadership style is the democratic leadership style and it has also given higher productivity, increased the morale of the group and better contributions from the employee (13). When the group members and other individuals in the organization share ideas in the organization it brings out innovative ideas and helps in understanding what the other individual wants from them. Past researches have seen that the democratic leaders have the following traits in them- Honesty, Intelligence, creativity, competence, fairness and courage.  Tim Cook and Nigel Ang have approached the organization in a democratic way and have proved to be highly useful by this approach. However, the democratic leadership style can be sometimes very time consuming. The consulting process with the employee of the organization can be very ineffective at times. Tim Cook also faced many issues by his democratic approach. One of the issues is that sometimes the employee feel demotivated when his/her idea is not implemented in the organization. This is a major issue in the organization and may lead to decreasing the effectiveness and the productivity of the worker. Tim cook had to manage his employees carefully so that this does not affect the workplace of the organization.

Selection and Rationale of Case Studies

Apart from this, both the organization focused on providing better quality of goods. Apple produces expensive and durable products, which differentiate them from its competitor (14). They charge relatively higher price for their products but in exchange the service that they provide are of greater quality. This has helped them in gaining recognition and increasing the brand reputation. Apple has been successful in expanding their business globally and they have changed the way of doing business. Nigel Ang is hopeful that they will also expand their business in the near future.

Both the leaders have been sharp in the planning and taking the managerial decisions. Both the leaders have led the organization beautifully and it can be said that the success of the organization is highly dependent on them but there is some changes that need to be done or corrected that can help them in gaining competitive advantage over their rivals. Apple has been excellent in innovating new technologies and had also been successful in operating their business globally. However, the Apple products are limited and the organizations have not done much product diversification (15). They could invest more in the research and development process and bring out more products for example they can bring their own television or gaming consoles.

On the other hand, Kepler analytics have invested a lot in the research and development process but they have failed to expand their business globally. Expanding the business globally will help them in increasing the brand recognition and will also help them in increasing their customer’s base (17). Nigel Ang needs to discuss and make proper plans to target the market of the specific countries, which will help them in gaining recognition in the market and which will help them to expand their business revenue. Gaining more profit in the environment will provide them more opportunity to invest in the other activities like employee training and other functions of the organization. Nigel Ang need to experiment more and should look to diversify the product which is also missing for Tim cook.

Both the leaders have been remarkable in their leadership style and they have been an inspiration to the youth. A lot can be learned from them, the way they managed both the organization and created some of the revolutionary technologies have been outstanding. Tim Cook helped to understand how innovation can help the organization in creating a brand image and how it can help the organization in increasing the USP of the product (18). The democratic leadership approach that they follow has been the best, which can be seen by the increased productivity of the employees. They helped to understand how the employee contribution can be increased in the organization and how the understanding the ideas of the employee can help the organization in making better decision and how it can affect them in motivating themselves. Both the leaders have been phenomenal by the way they experiment and take risks in the organization (19). This motivates the youths of the generation to invest their skills and come up with innovative business ideas. They have been the role model of how an organization should be managed and how the organization can be successful by implementing their own ideas effectively. Both the leaders have shown that the decision taking should be flexible so that an individual can adapt to any situation in the market (20). They have failed many times in the market but they have compensated the loss by not giving up and bringing more innovative products.

Conclusion:

This assignment discussed about the two successful entrepreneurs who have inspired us by their leadership style and who have brought change in the environment by bringing some of the revolutionary services and product. Tim Cook and Nigel Ang have been excellent by their democratic approach towards their organization. Apple after the demise of Steve Jobs has brought some of the exceptional products that have created buzz in the telecommunication industry. On the other hand Nigel Ang has come up with solutions that will enhance the retail experience. Nigel Ang and Tim cook follows the democratic style of leadership, which has proved to be the best leadership style as this leadership approach has helped in increasing the employee contribution and has also helped in increasing the productivity of the customer. However, both the leaders have been excellent but there is some areas that can be improved for example Tim cook can diversify the Apple products and Kepler analytics can expand their business globally, which will help them in increasing the brand recognition and will ultimately lead to increasing the revenue of the organization.    

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