Emerging Concepts in Entrepreneurship Growth
Entrepreneurship is the key driver of economic growth. It is the lifeblood of any expanding economy, generating jobs, introducing new products and services, and promoting forward and backward integration.
Modern entrepreneurship growth is largely shaped by globalization and the rise of information and transportation technology. The Internet has been instrumental in the development of entrepreneurship. The following are some of the emerging concepts in entrepreneurship growth.
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Social Entrepreneurship
Social entrepreneurship is applying practical, innovative, and sustainable approaches to benefit society. Its main emphasis is to uplift the standard of marginalized and poor people in society. The areas of social entrepreneurship are education, health, welfare reform, human rights, workers’ rights, environment, economic development, agriculture, etc. Social entrepreneurship may be non-profit or for-profit entities.
The concept of social entrepreneurship is growing rapidly and attracting the increased attention of people. Social entrepreneurs come up with brilliant ideas for creating new products and services that dramatically improve people’s lives.
Social entrepreneurs are society’s change agents, creators of innovations. They always challenge the status quo and transform the world. They empower people to extend their reach, deepen their impact and fundamentally improve society. Most entrepreneurs see opportunity and believe. However, social entrepreneurs first believe and later search for opportunities. The Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus who established Grameen Bank in Bangladesh is regarded as the pioneer of social entrepreneurs.
Traits of Social Entrepreneurs
Social entrepreneurs share some common traits. They are explained as follows:
1. Ambitious:
Social entrepreneurs are ambitious. They like to tackle major social issues to fight poverty.
2. Mission-driven:
Social entrepreneurs are dedicated to generating social value, not wealth. They are always engaged in promoting systemic social change.
3. Strategic:
Social entrepreneurs are focused and hard-driving in their pursuit of a social vision.
4. Resourceful:
Social entrepreneurs have limited access to capital and market support systems. As a result, they must be skilled at mobilizing human, financial and political resources.
5. Results-oriented:
Social entrepreneurs are driven to produce measurable returns. They always work to have society’s potential to affect social change.
Strategic Entrepreneurship
Strategic management is a process that involves carefully integrated strategy formulation and implementation efforts that result in positive outcomes. It is a set of commitments, decisions, and actions required for a firm to achieve strategic competitiveness and earn above-average returns. It is concerned with making and implementing strategic decisions about an organization’s future direction.
Entrepreneurship is the process of creating new enterprises. It involves purposeful and systematic innovation. Risk bearing is another basic element of entrepreneurship. It also involves exploration of opportunity. Entrepreneurship demands-resources which may be capital, men, material, technology, equipment, etc,
Strategic entrepreneurship is the intersection between strategic management and entrepreneurship. It involves simultaneous opportunity-seeking and advantage-seeking behaviors for superior firm performance. Normally, small, entrepreneurial ventures are effective in identifying opportunities but are less successful in developing competitive advantages needed to exploit those opportunities. On the other hand, large firms are more effective in building competitive advantages but are less able to identify new opportunities.
Entrepreneurship involves identifying and exploiting opportunities. For this, entrepreneurial firms are also required to act strategically. It demands the integration of entrepreneurial and strategic thinking.
Strategic entrepreneurship facilitates firms’ efforts to identify the best opportunities matched to their resources and then to exploit them with the discipline of a strategic business plan. The goal of strategic entrepreneurship is to continuously create competitive advantages that lead to superior firm value.
E-entrepreneurship
E-entrepreneurship is defined as the business technique that uses the Internet to achieve vision, mission, and objectives. It is entrepreneurship in e-business. E-entrepreneurs use the World Wide Web (WWW) to transact virtually with other businesses and consumers.
E-entrepreneurship operates in a fast-moving, highly uncertain, unknowable, and unpredictable context. It exceeds the traditional concepts of entrepreneurship. It operates in a highly competitive marketplace where sustainable competitive advantage is difficult due to minimal barriers for the new entrants. Likewise, there is always a high possibility of imitation of innovation.
It includes
- E-procurement: It enables the electronic purchasing of products and services from a company via digital networks.
- E-shop: It allows the electronic sales of products and services by a company using digital networks.
- E-marketplace: It allows electronic trade with products and/or services via digital networks.
It is found that entrepreneurship and net economy are positively related. Entrepreneurship and e-entrepreneurship are complementary, and a combination of the two is vital to organizational success and sustainability in today’s dynamic and changing economy.
The following are some of the factors which are cornerstones in the development of e-entrepreneurship.
- Customer focus
- Continuous improvement and measurement to achieve customer satisfaction
- Acquiring customer and market knowledge
- Mutual respect, trust, and benefit of all stakeholders
- Consistent and precise performance to high standards in all areas of the organization
- Striving for excellence through benchmarking
- Measurement of quality using data and tools
- Improving quality and efficiency in decision making
- Better use of resources to achieve efficiency and effectiveness
- Results focus
- Management by facts and processes
- Effective leadership and team commitment
- Team building and collaboration
- Valuing human and intellectual capital
- Employee training/ education/
- Empowerment and involvement
- Opening channels of communication
Green Entrepreneurship
Green Entrepreneurship is an approach that adopts principles, policies, and practices to improve the quality of life of the customers, employees, communities, and the planet. The following are the characteristics of green entrepreneurship.
1. Socially and environmentally responsible:
Green entrepreneurship adopts principles and practices that protect people and the planet.
2. Care to the workers:
Green entrepreneurship creates jobs that empower workers and honor their humanity. It acts to transform society into a socially just and environmentally sustainable one.
3. Protection of customers and clients:
Green entrepreneurship ensures the use of the safest methods to keep the customers and clients healthy
4. Improve the communities:
Green entrepreneurship is always directed towards improving the community.
