Diverse Entrepreneurial Venture Types Explored

LO1 Explore and illustrate the range of venture types that might be considered entrepreneurial

Scarborough (2016) has stated that invention of any particular business idea is related to entrepreneurism. The responsibility of making use of limited resources to make progress in the business venture and the initiation business disciplines which, could be absolutely new, are also significant aspects of entrepreneurship. The objective is to develop a service or product which could not be in circulation or utilisation concurrently. Generating the most extensive return margins on the investment capital and management of the uncertainty factor associated with that of the start-up ventures are closely associated with the process of entrepreneurship. Further aspects are to be identified as the management of time and monetary and human resources within the context of the service or product thus developed. As per the research undertaken by Burns (2016), it could be observed that a specific category of entrepreneurs, who demonstrate the characteristics such as proactivity and self-motivation, are identified as Intrapreneurs. Such personnel generally operate within the structure of any business organisation to ensure the promotion of innovative methods regarding the essential functionalities such as designing and development of products and services as well as marketing and resource management. Furthermore, Linton and Solomon (2017) have observed that the Intrapeneurs are mostly deliberative about the increment of productivity and development of skill measures of the subordinates within the business organisations respectively. Intrapeneurs consistently emphasise on the factor of instituting of changes within the functionalities and processes under their jurisdiction so that effective improvement of the products and service structure could be achieved. The advantage of having the organisational resources and amenities as prime security buffer could empower the Intrapreneur to have unfettered access to the differential decision formulation opportunities regarding the business objectives. Organisational resources also provide the Intrepreneur with an advantage of working in virtual disregard of the risks arising out of failure in the venture undertakings. On the contrary, the Entrapreneur has to consistently factor in the possibility of having to cope up with failure in the market and this sets the Intrapreneur apart from the Entrapreneur.

According to Laukkanen and Tornikoski (2018), Lifestyle Entrepreneurship is reflective of the process of introduction of alteration of lifestyles. It is primarily an aspect which transcends the objectives of profit oriented business ventures and emphasises on the preference of the entrepreneurs rather than their professional market objectives. The advent of a fundamental change in the lives of the identified consumers of the products and services, thus, indicates Lifestyle Entrepreneurship. This study would be focusing on two of such Lifestyle Entrepreneurship based organisations which could be acknowledged as EG Solutions PLC (CEO Elizabeth Gooch) and MOMA Foods (CEO Tom Mercer). From an argumentative perspective, Schaper (2016) has observed that Social Entrepreneurship defines encouragement of entrepreneurship involving new organisation establishment. The underlying aspects are development and implementation of various business ventures with emphasis on addressing issues which are socio-cultural in nature. HSBC Bank could be understood to be one of such examples of an outcome of Social Entrepreneurship.

Characteristics of Social Entrepreneurs

1: The stability and expansion of the business are completely incumbent on the availability of financers and investors.

2: Social Entrepreneurs formulate multiple exit strategies to suit specific conditionalities.

3: Such businesses have mostly limited number of operational locations.

4: The core objective is to earn as much profit as possible so as to develop effective buffer stocks in case of intermittent failures.

5: The working durations are primarily non-definite and extensive flexibility could be observed in this regard.

6: The most stringent mechanism of control is instituted in organisations formulated by such entrepreneurs and the subsequent regulations of administration are also formulated accordingly.

Characteristics Lifestyle Entrepreneurs

1: The entrepreneur remains to be the primary source of all of the investment capital.

2: The business discipline and the market segments are concertedly worked upon and eventualities are managed from a progressive perspective and exit planning is not undertaken.

3: The centres of business operations and organisational outlets regarding delivery of services and products are mostly numerous and fundamentally much greater in number than that of the Social Entrepreneurship based business ventures.

4: Earning of profits is primarily secondary to lifestyle change institution.

5: Work hours are more or less definite and balancing of the personal and professional lives could be sought in terms of such entrepreneurship.

6: Organisational structures are mostly fluid and flexible and no rigidity of control could be instituted.

According to Venkataraman (2019), retaining developmental focus on the micro and small business ventures could provide an effective and viable alternative to the administering of monetary incentives such as rebates in the taxation format to the large business organisations in terms of effective progression of the UK economy. The generation of extensive employment opportunities could be the primary benefit in this perspective and this could advance the arguments in favour of the nurturing of the SMEs. Volery and Mazzarol (2015) have convincingly outlined that the small and micro business ventures including the start-ups contribute substantially to the average employment opportunities which get generated annually at UK. On the contrary, the research of Trehan, Higgins and Jones (2018) have suggested that expansion of the large business entities within the domestic UK markets could be considered to be greater prospective in terms of development of employment opportunities. This has been lent credence in the form of cumulative expansion effects of different large business entities at UK, where, the probability of ancillary employment possibilities could be enhanced when the organisational with a comparatively large core of human resource personnel could be expanded. However, this could not tarnish the fact that diversification of economic progression prospects and decentralisation of employment opportunities could be only achieved through setting up of various SMEs. In this context, the informed opinion of Dunne et al (2016) has been that the financial burden which the successive UK governments have had to bear to reinvigorate the larger business firms through extensive packages of incentives, had been always greater than that of the amount required to be invested to set up greater SMEs.

According to Yan and Yan (2016), the rationale of lesser economic burden of supporting the SMEs could be derived from the fact that the practices of undervaluation and underestimation in terms of the recruitment costs have been profound by the comparatively larger business entities at the UK. () have outlined the cost of new employment opportunity formulation to be £20000 when the associated organisation could be recruiting 1000 new employees with the government offering £20 million as incentives. However, the ancillary and miscellaneous costs could reach up to £70000 even if the job creation endeavours could succeed in creating even not more than 300 posts. This could be inclusive of the trends of inflation and expanding operating costs.

LO2 Assess the impact of small businesses on the economy of UK

The research of Cowling et al (2015) has indicated that 5.4 million small business organisations have been active within UK throughout the period of 2016-17. 99% of the totality of the operating business organisations within the UK is comprised by such SMEs. These start-up ventures generally employ, on an individual basis, no more than 250 personnel, on an average. On the other hand, Martin et al (2016) have stated that there 5.3 million micro start-up ventures have been operating at the UK domestic market during the period of 2016-17. Not more than 9 personnel are employed at each of these micro organisations currently. Furthermore, Baldock and North (2015) have outlined that only 32% of current jobs at the UK domestic market has been contributed to by the extensive number of the SMEs which are operating within the domestic business sector of UK. The research of Shehata, Salhin and El-Helaly (2017) has brought forth the realisation that the gross contribution measure, in terms of the percentage value, of the SMEs, in the amount of economic turnover on an annual basis, has been 19% only so far. However, the micro and small business ventures have also been able to contribute up to 60% of the employment measures, involving 15.7 million new working personnel, at the private sector within the domestic market scenario of UK. According to Rizos et al (2016) the combined annual turnover of all of the SMEs per annum have amounted to 47% of the commercial turnover at the private industrial sector of UK. The monetary value of this has been £1.8 trillion. Cowling, Liu and Zhang (2016) have stated that the contribution of the micro and small business segments at the United Kingdom employment sector could be compared to the employment generation of SMEs at the United States of America (60% to 80% of the existing employment). Storey (2016) has observed that currently 5.5 million SMEs operate at the private industrial sector of the United Kingdom. 97000 new SMEs had been established at UK during the period from 2015-16 and 2016-17. The opinion of Grimm and Paffhausen (2015) has highlighted that availability of government grants and loans for the UK startups have been one of the key factors in this growth of the SMEs. These loans have been reflective of the renewed emphasis by the subsequent UK governments to foster necessary growth within the entire micro and small business sector of the UK. Such loans could be categorised as government backed business loans which have contributed significantly to the positive expansion of start-up organisations. As has been opined by Abisuga-Oyekunle and Fillis (2017), innovation based positive growth has been responsible for the expansion of the micro and small organisations at the United Kingdom financial sectors. The establishment and development of the Airbnb, Uber and Funding Circle have been outstanding examples of the advent and expansion as well as business success of micro and small business ventures and entrepreneurial initiatives. The social economy of the United Kingdom has also experienced considerable expansion due to the development and establishment of such innovation based start-up businesses.

According to Kersten et al (2017), the development of the SMEs at the UK business sectors had been exacerbated by the 2008 global financial crisis. This had also contributed profoundly in the establishment of primarily innovation based financial start-up businesses. FinTech has been the most noteworthy example in terms of the providing banking and associated financial solutions since the global financial crisis has been responsible in eroding the public trust away from the conventional banking and financial organisations of the UK. This has contributed favourably in the development of such alternative financial organisational solutions such as FinTech. Martin et al (2016) have indicated that the financial assistance in the form of investment capital loans furnished by the United Kingdom for the development of SMEs, have emphasised on the direction of governmental impetus in the development of innovation based entrepreneurial initiatives such as the FinTech. As of now, the UK is the most business intensive sector of market operations of FinTech activities notwithstanding the fact that China has been the main component as far as functional business ventures are concerned globally. Rizos et al (2016) have been of the view that large business firm establishment and expansion at the UK is also improbable from the perspective that prohibitive costs are incurred in the process of direct expenditure of operating costs. This could further complicate the situation of diversification of economic progress avenues since large firms tend to concentrate wealth creation at particular points of interests. According to Storey (2016) this leads to the endangering of the landscape of economic competition which is not conducive to the overall balanced growth prospects of the economy. According to Grimm and Paffhausen (2015), Britain ranks at the fourth place in terms of being the most micro and small business density in the current global perspective. Kersten et al (2017) have specified that the ratio of number of small and micro organisations to the total number of UK citizens has been that of 81:1000. The same researchers have also outlined that the UK is a leading entrepreneurial national sector as per the Global Small and Micro Business Impact Report. Abisuga-Oyekunle and Fillis (2017) have stated that the Gross Value Addition (GVA) at the UK, which has been undertaken by the micro and small entrepreneurial ventures, has amounted to 20.4% of the entire economic value output annually and this is also comparable to the global average GVA of 20.5%. Furthermore, Cowling, Liu and Zhang (2016) have observed that as per the GVA percentage based value, the highest average in the world is achieved by Norway (38.1%) within the period of 2016-17. The contribution of the micro business sector in the UK, in terms of generating employment has been that of 17.3%. This could not be favourably compared with the global average of 32.3% jobs getting generated by the micro industrial ventures. Australia tops the list with 44.5% of jobs getting derived from the micro business sector with Spain at the second place with 41.1% jobs getting generated from the micro business sector.

LO3 Determine and assess the key aspects of an entrepreneurial mindset

Yitshaki and Kropp (2016) have identified that Elizabeth Gooch possess the qualities of entrepreneurial leadership skills. She has the qualities of innovation and opportunism to utilise the existing situation in her favour. Würmseher (2017) has determined that she further has demonstrated survival capabilities through risk avoidance. She has proved herself to be a visionary entrepreneur. Tom Mercer has been a motivated individual also and had undertaken extensive marketing of his products to establish his entrepreneurial venture. According to Roach and Sauermann (2015), the characteristic features of these two entrepreneurs have been achievement drive, finding alternative solutions to existing problems and managing control, uncertainty management and innovation based initiative taking. Rauch and Hulsink (2015) have delineated that both entrepreneurs have exhibited a marked trait of optimism and commitment towards their intended business venture which have characterised the composition of their mindsets. According to Gruber and MacMillan (2017) Elizabeth had exhibited her motivational commitment by leaving her secured HSBC bank based job where she had worked for 12 years since the age of 18, to become an entrepreneur. Independence and self-dependency are the two underlying aspects of her mindset. As the CEO of MOMA foods, Tom Mercer has exhibited the ability of innovation through development and utilization of an effective business solution despite consistent hardships. Apart from this, Tom has demonstrated hardworking abilities through consistent attempts to market the food products from different locations and in utilisation of various discarded equipment such as vans as his sales outlet. Tom Mercer, had been attempting to develop effective business ideas while he was working at the Bain and Co as the management consultant at London. The development of the start-up venture business idea and selling the same attested to the visionary and innovative nature of Tom. According to Wales (2016), other particulars of the mindset of Tom as an entrepreneur has been the ability of forward thinking and strategic planning such as relocation to new super shops during recession.

LO4 Examine the different environments that foster or hinder entrepreneurship

Afsar et al (2017) have concluded that the technical experience and knowledge which Elizabeth had gained previously while working at the HSBC Bank, offered her with the opportunity to properly develop the entrepreneurial undertaking of hers through perception of an effective business model. This has become evident in the ability of Elizabeth to properly analyse the situation in terms of what needed to be done to transform her business venture from a technical consultancy service into the software development organisation. According to Teague and Gartner (2017), the entrepreneurial venture undertaken by Elizabeth has outlined the she has derived help from her previous experience and technical knowledge and has formulated perceptions based upon her professional business instincts. Kautonen, van Gelderen and Fink (2015) have also found similar characteristics and traits in Tom Mercer who had been previously a manager at Bain and Co. This had contributed to the development of his managerial skills. Resource management has been constant problems for both and Elizabeth had to take a loan of £ 1000 for this and Tom had to face lots of problems to determine suitable locations for his food business outlets. Their previous experiences assisted them in overcoming their problems.

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