Entrepreneurship Assignment 1 . Name Registration Number Class Teacher Muhammad Haris Siddiqui FA18-BCE-080 BCE-8 Dr. Sher Akbar Question: Search the Internet for four accounts of successful corporate entrepreneurship. What key factors for success are common across all these accounts? Which are unique? If one company can foster an entrepreneurial culture within an existing firm, what stops another company from copying its process and taking away the initial advantage? Answer: 1) Apple - Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, & Ron Wayne: While that they had been friends since highschool , the 2 college dropouts gained considerable exposure to the pc world while performing on game software together on the night shift at Atari. In 1975, the 20-year-old Jobs and Wozniak found out shop in Jobs' parents' garage, dubbed the venture Apple, and commenced performing on the prototype of the Apple I. In 1977, they introduced the Apple II -- the primary pc with color graphics and a keyboard. Designed for beginners the user-friendly Apple II was an incredible success, introduction the age of the private computer. First-year sales topped $3 million. Two years later, sales ballooned to $200 million. 2) Sony PlayStation - Ken Kutaragi: Sony backed Ken’s corporate entrepreneurial venture by investing $2.5 billion into the PlayStation start-up, and has gone on to create over 70% of the home-video-game-console international market share. The financial success of the PlayStation was so impressive that by 1998, the PlayStation was providing 40 percent of Sony Corporation’s operating profits. Ken’s corporate entrepreneurial success has been called one among the best innovations and launches in business history 3) 3M Post-It Note - Spencer Silver and Art Fry: 3M scientist Spencer Silver invented a not so sticky, reposition adhesive in 1968, but it took him several years to come up with how best to use it and market the product. Spencer shared his idea through seminars in which he shared with co-workers the features and benefit his semi-adhesive to 3M employees. 4) Duck Commander / Duck Dynasty - Phil Robertson: There was a guy who so loved duck hunting that he chose that over playing pro football for the NFL. He invented a duck call, started a company called Duck Commander, eventually put his son Willy in charge, and that spawned a media and merchandising empire for a family of rednecks known as Duck Dynasty. Many connoisseurs of business would agree that it is easy to identify an entrepreneur these days, because of the underlying concept that anyone who starts a business is considered to be an entrepreneur. However, many small business owners know that starting something new doesn’t always guarantee success. Unfortunately, many businesses either quit, discontinue, or fail within the first five years of operations for a variety of reasons, including lack of finances, profitability, and even personal reasons can come into play. There are key success factors that corporate entrepreneurs or “entrepreneurs” must meet first. For instance, all of the entrepreneurs in the above stories strived to convince middle management to allow them to share their idea or concept with senior management. They had to make it their mission to convince senior management that their new "out of the box" product or service held real value, had a viable market, and would be both profitable and synergistic to the corporation’s overall mission. Additionally, in each of these corporate entrepreneurship stories it took a unique set of skills beyond creativity, including being willing to take some risks at sharing and pushing an innovative idea, having the perseverance to wait for senior management's approval to create and launch the product or service, and then having the drive to see it through to completion, no matter what.
