Subject Entrepreneurship
Segment Sources of Opportunity
Topic Introduction
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Table of Contents
1. Background
2. Reading
3. Segment Overview
1. Background
New venture creation and entrepreneurship are changing the face of the world's
businesses and economies. Historically, entrepreneurship has taken many different
turns over the centuries. In today's market-based economies, new venture creation
is the key to technological and economic progress.
We have defined entrepreneurship as the creation of an innovative economic
organisation for the purpose of gain and growth under conditions of risk and
uncertainty. We also briefly explored the managerial dimensions of entrepreneurship,
such as individuals, environments and organisations. Various success stories we've
learned previously elucidate that people with vision, driving force and risk-taking
ability just seize the available opportunity and build businesses and organisations.
However, how does an individual identify opportunities to create a new venture?
One of the hardest things for many people is to discover where to find the best ideas
for starting a business. Generating business ideas is frequently an obstacle for a
nascent entrepreneur. Even when the motivation for entrepreneurship is strong, it is
not obvious to people how to begin the process. In this segment, you will learn about
a model that shows a wide variety of paths to entrepreneurial activity.
This segment also offers a variety of sources of ideas and conceptual and practical
categories for idea generation. You will explore the role of creativity and idea
generation and examine some techniques that may help you generate creative
business ideas. In addition, the segment offers guidelines on how to evaluate these
ideas. This helps you determine the ideas that are the strongest and best to pursue
and those that may need more work or may be near impossible for even highly
motivated entrepreneurs to exploit.
During the course of this segment, you will read about a case where key concepts
taught in each topic will be illustrated further with examples. Your additional
assignment for this segment is to generate a list of business ideas, from which you
will eventually select an idea for your final project.
2. Reading
Reading: Textbook and Other Readings
Required Textbook Readings:
You are required to read the following:
Chapter 2, "Resources and Capabilities" of the textbook: Dollinger, Marc J.
Entrepreneurship: Strategies and Resources. 4th ed. Marsh Publications LLC,
2008
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Subject Entrepreneurship
Segment Sources of Opportunity
Topic Introduction
Chapter 3, "The Environment for Entrepreneurship" of the textbook:
Dollinger, Marc J. Entrepreneurship: Strategies and Resources. 4th ed. Marsh
Publications LLC, 2008
Other Required Readings:
The Blitz case
Reference Readings:
Leigh, B. "Bringing Back a Classic", Inc. 25 issue 8 (August 2003): 46-47
Barney, J. "Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage", Journal of
Management 17 Issue 1 (Mar 1991): 99-120
K. Kakati. "Success criteria in high-tech new ventures", Technovation 23
(2003): 447 – 457
Beck, S., "Out of Business", Inc. 19 no.6 (May 1997): 72-77
Maitland, A., "Reputation: you only know its worth when it lies in tatters", The
Financial Times (31 March 2003): 14
Fenn, D. and Jonn C., "Ordinary People, Extraordinary Creativity", Inc. vol. 24
issue 10 (Oct 2002): 83
Birch, D.L., "The truth about start-ups", Inc. 10 no.1 (Janurary 1988): 14-15
Nicole, G. "Just Say Om", Inc. 25 issue 7 (July 2003): 42-43
3. Segment Overview
Segment, "Sources of Opportunity" discusses a process model for entrepreneurship
and details the sources of opportunities and business ideas that an entrepreneur can
analyse to create a new venture.
In addition to the content described, each topic includes a self-assessment that will
help you ensure that you understand the material.
Sources of Opportunity – Overview
Now, let us review a brief description of the topic contents.
This topic, A Process Model for Entrepreneurship, offers a model for starting a
new business, which demonstrates the variety of modes and paths available.
This topic, Types and Attributes of Resources, introduces you to the language
and concepts of the resource based view or RBV of the organisation. In this topic, we
will explore the sources of opportunities and business ideas that originate within the
resources, capabilities, experience and interests of the individual entrepreneur or
entrepreneurial team. You will also learn about RBV and entrepreneurship. According
to RBV, if an entrepreneur has, or is able to develop, resources that are rare,
valuable, hard to copy and non substitutable, it can lead to long term sustainable
competitive advantage. The RBV of the organisation enables us to identify the initial
strengths and weaknesses of our enterprise.
This topic, Analysing the Remote Environment, shifts the focus from the internal
to the external. This topic provides a broad overview of the remote environment and
its six dimensions. The remote environment for the new venture provides
opportunities and threats to the organisation. Entrepreneurs need to exploit these
opportunities and overcome the threats.
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Subject Entrepreneurship
Segment Sources of Opportunity
Topic Introduction
This topic, Creativity and Idea Generation, introduces the concepts of creativity
and offers proven creativity techniques. You will learn about Peter Drucker's famous
sources of innovation in this topic.
This topic, Competitive Analysis, reviews the Porter model of competitive industry
analysis. This model helps you determine whether an opportunity is attractive. The
model also provides guidance on how to construct a strategy to defend against
weaknesses and exploit strengths.
Objectives: Sources of Opportunity
Upon completion of this segment, you should be able to:
trace your own path to entrepreneurial activity
take inventory of your resources, skills and capabilities and rate their value
for new venture creation
scan the business environment and generate business ideas from the
information gathered
generate business ideas by using creativity techniques
analyse the attractiveness of an industry for new venture creation and entry
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