Class assignment – for submission – explain your answers, NO BULLET POINTS.
Review this article on a self-made entrepreneur – the Spanx founder Sara Blakely (https://www.fundable.com/learn/startup-stories/spanx)
TWO FULL PAGES, SINGLE SPACED, FONT SIZE 12. CAN INCLUDE QUESTIONS AND MAKE THE FONT SIZE FOR QUESTIONS LARGER TO MAKE IT REACH TWO FULL PAGES.
- Summarize the concepts of the discussion.
- What are the leadership traits and styles to be an entrepreneur? What do great leaders do when starting up companies?
- What is the importance of failure when becoming a Leader?
- How would you overcome challenges in dealing with your own business as a leader?
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Helpful resources to answer the questions:
Lesson 12 lecture – Entrepreneurial Leadership
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Identify the values required for entrepreneurial leadership
- Explain what it means to have an entrepreneurial mindset
- Describe what is meant by entrepreneurial spirit or passion
- Define problem solving and how to make effective decisions
There may be no better place to put personal values and mission to the test than in an entrepreneurial role. Startups cannot be run on concepts alone. More than almost any other kind of venture, they demand practical solutions and efficient methods. Entrepreneurs usually begin by identifying a product or service that is hard to come by in a particular market or that might be abundantly available but is overpriced or unreliable. The overall guiding force that inspires the startup then is the execution of the company’s mission, which dictates much of the primary direction for the firm, including the identification of underserved customers, the geographic site for a headquarters, and the partners, suppliers, employees, and financing that help the company get off the ground and then expand. In a brand-new organization, though, where does that mission come from?
The founder or founders of a firm develop the company’s mission directly from their own personal beliefs, values, and experience; this is particularly true for nonprofits. Sometimes the inspiration is as simple as the recognition of an unmet need, such as the rising global demand for food. Bertha Jimenez, an immigrant from Ecuador who was studying engineering at New York University, could not help but be concerned that while craft breweries were riding a wave of popularity in her adopted city, they were also throwing away a lot of barley grain that still had nutritional value but that no one could figure out how to reuse. After a few attempts, Jimenez and two friends, also immigrants, finally hit on the idea of making flour out of this barley grain, and thus was born the Queens, New York–based start-up Rise Products, whose website proclaims that “Upcycling is the future of food.”
Rise Products does not only supplies local bakers and pasta makers with its protein- and fiber-packed “super” barley flour for use in products from pizza dough to brownies. It has also sent product samples on request to Kellogg, Whole Foods, and Nestlé, as well as to a top chef in Italy. Jimenez and her fellow co-founders say, “In the long term, we can bring this to countries like ours. We want to look at technologies that won’t be prohibitive for other people to have.”
If we were to diagram the relationship between founders’ values and the entrepreneurial mission, it would look something like this:
Just as a personal mission statement can change over time, so can the company mission be adapted to fit changing circumstances, industry developments, and client needs. TOMS Shoes is another entrepreneurial firm founded to fill a need: For every pair sold, the company donates a pair of shoes to a child without any. Over time, TOMS Shoes has expanded its mission to also offer eyeglasses and improved access to clean water to people in developing countries. It calls itself the “One for One” company, promoting founder Blake Mycoskie’s promise that “With every product you purchase, TOMS will help a person in need.
The point is, if you have clarified your personal values and mission statement, there is almost no limit to the number of ways you can apply them to your business goals and decisions to “do good and do well” in your career. The purpose of business is relationships, and the quality of relationships depends on our acceptance of self and concern for others. These are developed through the virtues of humility on the one hand and courage on the other. The demanding but essential task of life is to practice both. In that way—perhaps only in that way—can we be truly human and successful business professionals.
The Entrepreneurial Mindset
Entrepreneurship takes many forms (see Table 1.1), but entrepreneurs share a major trait in common: An entrepreneur is someone who identifies an opportunity and chooses to act on that opportunity. Most business ventures are innovative variations of an existing idea that has spread across communities, regions, and countries, such as starting a restaurant or opening a retail store. These business ventures are, in some ways, a lower-risk approach but nonetheless are entrepreneurial in some way. For example, Warby Parker, a profitable startup founded by four graduate students at Wharton, disrupted a major incumbent (Luxottica) by providing a more convenient (online initially), affordable, and stylish product line for a large segment of consumers. In this sense, their innovation is about creating something new, unique, or different from the mainstream. Yet they attracted an existing, and in some ways mature, sector of an established industry. In a different way, McDonalds, which is 90 percent owned by franchisees, introduced an “all day breakfast” menu in 2017 that was hugely successful; it also targeted a larger segment (in part younger consumers) and brought back consumers who had chosen other options. In summary, many entrepreneurs start a new venture by solving a problem that is significant, offering some value that other people would appreciate if the product or service were available to them. Other entrepreneurs, in contrast, start a venture by offering a “better mousetrap” in terms of a product, service, or both. In any case, it is vital that the entrepreneur understand the market and target segment well, articulate a key unmet need (“pain point”), and develop and deliver a solution that is both viable and feasible. In that aspect, many entrepreneurs mitigate risks before they launch the venture.
Being aware of your surroundings and the encounters in your life can reveal multiple opportunities for entrepreneurship. In our daily lives, we constantly find areas where improvements could be made. For example, you might ask, “What if we didn’t have to commute to work?” “What if we didn’t have to own a vehicle but still had access to one?” “What if we could relax while driving to work instead of being stressed out by traffic?” These types of questions inspired entrepreneurial ventures such as ride-sharing services like Uber, the self-driving vehicle industry, and short-term bicycle access in the free bike-sharing program in Pella, Iowa (Figure 1.10).
Figure 1.10 A bike-sharing program in Pella, Iowa, allows users to access bikes at a variety of locations. (credit: “Corral of VeoRide Dockless Bike Share” by “paul.wasneski”/Flickr, Public Domain)
These ideas resulted from having an entrepreneurial mindset, an awareness and focus on identifying an opportunity through solving a problem, and a willingness to move forward to advance that idea. The entrepreneurial mindset is the lens through which the entrepreneur views the world, where everything is considered in light of the entrepreneurial business. The business is always a consideration when the entrepreneur makes a decision. In most cases, the action that the entrepreneur takes is for the benefit of the business, but sometimes, it helps the entrepreneur get ready to adopt the appropriate mindset. The mindset becomes a way of life for the entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs often are predisposed to action to achieve their goals and objectives. They are forward thinking, always planning ahead, and they are engaged in “what if” analyses. They frequently ask themselves, “What if we did this?” “What if a competitor did that?”—and consider what the business implications would be.
Most people follow habits and traditions without being aware of their surroundings or noticing the opportunities to become entrepreneurs. Because anyone can change their perspective from following established patterns to noticing the opportunities around them, anyone can become an entrepreneur. There is no restriction on age, gender, race, country of origin, or personal income. To become an entrepreneur, you need to recognize that an opportunity exists and be willing to act on it. Note, however, that the execution of the entrepreneurial mindset varies in different parts of the world. For example, in many Asian cultures, group decision-making is more common and valued as a character trait. In these regions, an entrepreneur would likely ask the advice of family members or other business associates before taking action. In contrast, individualism is highly valued in the United States and so many US entrepreneurs will decide to implement a plan for the business without consulting others.
Entrepreneurial leadership
Entrepreneurial problem solving is the process of using innovation and creative solutions to close that gap by resolving societal, business, or technological problems. Sometimes, personal problems can lead to entrepreneurial opportunities if validated in the market. The entrepreneur visualizes the prospect of filling the gap with an innovative solution that might entail the revision of a product or the creation of an entirely new product. In any case, the entrepreneur approaches the problem-solving process in various ways. This chapter is more about problem-solving as it pertains to the entrepreneur’s thought process and approach rather than on problem-solving in the sense of opportunity recognition and filling those gaps with new products.
For example, as we read in Identifying Entrepreneurial Opportunity, Sara Blakely saw a need for body contouring and smoothing undergarments one day in the late 1990s when she was getting dressed for a party and couldn’t find what she needed to give her a silhouette she’d be pleased within a pair of slacks. She saw a problem: a market need. But her problem-solving efforts are what drove her to turn her solution (Spanx undergarments) into a viable product. Those efforts came from her self-admitted can-do attitude: “It’s really important to be resourceful and scrappy—a glass-half-full mindset.”1 Her efforts at creating a new undergarment met resistance with hosiery executives, most of whom were male and out of touch with their female consumers. The hosiery owner who decided to help Blakely initially passed on the idea until running it by his daughters and realizing she was on to something. That something became Spanx, and today, Blakely is a successful entrepreneur.2
Figure 6.2 Sara Blakely (right) participates in a discussion at the 2018 Fast Company Innovation Festival. (credit: “Ed Bastian and Sara Blakely at the Fast Company Innovation Festival” by “Nan Palmero”/Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
Before getting into the heart of this chapter, we need to make a distinction: Decision making is different from problem solving. A decision is needed to continue or smooth a process affecting the operation of a firm. It can be intuitive or might require research and a long period of consideration. Problem solving, however, is more direct. It entails the solution of some problem where a gap exists between a current state and a desired state. Entrepreneurs are problem solvers who offer solutions using creativity or innovative ventures that exploit opportunities.
