Welcome to the first of Ready Set Startup’s Starting a business: Tools and Techniques videos on “What is Entrepreneurship.” Get stuck into the video right here. There is a text summary below for those of you that prefer reading, however it is missing the diagrams that I show on the video.
What is Entrepreneurship?
Today my topic is “What is Entrepreneurship”. I want to share with you 3 things that you need to master to make your startup profitable.
Okay so what is entrepreneurship? It’s hard to spell and hard to say. So people can think it’s hard to do. And in one way it is. But understanding the elements you need to get right to make it work, makes it a lot easier..
Here’s a really cool definition of entrepreneurship fro Professor Howard Stevenson of Harvard Business School:
“Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources controlled.”
An entrepreneur sees an opportunity and says, “Right. I’m going to make that happen – and I’m going to find a way to do it.”
3 things you need to master to make your startup sucessful
To break it down even further, I want to share with you a model that really helps to explain what is entrepreneurship. I’ve taken this from a model of entrepreneurship developed by the late Professor Jeffrey Timmons who worked at Babson College. (A book on entrepreneurship I highly recommend is New Venture Creation by Timmons and Spinelli – especially the Australian version, which features a business plan I wrote. :-))
For this bit, you really need to watch the video – sorry! I explain what the 3 things are and how the Facebook team used them to successfully grow Facebook. Then I give you some ideas to think about how you can apply them to your own startup. (It starts at 2:25 in the video.)
I recorded this on Google+ Hangouts. The quality is not the best, but I wanted to get the info out there for you. If you’d like to join me live the next time I do one of these, that would be awesome! Make sure you connect on Google+
Hi Susan – what a great video! I am a real AV learner, so it was great to be able to “hear and see”. And, coincidentally, it was just the thing I needed to hear about! What a great model – sparked lots of thoughts and plans for my own startup – a not-for-profit org. We are currently chasing some large-scale funding, but it was really helpful to be able to see what dynamics I need to alter to make a plan B. Thank you! 🙂
Thank you Emily! You made my day.
I love this model too. It’s a great framework to understand business
Facebook is definitely one of the success stories that you can use as a model for entrepreneurship. I agree with the definition of entrepreneurship as the way of grabbing opportunity without minding the resources at first. The planning stage is what’s going to increase your resources, and what’s going to expand your opportunities. For an SEO reseller, like me, that opportunity would be the first client. I think the same goes for a lot of start-ups out there. Well, at least that’s what I think.
Hello. I found your website, read this post (or watched it) and I am impressed. The model you are talking about is great. I have been researching the topic for some time but I have never heard about this exactly. Everyone should keep that in mind as well as the quote you are providing. Entrepreneurship and success (in fact) are both the pursuit of opportunities and taking advantage of them!