Entrepreneurship: Jeff Bezos and Amazon

This report explores the entrepreneurship journey of Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. It discusses the traits and characteristics of an entrepreneur, the process of opportunity recognition and idea development, and the competitive advantage of Amazon. The report concludes with recommendations for future business expansion.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Background......................................................................................................................................2
About Jeff Bezos..........................................................................................................................2
Characteristics/Traits...................................................................................................................3
Opportunity recognition and Idea development process.................................................................4
Competitive Advantage...................................................................................................................5
Conclusion and Recommendations..................................................................................................5
References........................................................................................................................................6

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Introduction
Entrepreneurship is a process that includes idea generation and implementing that idea in a
profitable manner using personal traits and decision making ability. Entrepreneurship is
considered as the purposeful activity of a person who takes the initiative to organize and
maintain a business unit in order to earn profit through producing and distributing the services
and goods (Drucker, 2014). This report consist of understanding the entrepreneurship theories
and concept with relating it to current entrepreneur and his business venture for that Jeff Bezos is
chosen as he is the founder of Amazon, a well renowned brand that focuses on digital streaming,
artificial intelligence, cloud computing and ecommerce. Further sections of report highlights the
traits and characteristics of Jeff Bezos as an entrepreneur and the idea development process that
he used to start Amazon and competitive advantages that business developed during its tenure to
survive in the market are explained followed by recommendations and conclusion.
Background
About Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos is founder of Amazon.com; Bezos was born in New Mexico, USA and was brought
up in Houston Texas. When Bezos was born his mother was a high school student and father was
an owner of bike shop. After the divorce of his father and mother, his mother married to Mike
Bezos and Mike adopted four year old Jeff and after that they moved to Texas and there his
father Mike worked as an engineer. Bezos got graduation degree in computer science and
electrical engineering in 1986 and that time he got offers for job from Bell Labs, Andresen
consulting and Intel and after that he worked in various field on Wall Street from 1986 to 1994
(Bezos, 2016). He founded Amazon in 1994 in his garage after quitting his job and firstly he
named his company as “Cadabra” later changed it and named as Amazon that was inspired by
Amazon River in South America and he believed that “A” is the beginning letter in the alphabet
that means always in top and successful. Initially he started to sell books online and invested
$300, 00 in his startup.
After three years Bezos expanded the business and took an initial public offering and he
expanded by selling online videos and audios and by the end of year he further expanded his

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business by adding consumer goods. In 2008, he launched Amazon kindle and expended its
business on continuous basis by investing huge amount in offering online services to customers.
“Amazon was recognized as the largest online shopping retailer in the world in 2013”. In 2018,
organization earned the highest profit that was $2billion in a quarter (Furgang, 2018).
From the above analysis of Jeff Bezos entrepreneurship journey I think economic theory of
entrepreneurship best fit in this situation as Jeff Bezos took the advantage of beginning of
internet in the market that means technological advancement and from that opportunity he
developed an idea to launch online bookstore and expanded it accordingly from its risk taking
ability and leadership style. Economic theory of entrepreneurship states that entrepreneurs get
advantage of favorable economic conditions such as industrial policies, taxation policies, market
conditions and technology (Dana, 2011). From Schumpeter theory of innovation an entrepreneur
is considered as an innovator who developed new products and services from all these favorable
conditions (Schumpeter, 2017).
Characteristics/Traits
An entrepreneur possess some common traits such as passionate, strong work ethics, excellent
interpersonal skills, determined towards work, creative, risk taker, innovative, competitive spirit,
disciplined and self-starter (Nielsen, et al., 2017). From the analysis of entrepreneurship skills of
Jeff Bezos it is analyzed that he is an ambitious person who strives for growth and success and
always stays positive towards its goals. He started from a garage and now he is owner of the
world biggest online portal Amazon and recognized as the “king of internet”.
“Jeff Bezos is a risk taker and a ruthless boss who does not tolerate complacency at any cost”.
Jeff Bezos is an innovator and has creative mind from developing an alarm for his siblings to
creating ecommerce retail his hunger to develop something new increased with time. Further he
is hardcore realist and accepts the negative situation and outcome in a positive way. He believes
in “regret minimization theory” and is a great experimentalist and tries to do new things. It is
known that Bezos quit his job to start Amazon and to gain the advantage of opportunity that
internet provided. He took risk but in calculative manner and succeed and he also possess a high
competitive trait that helps him to survive in the market and be the winner in this competitive
environment (Saleh & Hu, 2016).

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Opportunity recognition and Idea development process
Opportunity recognition is a process that involves creation of a new business or a stage where
entrepreneurs get an opportunity to improve their business or start new business. Opportunity
creation process includes three steps that are perception or mindset of entrepreneur, discovering
new opportunities from the market and creating an outcome from those opportunities (Baron &
Shane, 2008). “A better informed entrepreneur would have bigger chances at recognizing
emerging opportunities”.
Ideas are the back support of innovations without ideas no innovation can be done. Idea
development is a process that includes creating an idea, developing and analyzing the idea, and
communicating it to others if feasible. Ideas are generated or developed from the opportunities or
problems. Some of the tools that help in idea development include brainstorming, analogy
thinking and idea challenge. All these tools help in idea creation then idea is assessed by
collecting relevant information through market research than business plain is made according to
feasibility of idea and finally development and testing of idea is done (Harrison & Leitcch,
2008).
Entrepreneurship theory that I think fits in this situation is sociological theory and
entrepreneurship innovation theory. Sociological theory focuses on the social culture, values and
belief that influenced entrepreneurs to take advantage of the changing social values and beliefs
and serve the society as per their demand and needs. Political and social change affects the
entrepreneurs and also provides various opportunities to them (Bylnd & McCaffrey, 2017).
From analyzing the journey of Bezos it can be said that idea creation and development is a
process that starts with ability of an individual and that means individual should be a self-starter
and generate idea as he did by getting the advantage of internet and then by understanding the
social needs of people in the market and he developed online portal by assessing need of market.
So opportunity recognition is an important step for an entrepreneur.

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Competitive Advantage
Competitive advantage means the unique selling proposition of a company that differentiate it
from its competitors in the industry. Amazon offers products to its customers through online
platform and led the market by offering other additional services to the customers that includes
prime deliver and discount offers (Prescott, 2016). Company’s business model is different from
its competitor and due to that they are able to offer products of wide variety at low prices. The
other advantage is convenience of shopping for the customers as Amazon sells wide varieties of
products ranging from grocery to digital media and from mobile devices to home appliances to
trending clothes with the option of same day delivery. Amazon covers major segments that are
consumer electronics, giving competition to Netflix and competing with the biggest player in
market that is Wal-Mart and all this helps the company to strengthen its financial position in the
market and this gives the benefits to the company or considered as competitive advantage for
Amazon (Datoo, 2019). Further, this developed brand image of the company in mind of
customers, technology advancement is another area where company excels and all this is done
under the leadership style of Jeff Bezos.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Entrepreneurship is a process that includes development of idea and running a business in
profitable manner. From the above case analysis of an entrepreneur Jeff Bezos founder of
Amazon it is concluded that entrepreneur traits are important and that helps them to be
successful. Jeff Bezos entrepreneurship journey is not easy he took risk and got an idea and that
idea makes him the world richest person. So idea generation and development is also important
aspect of entrepreneurship and this is understood with the help of entrepreneurship theories that
are economic, social, innovation and psychological theory. Further it is recommended that online
business will increase in future and company can expend its business in other countries and can
extend market reach by developing new partnerships.

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References
Baron, R. & Shane, S., 2008. Entrepreneurship: A process perspective.. s.l.:Nelson Education.
Bezos, J., 2016. Jeff Bezos. s.l.:Weigl.
Bylnd, P. L. & McCaffrey, M., 2017. Journal of Business Venturing. A theory of
entrepreneurship and institutional uncertainty, 32(5), pp. 461-475.
Dana, L. P., 2011. World encyclopedia of entrepreneurship. London: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Datoo, S., 2019. How to succeed in Business. [Online]
Available at: https://fortune.com/2019/06/07/jeff-bezos-tips-advice-entrepreneurs-business/
[Accessed 29 August 2019].
Drucker, P., 2014. Innovation and entrepreneurship. New York: Routledge.
Furgang, A., 2018. Jeff Bezos: Tech Entrepreneur and Businessman. s.l.:Enslow Publishing.
Harrison, R. & Leitcch, C. M., 2008. Entrepreneurial learning: conceptual frameworks and
applications. New York: Routledge.
Nielsen, S. L., Klyver, K., Evald, M. R. & Bager, T., 2017. Entrepreneurship in theory and
practice: paradoxes in play. London: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Prescott, M. E., 2016. Big Data: Innovation and Competitive Advantage in an Information Media
Analytics Company.. Journal of Innovation Management, 4(1), pp. 92-113.
Saleh, H. G. & Hu, W., 2016. Dark side of leadership impact on project failure: towards a model.
Innovation and Management, Volume 1814, pp. 936-939.
Schumpeter, J. A., 2017. Essays: on entrepreneurs, innovations, business cycles and the
evolution of capitalism. New York: Routledge.