Entrepreneurship and Small Business Venture Assignment

Running Head: ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND SMALL BUSINESS VENTURE
Entrepreneurship and Small Business Venture
Name
Institutional Affiliation

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Executive Summary
The world is progressing so rapidly that it is now becoming quite difficult to sustain
business in a highly complex market environment. The same is true for the companies that
are not multinational and hence belong to the small and medium industries. The developing
nations have a vast majority of the companies that are multinational but on the other hand,
they have a considerable proportion of those companies that are growing and small
businesses that need care and attention. One such is the case of Australian Outdoor Living, a
company that provides outdoor items such as outdoor shutters and grass and spas, etc.

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Contents
Executive Summary...................................................................................................................2
1. Interview Summary.............................................................................................................4
2. Analysis of the interview....................................................................................................6
References..................................................................................................................................8

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Interview Summary
For any organisation to make a start in the market, the most important role is of the
owner or the manager. The company highly depends on such an owner who takes the lead and
makes the most challenging tasks quite easy to achieve. It even becomes quite appreciable
when the companies are working in mature market conditions such as the developing world
(Cropley & Cropley, 2016). Similar is the case of Australian Outdoor Living, a company that
provides the best of the outdoor items such as swim spas, outdoor shutters, and multiple other
things.
In an interview with the owner of the company, he mentioned the struggles and the
efforts that were made by him to start the company. The company was founded in the year
2005 and gradually worked to target the Australian market with now more than 250
employees in Australia. Belonging to the housing sector and industry, the company was
started to provide the most unique and necessary outdoor items that are the need of every
other house or small companies or their outlook. The owner has made efforts to earn
revenues; however, the company is still working to gain profits in the market.
While mentioning the intentions of starting the company, the owner of AOL stated
that it was his father who has been a mastermind behind this company’s idea and to target the
housing sector was with this aim to make the needs of people satisfied. This meant to be the
essence of the company’s profitability that every other house in the nearby area was
dependent on the company for the outdoor products. The owner had this view in mind that
the company must not be confined to the housing sector but also the corporate sector that
needs a good outlook. This makes most of the efforts of the owner quite evident.
The owner mentioned that there had been an inspiration for him through his father,
who earlier had some close contacts with entrepreneurs of his time. The owner, because of
the inspiration of his father, was able to achieve this milestone and establish a company. The

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company was supported by the ideas of both the owner and his father, along with some other
experts who have experience in the market. Such practical insights were gained through
them, and the owner eventually got interested in giving the efforts a true name in the market.
The opportunity was grasped when one of the owner’s friend was leaving for abroad and had
a shop to rent out. That was the time when the owner, along with his father’s savings invested
in the shop by making monthly instalments to clear the rental payments and eventually gained
complete ownership of the shop.
Mentioning about the stress and risks that may lead to mental discomfort, the owner
mentioned that he has no such experience of taking a risk as the company could operate from
the garage of the home even if they had no proper shop. However, in terms of the stress, yes,
the owner had to face challenges to earn a name in the market. The owner mentioned that it
was the financial stress if making the profit as well as the payments for the rent of the shop
that bothered him the most. Along with this, the company’s main objective to target more
customers was also another stress that was quite challenging for the owner. However, the
customers were still managed to be in a handsome amount due to close contacts with similar
entrepreneurs.
Innovation in terms of designing and outlook is the most influential element that can
gain the attention of the customers. As the company attracted the customers with the most
exceptional outdoor items, it was challenging to make the conventional minds consider the
new technology. The shift of the manual shutters to the automatic and remote-control system
was another innovation that was quite hard for the customers to accept when the changes
were made some ten years ago.
The innovation process was considered to be dependent on the market and industry
changes. By the time people did not depend too much on technology, there was a demand for
the manual system, but with the technological changes, the products were supported by an

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automated system. Therefore, the company had to depend on the new use of the products. As
more than 15 years have passed, the company does not have any funding sources due to
strong connections with the clients and vendors. However, encouraging innovation in the
market is considered challenging as many times customers come with an old item whose
spare parts are not available at the shop and thus they have to visit some other shops to repair
it.
Analysis of the interview
The stories and perceptions that the owners share with the interviewees are usually
not a true picture of reality. Maravilhas, Melo & Oliveira (2018) have mentioned that there
are lots of people who are not comfortable sharing the exact information about their firms and
companies. It may be due to several reasons as they may have a fear of leaking the
information to the competitors or they can have the idea of how the business is being
operated (Hamidimonazam, Hosseini & Zaeri, 2016). In the context of AOL, the company
had exaggerated that it did not have any funding issue when the only main challenge was the
technological acceptance by the traditional customers. This seems to be such an ideal case
that the company had no challenge in monetary terms. Tomar (2016), has argued that
financial capital is so crucial for the companies to operate irrespective of belonging to the
small or large industries. The financial capital is always ahead of every other capital, even
sometimes the customers.
Additionally, the thought that innovation is only due to the industry and market
changes maybe just a generalisation of the concept that every change is due to the market
conditions. The owner has also mentioned that there are multiple contacts that have been used
to make the business sustainable in the market, but the reality is that these contacts may not
be so strong that they can help a company of a similar industry to flourish and gain attention
in the Australian market. Spinelli, Ensign & Adams (2014) have argued that there are many

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more facts that the companies do not provide while making as many such assumptions and
facts that are too good to be true. This is not always the case in every market environment,
and thus the housing sector is one of them.
As a matter of fact, this can be concluded that although Australian Outdoor Living has
been operating in the market for more than 15 years, yet the company may have seen some
very difficult times like the economic recession of the year 2008 when the funding and
investment might have been a challenge for the company (Rigas & Nawar, 2016).
Additionally, the growth of the company seems to be so smooth that it looks as if the owner
has provided an ideal scenario in which all situations were just according to what the
company needed. Therefore, this can be assumed that the company went through some
challenging times but has managed to sustain the business in the Australian market.

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References
Cropley, D. and Cropley, A. (2017), "Innovation capacity, organisational culture and
gender", European Journal of Innovation Management, Vol. 20 No. 3, pp. 493-
510. doi: https://doi.org/10.1108/EJIM-12-2016-0120
Hamidimonazam, H., Hosseini, M. R., & Zaeri, F. (2016). Barriers to adopting building
information modelling (BIM) within South Australian small and medium sized
enterprises. Project Management Development—Practice and Perspectives, 125-132
[Print]
Maravilhas, S., Melo, P., & Oliveira, S. R. G. (2018). Entrepreneurship and Innovation: The
Search for the Business Idea. In Handbook of Research on Strategic Innovation
Management for Improved Competitive Advantage (pp. 40-54). IGI Global.
Rigas, D., & Nawar, Y. S. (2016, July). Leadership and innovation growth: a strategic
planning and organisational culture perspective. In International Conference on HCI
in Business, Government, and Organisations (pp. 565-575). Springer, Cham. doi:
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39396-4_52
Spinelli, S., Ensign, P.C. & Adams, R.J., (2014). New venture creation. McGraw-Hill
Ryerson.
Tomar, T. S. (2016). Entrepreneurship development and innovation management: key
connections. In 4th International Conference on Innovation and
Entrepreneurship (pp. 263-271).

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Appendix
a) Interview Transcript
1. When was the company established?
The company was established in 2005
2. Do you have any other ventures beside this?
No, this was my first company. Beside this I donot have any idea. I just took the risk
and applied proper strategies which turned out positively in my favor
3. From where you took the inspiration to start this company?
From my father. He is the mastermind of the company
4. What efforts and harships he faced during the establishment of the company?
Initially we have to start from a small garage and need to make a name in the market.
There were no funding sources. But with the guidance from my father experience and
proper marketing insights we managed establish our name in the market.
5. What is your product offering?
Outdoor items
6. What is the target market of the company?
Initially we focused on every nearby household but when we start growing we
expanded our taget maket geographically. But the main idea remained the same which
is “Outdoor items” which is the need of every household
7. Are you the mastermind behind this idea?
No, the main mastermind behind this idea is my father.
8. What is the most challenging part when you started the company and how did
you cope up with that?
The most challenging part is to establish a name in market and cope up with the
diversified need of the customers. With proper innovation and insights we managed to

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grow and sustain in the market
9- How do you see the future of your company?
Now we have enough funding and the resources. Its been 15 years that we are
working in the industry. Apart from any economic activity everything will run smoothly. We
are continuously monitoring the marketing trends, I believe we will continue to grow in the
upcoming years by using the marketing insights in a proper way.