Analysis of GoPro: Dark Side of Entrepreneurship and Competitive Advantages

This report provides an analysis of GoPro through questions on the dark side of entrepreneurship and competitive advantages. It explores the attributes linked to the dark side of entrepreneurship and the concept of entrepreneurship. It also examines the competitive advantages of GoPro and the threats the company faces.

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By (name)
Name of the course
Tutor’s name
Name of the university or College
The country and city where its located
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Executive summary
GoPro is a business organization founded by Nick Woodman when he saw a need of having a
portable high resolution and durable camera with the ability of capturing surfing activities. Its
headquarters is at Sa Mateo in California and most of its products are sold through, the whole
sale and retailers distributors globally through GoPro website. The main objective of this report
is to provide an analysis of GoPro through question provided in part A and Part B. Part A
question one will be based on the attributes linked to dark side of entrepreneurship. Question two
will focus on concept of entrepreneurship. Part B question one will address the competitive
advantages of GoPro and question two the threats of the company.
Introduction
GoPro is among the high profits making companies with a high definition actions camera which
can be used in capturing various events like sports and share the footage on media platforms. Th
GoPro company also deals with mount designed selections which allow the customers in
capturing the content while carrying out their activities. The camera is always fixed with other
accessories like helmet and tripod to improve its capability in different environments. The main
objective is to give an analysis of the GoPro guided by the following questions in part A and B.
Part A
Question one
One of the key aspects linked to the dark side of the entrepreneurship is the need to control.
Occasionally, many entrepreneurs are preoccupied with the dominance which impacts their
capability in taking the right directions and contributes greatly on how they cope with others
(Miller, 2016). A big number of entrepreneurs are not suitably adopted to the market and would

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always want to establish their own environment. In any business institution, the desire to take
control may result to extreme behaviors like an individual being in need to be guided even on
minute operations of the organization.
Secondly, the act of an entrepreneur in desiring the applause. An entrepreneur should always see
the act to feel insignificant or being nothing within the market environment (Klotz & Neubaum.,
2016). There are inner voices that presents themselves at the beginning of every good idea.
Regardless of where they come from, a good entrepreneur should look a way on how to deal with
them in a creative manner via actions. An individual who is able to counter his or her fears will
always get the applause and be in a position to master the fears (Rauch & Hatak., 2015).
Thirdly, possessing the sense of distrust. One of the key things that makes some entrepreneurs to
remain firm is a strong distrust within their environment. Thus, they will continuously scan their
business environment with the main objective of confirming the suspicion. Such an act makes
them alert to customers, suppliers, competitors or any other entity that would impact the industry
either positively or negatively (Saleh & Hu, 2016). Although, that kind of vigilance might result
to losing sense of proportion among the many entrepreneurs.
Question two
The concept of entrepreneurship can be described as the owner of doing something that could be
small of even big. According to (Rogers & Hewson, 2016) entrepreneur’s success can be
impacted by key aspects like opportunities, risks and management. Nicholas Woodman was able
to implement hid decision due to the powerful passion, hard-work, self and having a very strong
sense. Thus, Peter Drucker says that it’s not magic, not mysterious and nothing linked to genes
but a discipline that can be learnt like any other. With regards to Peter, its explicitly clear that

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entrepreneurship its not all about genes but can be learnt. Nicholas Woodman was not able to
learn about entrepreneur from any where but acquired the sills through his two failures which
lead him to success (Khorasani et al. 2018). The man is not linked to any field of engineering but
passion and hard work together with determination is what brought his success. From this case, it
clear that entrepreneurship can be learnt bust its attributes like motivation, passion and strong
self are in an individual.
When Nick Woodman came from the University, he tried to establish his business organization
which was known as FunBug. His idea was never successful but instead of Woodman trying to
look for a job or opening another business, he came up with the decision of touring around the
globe with an objective of surfing. While in Indonesia and Australia, he was using 35mm which
he tied to his palm to capture his surfing events. This is the trip that inspired Woodman to
establish GoPro which is today one of the prominent photographic business organization within
the wearable action cameras company. The camera is normally HD individual camera portable
and can as well be worn anywhere in the body to capture extreme activities or videos. Today, the
action photography camera is very popular in ski, water games, motorcycling, snowboard and
other extreme events.
Part B
Question one
The porter five forces theory is one of the strategic tools used in management vita to the analysis
and comprehend the underlying the competitive advantages of an organization (Raposo, Madeira
& Nave, 2018). The porter’s technique plays a key role in understanding the competitive
advantages that has enabled the GoPro to last for a long in photographic industry. This technique

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will focus on how GoPro has managed in building a stable competitive advantage in supplying
and dealing with photographic services.
The GoPro has mainly focused in innovating new services and products in order to country the
new entry in the market. These new services and products has played a key role in retaining the
old and attracting the new customers within the company (Gold & Kerly ., 2019). Other than
focusing on the camera as the only product, the company has established a content platform and
YouTube channels. The content platform has been produced through partnership with brands like
LG and Xbox and has greatly contributed to reinforce the position of their brand. Reinforcing
the brand has a big role in staving off their competitors. For example, the polaroid, cube and
SANYO’s 4k which are the new products in photographic market and posing a big threat to the
market share of GoPro.
Secondly, the company has been able to establish a large number of suppliers from which they
acquire their raw materials. According to (Salavou, 2015) dominance by the suppliers can result
to decrease in the margins for GoPro. This is because the strong suppliers within the marketing
industry can use the negation authority in extracting high prices from the GoPro. General impact
of powerful suppliers is the profitability from the photographic products and services.
Thirdly, the bargaining power of the buyers can contribute a bigger percentage to the competitive
advantages of a company. Many buyers would wish to obtain the best products and services and
at low prices (Ouma & Oloko, 2017). Normally, buyers will demand a lot from their service
providers. Thus, the little and more customer bargaining power of GoPro the higher their ability
in seeking to provide more offers and reduce their prices as well. Therefore, in the recent years,
the company has been able to develop a durable, high resolution and portable cameras with the
ability to capture a surfacing footage. The GoPro high resolution action cameras offer sports

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enthusiasts with a capability to share footage on their social media. GoPro has as well gone
ahead to redesign their product through selection of mounts to allow the customers take record
while engaging with their activities. The popular based-mount equipment is the handlebar,
helmet, tripod and roll bar. In addition, GoPro adds value to its products by providing software
solution making easier for the clients to share, edit and manage their contents from GoPro
devices. Adding value to their devices has facilitated greatly in decreasing the bargaining power
of the customers and offer a good opportunity for GoPro to stabilize its production and sales
processes. Secondly, development of new products has limited the power of bargaining by the
customers and as well reducing the competitors (Wicker et al. 2015).
Fourthly, when a new service or commodity satisfy the requirement of a customer in various
methods the profit of any company is negatively impacted like Google drive and Dropbox being
substitute to storage hardware drive. The GoPro had to find a way of overcoming the immense
competition from the manufactures like the Nikon, Canon and Olympus. In order to counter the
competition from the above companies, GoPro had to work on expanding their market
internationally and working on new features of their cameras. The effort has so far enabled the
company to the company to continue gaining control of the photographic market and successful
infiltration of their brand on consumer experiences. In a span of ten months, GoPro has been able
to produce new cameras, lens, battery, audio among other accessories of their existing camera.
The company is as well able to develop digital and custom sensors processing technology thus
making their products look more appealing to the customers. Lastly, the GoPro company has
acquired a web development platform to expand its area of products development in which the
firm will be able to provide some video software categories.

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Lastly, the next area where the GoPro has gained a competitive advantage is the possession of
ability to deal with its rivals. With respect to (Bertozzi, Ali, & Gul, A2017) if the level of rival
companies increases within a market environment, then there a high chance of losing and
reducing the profits of a certain business organization. GoPro is operating within a tremendous
competitive business environment. However, the competition is not able to overthrow its long-
term stability. The achievement of GoPro has been enhanced by its successful efforts to scale the
media brand globally. Its international expansion is as result of entering the recent vertical
market and capability of creating awareness among all its customers. The company has also been
able to establish a significant relationship among the musicians, athletes and celebrities.
Question two
Several threats are facing the GoPro business organization. One of them is cropping of many
rivals that have joined the photographic market (Bogdanova et al. 2016). These rival companies
include; JVC, Garmin and sonny and they have designed their products to look similar to the
products offered by GoPro industry. Their products for example they can be mounted on surface
and be able to capture a footage from various perspectives. The rival is also increasing every day
especially from the new competitors whose main attention is on subset of the space. For
example, the pivothead is one the camera that has been produced giving the consumer the ability
to wear in form of a sunglass. The camera is as well believed to limit the view point that need to
be captured. Pivothead has as well established a threat in establishing the GoPro video model
content by developing a mobile application that can sync a content hence the user can share it as
recorded content. Therefore, in order to overcome this kind of competition, GoPro is required to
maintain the quality and a high performance of their products and services. The company should

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also focus in developing its expertise within customers’ electronics and invest their resources to
enter in the space (Ghouri et al. 2018).
Second threat is the use of Kickstarter tool by the small upcoming photographic organizations.
This is a technique is currently used as a way of funding the new business organizations to
counter the competitive potentials (Horn et al 2015). For example, one of the companies that is
using the tool is Giroptic aiming to develop a 360 camera. Thus, the tool is greatly helping the
new enterprises in overcoming the financial constraints which would otherwise allow the GoPro
to dominate the industry. That means the GoPro needs to come up with various ways to raise
more finances in order to facilitate the development of its photographic equipment.
Thirdly, the Airdog designed a flying drone which can take the GoPro camera into the space
enabling the consumer to film from the aerial perspective. This special has a high potential of
evolving in an integrated camera that can fly resulting to the future threat of GoPro. In such
cases, the company needs to come up with more innovative ideas which will help in positioning
the company with the four omega trends namely; wearables, linked applications, virtue reality
and drones. Additionally, GoPro should continue making its products ubiquitous brands both
internationally and brands in the space.
Lastly, Buyers-the market capture electronics overwhelmed by the camcorders and cameras is
highly competitive (Saebi, Lien & Foss., 2017). Camera and Camcorder manufacturers have
diversified the capturing devices which a highly competing for photographic market share. In
such instances many buyers are price sensitive due to low differentiation within the market. This
factor only strengthens the power of buyers leading to low profits in organization. Hence, the
GoPro needs to counter the market segmentation by establishing highly quality devices which

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can be mounted and stand a harsh environment. The device should be developed with ability to
show a real practical image in any adventure to raise the profits.
Conclusion
GoPro is now one of the leading photographic companies and Nick Woodman as a testimony of
vision which inspiring the whole world today. The success of the company is as the result of
motivation, passion and focus to become the best brand and second company in camera
manufacturing.

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