Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice (PDF)

Running head: ENTREPRENEURSHIP THEORY & PRACTICE
Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice
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Executive Summary
Entrepreneurship is an essential element for the economic progression for the manifestation of
the basic importance in various ways that include assessing, denting and exploiting of the
chances and opportunities in the business field. The assignment sheds light on the journey of
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates towards their achievement of the success in the current world. Apple
ad the Microsoft, the two most biggest companies of the two eminent personalities of discussion
are the inspiration to many entrepreneurs of the current era.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Discussion........................................................................................................................................3
Steve Jobs....................................................................................................................................3
Bill Gates.....................................................................................................................................6
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
Entrepreneurship, the very term is generally conceptualized as the invention of the
chances or the opportunities with the subsequent formation of the innovative economic activities
with the formation or the creation of a new organization. It is a essential element for the
economic progression for the manifestation of the basic importance in various ways that includes
assessing, denting and exploiting of the chances and opportunities in the business field and then
by the creation or the formation of the new firms for making them more dynamic and
economically forwarded (Keith et al. 2016). These include innovation, employment creation, and
growth of the productivity of the society. There along saying that you can never make an
omelette without breaking the eggs, similarly one cannot be successful without going through the
struggles and the hardships. According to the Kets de Vries and Manfred (1985), a higher degree
of energy and commitment is generally required for achieving a dream and has requirements and
desires behind it for some of the entrepreneurs, since losing them can result in a wreck of the
organization. It is the will and the strength of an entrepreneur that contributes to the innovation
and the success of a business. The assignment focuses on two of the renowned entrepreneurs and
their skills and the story behind success in their business field.
Discussion
The assignment highlights the infamous rage of Steve Jobs in the search of perfection,
who builds one of the famous and largest companies in the world in the current era with the
creation of most desirable and wanted products for the consumer use that exceeded the
expectations of the customers in the competitive business market of innovation. Another figure
that will be discussed in this assignment is Bill Gates, the most richest and influential
entrepreneurs who created the largest technology business, The Microsoft.
Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs, known as one of the genius American entrepreneurs invented and co-founded
Apple Inc. His skills of entrepreneurial leadership are generally looked at the art of organizing
people towards the successful achievement of a common goal with the effective usage of
proactive behaviors and measures of entrepreneurship. With the identification of the perfect
opportunities and through innovative strategies, creative mindsets and understanding of the
market structure, Jobs managed and changed his fate in a dynamic company structure (Dees
2017). Being both an artist and an engineer, Jobs was one of the hard-nosed business people who
inspired loyalty and guarded the secrecy of his innovative thoughts even while showing the
world his tools. One of the greatest ability of Jobs was too disparate values and ideas in his
multitasking mind and then applying and synthesizing his ideas towards the creation or
formation of elegant products. His entrepreneurship skills are the main key towards his success.
Courage, insight, and brilliance were some of the main set of skills in his hallmark.

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Some of the important entrepreneurial skills of Steve jobs towards building the empire of
Apple include the following.
The story of success starts and ends with perseverance – Steve Jobs success story
influenced many and the main factor behind his success is his pensiveness in the case of various
failures and downfalls. He had irreverence towards the context of failure since he understood and
believed that failure is the spur of the journey and the beginning of innovation and newer ideas
(Heracleous and Klaering 2014). According to his personal insight, pure perseverance is the
main key that separates or distinguishes a successful entrepreneur from a successful one.
Once the founder of a company, always the salesman from the heart – Apart from being
the co-founder and the CEO of Apple, Jobs hold the main sales position in the organization. His
skills of success furthermore portray his dedication towards the sales position. Social media
platform includes a countless number of video clips of his sales skills. Besides this, Job's
legendary presentation of the keynote on the Macworld highlights his skills and the degree of
intensity and clarity of his sales pitch. In these long years of Apple, Jobs has never failed his
responsibility towards driving sales.
Creation of own territory and market – Jobs believed in the creation of the market for the
company. He ignored the idea of providing the market according to the market requirements.
Instead, he was impulsive about the research findings and gathering of the market and believed
that the needs, desires and the wanting of the clients and consumer are dependent over the
creation of the business units in the market. One of the famous examples in this connection is the
introduction of iPad. Steve Jobs took the idea from 1989 GridPad for the creation of a
differentiated product in the market (Burton, Sørensen and Dobrev 2016).
Attention towards the detail – according to Steve Jobs, each and every structure or the
peripheral of the design of the product and their functionality was very much important for him.
According to his personal insight, the lack of any of the product launched or introduced by the
company should look as good as the front one (Burns 2016). Furthermore, he gave attention
towards the detailing and exquisite of the internal design of the products. Steve jobs developed
the skill of perfection which in turn helped him to stand out in the competitive market and he
inherited this quality from his father.
Simplicity actually sells - Steve Jobs designed each and every product from Apple user-
friendly. All the products are this easy to use since Jobs restricted and banned any complex
interface and methods. His ideas of simplicity and user-friendly products with minimalistic
aesthetics of the launched products makes the products of his company stand out and
differentiate from the products from the other competitors of the market (Weikum, Hoffart and
Suchanek 2016). His strategy of marketing highlighted and delivered the world a message that
the products of Apple are easy and friendly as well as classy to use.

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Take many routes towards the market – Steve Jobs never felt burdened or pressurized by
the trends of the mainstream market. According to his personal insight, it is important to embrace
each and every chance or opportunity, be it conventional or cutting edge. This is because these
factors contributed to the marketing success of his organization (Wheelen et al. 2017). Jobs
always had a clear story and believed to form a wide range of seductive experience of his
customers with the Apple products. Jobs furthermore ignored the marketing analytics and aimed
towards his intuition.
Surrounding with the best – Steve Jobs surrounded himself with lots of talent. He had the
ability to identify the person or the people he wanted in his team and wooed them strategically.
His skills allowed him to determine the best people for his support.
Excellence in the execution – Jobs gave attention to the execution of each and every
product launched. The company, Apple built over the creed of the epitome of excellence with
attention to each and every detail from supply chains, market channels, marketing till the
production of the final outcomes (Aulet and Murray 2013). It was mainly the level of class and
excellence of the Jobs skills and the way of execution that made Apple to stand out as the best
among all the competitor firms.
The iconic leader and the most successful entrepreneur of the world’s most innovative
company, Steve Jobs is the true example of an upcoming entrepreneur. His journey illustrates the
road from struggle and hardship towards the wealthiest business unit (Michelacci and Schivardi
2017). Some of the well known entrepreneurial skills one can draw from this influential leader
include the following. Steve Jobs proved that a college degree is not essential for the
achievement of success; furthermore, focus over the accessibility over the concept of elitism
results in more sales and finally, the setbacks actually help in building and reprioritizing a better
brand or a business unit.

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Figure 1 Source: (Created by the author)
The figure above denotes and highlights the main components of Steve Job's
entrepreneurial leadership traits which helped the company to flourish and reach the peak of
success. Steve Jobs noted two of the most important factors for building a successful business
unit which are the people and the passion.
Bill Gates
There is a saying that the greatest leaders and the entrepreneurs of the world have some
similar traits towards the contribution of building a successful business unit (Yoffie and
Cusumano 2015). Bill Gates, one of the successful entrepreneurs with the success of the
Microsoft are the richest man in the world till decade. His story of becoming the best showed
patterns of actions that defines his struggle in his initial days while building himself among the
historical leaders of his era. With a prolonged passion for computers and programming
languages, Gates spend tireless nights towards his passion through years. According to Gates,
success does not come overnight and thus fueled by his passion and desire, he made himself one
of the best examples of entrepreneurial leaders with some of the best skill set of knowledge and
strategies to reach success (Allio 2015). Two of the most important factors that led Gates to
reach to the epitome of success is his view on constantly looking forward and the urge to evolve
on a constant basis.
Some of the best entrepreneurial lesson Bill gates posses includes the following.
InnovationFocusPassionEffectiveCommunicationRiskTakerInvolvement

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The key towards the success is innovation – According to Bill Gates, one of the most
frequent issues is not always in the technical field but sometimes in the cultural field. He
believed that the survival strategy of a company depends on the intensity of movement of the
company towards newer innovation in the competitive market. Bill Gates believed that the
concept of innovation is the basis for entrepreneurship and it is the main ideas or thoughts that
develop or breaks a business to the extreme (Gordon et al. 2016). According to his personal
insight, the procedure of innovation comprises of the concept of never stopping down.
Time is a valuable asset - Bill gates leadership and entrepreneurial skills consist of proper
valuation and the importance of time (Ricart and Rey 2017). His skills highlight the essentiality
to respect the time and learn to utilize the time by proper investing in some of the essential
priorities.
Exploring the unexplored pathways - Gates believed that for winning big, it is important
to take bigger challenges and risks. He furthermore believed that success will surely knock the
door if there is something new and innovative in the chosen path in case of entrepreneurship.
Never fail to try again – One of the most important and noted skill sets of Bill Gates
included the courage and belief to never give up. One of the biggest example in the life story of
Bill Gates is the drastic failure of Traf-O-data before the formation of Microsoft which resulted
in him to bury heavily in debts (Clark and Brennan 2016). Bill Gates took this as the lesson and
learning for life and started Microsoft with the aim and the target of never giving up.
Lessons from failed products and dissatisfied clients – One of the entrepreneurial skills of
the Bill Gates is the belief that dissatisfied customers are the best one to teach lessons regarding
any wrong or defect of the product and can also suggest ideas for improvement for the long run
(Barringer 2015).
One of the most important sets of skills in Bill Gates’ entrepreneurial journey includes
the belief that it is important to enjoy both positive and the negative feedbacks for improvement
and growth opportunity.
Conclusion
The essence of the success and the development of an organization relies mostly on the
entrepreneurship traits and the quality of the leaders of the organization. Steve Jobs and Bill
Gates both are two of the most successful and renowned entrepreneurs in the world, whose
journey drove their business units towards the achievement of the success and profitability. The
report focuses on the conceptualizations of the skills of entrepreneurship by highlighting the
factors and the skills of the renowned personalities of discussion towards their contribution to
immense achievements in business.

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References
Allio, R.J., 2015. Good strategy makes good leaders. Strategy & Leadership, 43(5), pp.3-9.
Aulet, W. and Murray, F., 2013. A tale of two entrepreneurs: Understanding differences in the
types of entrepreneurship in the economy.
Barringer, B.R., 2015. Entrepreneurship: Successfully launching new ventures. Pearson
Education India.
Burns, P., 2016. Entrepreneurship and small business. Palgrave Macmillan Limited.
Burton, M.D., Sørensen, J.B. and Dobrev, S.D., 2016. A careers perspective on
entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 40(2), pp.237-247.
Clark, C. and Brennan, L., 2016. Social entrepreneurship: A global model for evaluating long-
term impact. International Journal of Entrepreneurship, 20, p.1.
Dees, J.G., 2017. 1 The Meaning of Social Entrepreneurship. In Case Studies in Social
Entrepreneurship and Sustainability(pp. 34-42). Routledge.
Gordon, J., Harvey, C., Shaw, E. and Maclean, M., 2016. Entrepreneurial philanthropy. The
Routledge Companion to Philanthropy, pp.334-347.
Heracleous, L. and Klaering, L.A., 2014. Charismatic leadership and rhetorical competence: An
analysis of Steve Jobs’s rhetoric. Group & Organization Management, 39(2), pp.131-161.
Keith, N., Unger, J.M., Rauch, A. and Frese, M., 2016. Informal learning and entrepreneurial
success: a longitudinal study of deliberate practice among small business owners. Applied
Psychology, 65(3), pp.515-540.
Kets de Vries, M.F., 1985. The dark side of entrepreneurship.
Michelacci, C. and Schivardi, F., 2017. Are They All Like Bill, Mark, and Steve? The Education
Premium for Entrepreneurs.
Ricart, J.E. and Rey, C., 2017. Strategising for the Future. The European Business Review, pp.7-
11.
Weikum, G., Hoffart, J. and Suchanek, F.M., 2016. Ten Years of Knowledge Harvesting:
Lessons and Challenges. IEEE Data Eng. Bull., 39(3), pp.41-50.
Wheelen, T.L., Hunger, J.D., Hoffman, A.N. and Bamford, C.E., 2017. Strategic management
and business policy. pearson.

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Yoffie, D.B. and Cusumano, M.A., 2015. Strategy Rules: Five Timeless Lessons from Bill Gates,
Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs. HarperBusiness.