Katie Page: The Successful Entrepreneur and CEO of Harvey Norman

The report examines the life story of Katie Page, the CEO of Harvey Norman, and her entrepreneurial journey. It highlights her background, entrepreneurial traits, idea development process, and competitive advantages. The report also provides recommendations for future success.

Running head: KATIE PAGE
KATIE PAGE
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Executive Summary
Entrepreneurs are considered to be very crucial for an economy. The different entrepreneurs
contribute towards the society in form of jobs, products and service benefits. For this reason,
raising entrepreneurs and assisting them in the right manner is considered crucial. The aim of the
report is to highlight the success of the entrepreneur named Katie Page who is the current CEO
of the Australia giant Harvey Norman. The report has highlighted the characteristics of the
entrepreneur, followed by the entrepreneurial journey and the competitive advantage. Various
theories as well as practical examples have been used.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
The background of Katie Page........................................................................................................3
Entrepreneurial traits.......................................................................................................................4
Opportunity recognition and idea development process.................................................................5
Competitive advantages...................................................................................................................6
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
Recommendations............................................................................................................................6
References........................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
An individual who takes the risk and identifies a problem scope, thereby converting it
into an opportunity is popularly known as an entrepreneur. According to Parker (2018), it can
also be stated that an entrepreneur is an individual who identify a current gap which exists in an
environment and plans to implement effective practices so that the gap can be converted into an
idea. Moreover, they develop this idea into a business plan and take a risk by making it
operational (Baum, Frese and Baron 2014). Hence, for any economy, entrepreneurs are
considered to be an effective part of the economy and they contribute well towards various
opportunities like generating employment, designing a product which is beneficial in the long
run and building the nation. The aim of the given report is to examine the life story of an
entrepreneur from Australia named Katie Page. Katie Page is the CEO of Harvey Norman and
the most successful woman entrepreneurs of all times. The following report will be discussing
the background of the entrepreneur, with the traits and idea generation. The theoretical models
and theories will be presented with the help of a practical example.
The background of Katie Page
Katie Page was born in Australia. Belonging to a humble background, Page grew up with
three sisters. As Katie`s father was relocated every few years, the Page sisters grew up in
different parts of the country like Rochampton, Brisbane and St. George. Katie completed her
high school in the year 2973 and wanted to become a surveyor. As she liked to take up new
opportunities, she decided to take up continuous intelligence tests which raised money for the
underprivileged of the country. This was then when she met Gerry Harvey who was a judge at
one of the intelligence tests. A few years later she joined the company Harvey Norman as an
employee and was dealing in the ad buying and marketing of the organization (Cew.org.au
2018). Later she married Gerry and became the CEO of the company around 15 years later.
Under her guidance the company expanded to great extents and expanded to countries like
Malaysia, Ireland, Singapore and Slovenia. In this case, if the economic theory of
entrepreneurship is applied, then it can be stated that the different external factors were in favor
of the entrepreneur along with the guidance of certain internal factors. She is highly acquainted
with skills like hard work, intelligence and experience.

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Entrepreneurial traits
As stated by Kuratko (2016), the skills and traits in an entrepreneur need to be a
specialized set of skills which have to more than those which are possessed by the general
crowd. Moreover, along with the possession of these skills, the entrepreneur needs to have
favorable conditions from the external environment to achieve success in the long run.
According to Baum, Frese and Baron (2014), the trait theory is an entrepreneurial theory which
assists an organization to understand the different skills of an entrepreneur. Certain traits which
belong to the personality of Katie Page have been stated as follows:
Innovative drive: Katie is very innovative in nature. According to Drucker (2014), this
can be rightfully understood with the aspect that that she planned to take the business to a new
extent and took the business to achieve new heights. It was because of her skills that Harvey
became successful and that they were able to ace the online trading aspect.
Hardworking: Katie Page can be described as a hardworking entrepreneur. Moreover,
this can be supported by the fact that being an entrepreneur is not easy and that her engagement
into the organization from the beginning of her employment tenure can be stated to be
commendable.
Analytical skills: Examining the analytical aspect of any organization is also very crucial
for the long term success of the organization and for the different companies which are present in
the business, analytical skills assist an entrepreneur to analyze and make decisions based on
these analytics in order to combat competition and ensure long term success (Brenkert 2017).
Confidence: For an entrepreneur, having adequate confidence is very crucial in nature
and Page has been able to portray confidence and a good personality in order to maintain a good
positioning in the firm. Her interviews and technical talks portray her confidence and strength.
Risk appetite: Lastly, according to Brenkert (2017), the risk appetite can be described as a
crucial trait theory aspect which states that a successful entrepreneurship opportunity is
incomplete without a certain level of risk taking. Katie Page portrayed this skill by expanding her
business to different countries. However, her risks were calculative in nature and this bought her
success in the long run.

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Opportunity recognition and idea development process
Before Katie recognized the opportunity and indulged into the idea development
procedure, she went through various phases. These phases have been discussed as follows:
1. Recognition of Opportunity: Page realized the e-commerce opportunity back in the 1990s
when the e-commerce industry was booming considerably and decided that even
electronics with a good brand name could be sold online. As believed Gani (2014), she
decided to lead the company into this risk taking venture and invest in the domain.
Hence, by doing this, Harvey Norman became one of the first electronic companies to
explore the online markets.
2. Strengthening of the present idea as well as the resources: However, online expansion is
not any easy process and any company who wants to ensure that they have to harness a
new idea would be required to check its available resources (Burns 2016). After doing so
Page`s husband and Page decided to invest into the venture after making several
considerations.
3. Idea Development: The third procedure is the development of the idea by running some
market tests (Schaper et al. 2014). In the given tests, the different ideas which had to be
implemented were tested and the base for the implementation of the idea was formed.
4. Discussion: When an organization has the presence of certain stakeholders then, it is
important to take in their considerations and agreement with the entrepreneurial risk of
investing into the online domain and then proceed with the implementation phase (Gani
2014).
5. Implementation: Lastly, the implementation procedure has to take place where the actual
expansion to the online base was done. The idea of expanding the electric company on
the e-commerce portal was an instant hit as users looked forward to purchase the products

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online from a trusted company named Harvey Norman and looked forward to the
experience (Dees 2017).
Competitive advantages
According to Cew.org.au (2018), Harvey Norman is largely concerned with the business
of selling various electronic products. These products can be home products, consumer products
and communication products as well as homeware like furniture and beddings. They developed
the business back in 1982 and hence, when the business was expanded into the online domain
back in the year 1990s, it captured the online era of the business (Drucker 2014). The
entrepreneurs decided to take a risk in order to ensure that if success was achieved, it would be a
revolution in the e-commerce era. Amazon was doing considerably well at that time and for this
reason, Kate decided to take the risk. Therefore, from the examination of the given aspect it can
be rightfully stated that the primary competitive advantage of the business is that it was
expanded online at a time when electronics were not sold online and thus, when the users got this
opportunity, it achieved huge success. The opportunity was instantly recognized by the
organization and exploited.
Conclusion
Therefore, from he given analysis it can rightfully be stated that, being an entrepreneur is
not an easy task and that in order to be successful in the long run, it is very important for an
individual to take a certain level of risks and to harness the right opportunity which is available
for the firm. The report examined the different aspects of Katie Page`s journey as an
entrepreneur and the procedure of idea development and generation. Moreover, the competitive
advantage as well as the different entrepreneurial skills as possessed by the entrepreneur have
also been stated.

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Recommendations
Therefore, after the analysis of the different instances of the entrepreneurs lie and
examining the different life aspects it can be stated that it was both the internal as well as the
external factors that contributed towards making the entrepreneur successful. She possesses
unlimited capacity for exploiting a large number of opportunities, she undertook an exceptional
idea and converted it to an opportunity. Moreover, as a recommendation to her it can be stated
that she can the CEO can consider investing in the different emerging markets as present around
the globe. These markets can be specifically accessed through the South East Asian region.
However, an analysis of the different factors which are present in the external environment of the
business need to be considered effectively in order to understand the different systems in those
countries and a systematized procedure needs to be followed for sustainable success(Storey
2016).

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References
Baum, J.R., Frese, M. and Baron, R.A. eds., 2014. The psychology of entrepreneurship.
Psychology Press.
Baum, J.R., Frese, M. and Baron, R.A., 2014. Born to be an entrepreneur? Revisiting the
personality approach to entrepreneurship. (pp. 73-98). Psychology Press.
Brenkert, G.G., 2017. Entrepreneurship, ethics, and the good society. In Entrepreneurship (pp.
85-128). Routledge.
Burns, P., 2016. Entrepreneurship and small business. Palgrave Macmillan Limited.
Cew.org.au,2018. Katie Page - Chief Executive Women. [online] Available at:
https://cew.org.au/members/katie-page/ [Accessed 31 Aug. 2018].
Dees, J.G., 2017. 1 The Meaning of Social Entrepreneurship. In Case Studies in Social
Entrepreneurship and Sustainability(pp. 34-42). Routledge.
Drucker, P., 2014. Innovation and entrepreneurship. Routledge.
Gani, A., 2014. Understand Entrereneurship. Palgrave Macmillan Limited.
Kuratko, D.F., 2016. Entrepreneurship: Theory, process, and practice. Cengage Learning.
Parker, S.C., 2018. The economics of entrepreneurship. Cambridge University Press.
Schaper, M.T., Volery, T., Weber, P.C. and Gibson, B., 2014. Entrepreneurship and small
business.
Storey, D.J. ed., 2016. Entrepreneurship and new firm. Routledge.