Entrepreneurship and Innovation Project: Apollonia's Business

This project analyzes the entrepreneurial journey of Apollonia, who took over her family's baking business. The assignment delves into the personal ethics that drove her decision-making, including honesty, dedication, integrity, and caring. It examines key characteristics of successful entrepreneurs, such as versatility, flexibility, resilience, focus, and business acumen. The project further explores the importance of innovation, differentiating between revenue, business, and industry model innovations. The role of ethics in business is highlighted, demonstrating how Apollonia's ethical framework influenced her business decisions and contributed to the bakery's expansion and success. The project offers valuable insights into the practical application of entrepreneurial principles and the significance of ethical conduct in business growth.

PROJECTS
ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND
INNOVATION

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
What personal ethics drove Apollonia’s decision to take over the family business?..................3
Characteristics of a successful entrepreneur................................................................................5
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................10
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
Entrepreneurship can have several forms but the entrepreneurs share a common trait which is
that an entrepreneur is anyone who recognize an opportunity and chooses to take action on that
particular opportunity. Some entrepreneurs begin a new venture by resolving the problem that is
important, providing them some value that the other people would acknowledge if the product or
service is being given to them. Other entrepreneurs initiate the venture by providing a better trap
in terms of product, services or it could be both. In the past few years, the baking industry has
been flourishing vividly due to the internet and the widespread exposure. Also, there exists
numerous home bakers who have initiated baking customized cakes and are improvising in every
order. This digital platform assisted many starters as well as the experienced bakers to come into
a common platform (Huarng and Yu, 2021).
This report will discuss the major characteristic that are required for a entrepreneur to be
successful in a baking business or venture. Though the characteristic of the successful
entrepreneurs tend to be quite similar despite the type of the organization but as a beginner
entrepreneur must be a jack of all trades and inculcate distinctive abilities, skills and the
personality traits. Also, it includes the individual ethics to start the baking business as every
individual has some kind of ethics that need to be approved and accepted by the society (Hameed
and Irfan, 2019). These ethics are the codes of conduct that are employed by the entrepreneurs
that influences the society in a positive manner which lead to the increased chances of success of
the venture.

MAIN BODY
What personal ethics drove Apollonia’s decision to take over the family business?
Entrepreneurship can be defined as the process of setting new business by taking the market risk
for profitability and growth.an entrepreneur is the one who make some innovations in the
business by their creative thinking and good services. Entrepreneurs plays a very crucial role in
establishing any business and helps in achieving the goals. They are also very important for the
economy as they innovate new ideas for setting new business into the market and that leads in
earning revenue from the enterprise (Singh, and Gaur, 2018). There are basically four types of
entrepreneurs which are builder, opportunist, innovator and the last one is specialist. Builders are
the one who establishes business for a short period of time. They have temperamental
personalities which is very good for growth. Opportunist are the one who have optimistic
personality. They know the right time and right opportunity to adopt. Innovators are the best in
all as they come up with some innovative ideas of business which no one thought of. The last
one is specialist and these are also known as analytical and risk averse. They are very good in
skills because of their education and literacy. In the case study Apollonia’s decision of making
his parents business more successful was very accurate as being an entrepreneur she have all the
qualities within her. For establishing a business on her own there are many skills which are
required by an entrepreneur to have in them. Some of the skills and attributes an entrepreneur
should have for establishing and operating a business are as follows:
1. Versatile
When starting a business it is very necessary to have a personal customer interaction and
handling sales directly. Having a direct contact with the client is the best way of getting reviews
from the customer about the products. This makes the customer happy and empowered and a
happy customer always recommend other customers as well. So being versatile while running
any business is very essential as it helps in improving the growth and success rate of the
enterprise (Berger, and et.al, 2021).one more way of being versatile with the customers is
directly answering the phone calls of the customer. In the case study Apollonia’s is also have a
quality of being versatile like asking the customer about the quality of the breads and reverting
directly to the queries of the customer.
2. Flexible

It is very important to be flexible for running any business. Any entrepreneur should be flexible
enough to change the decorum or functions of the business if not recommend by the customers.
Flexibility makes innovation and those innovations are very beneficial for the growth of the
enterprise. Similarly in the case study apollonia’s is also having an ability of being flexible so as
to make changes in the organization for improving the taste and food quality.
3. Resilient
Establishing and running business individually is extremely difficult and it requires hard work,
dedication and lot of time to run a business. A good and successful entrepreneur must have
resilience ability to face all the difficulties when face failure (Castro, Scheede, and Zermeño,
2020).it is very important to never give up on the efforts and time you have invested in
establishing the enterprise.in the same way the case study also shows that after the demise of
Apollonia’s parents it would be very difficult to run the business but due to her resilient nature
the business grows so well and expanded in three more forms.
4. Focused
For running a business an entrepreneur should be very much focused as there are lot many
distractions in the path and sometimes many difficulties have be faced but the focus should be
constant of achieving the goal. A successful entrepreneur always know why the business was
started and what to achieved.an entrepreneur should know when to eliminate the noise and
disturbance of the other peoples .Determination and focus both are essential for establishing a
business and making it more successful.
5. Business smart
It is very important to know the strength and weakness is very essential for the entrepreneurs.by
knowing the business strategies, the competitor and the target market helps in improving the
business of the organization. The entrepreneur should know the revenue, the cost and the way of
earning profit in the organization (Sandoval, 2022). This helps in increasing the productivity and
growth of the organization.in the same way Apollonia’s also helping the team of the company to
achieve the goal and success.
Entrepreneurship and innovation both are very important concept used for the economic growth
and for sustainable environment. Innovation can be defined as the process of combination of
invention and implementation of any new action. For running a business an entrepreneur should
be innovative enough for giving creative ideas and for making changes in the existing process for

getting better outcome (Loué, 2018). Entrepreneurs take benefits of the opportunities to make
investment on the innovation done in the organization. The social entrepreneur is the one who is
responsible for social issues and provide innovative and creative ideas for solving the problem.
Social entrepreneurs have the combination of discipline, innovation and determination whereas
commercial entrepreneurs take the benefits of products, raw materials so that they can enable the
employees of the business to create the value and achieving the economic growth (Ratten, and
Dana, 2019). In addition to this innovation is very much necessary for starting a business and
making the ongoing business more profitable and productive. Innovation helps the organizations
in adapting the changes made in the system for improving the productivity. This is good and
beneficial for both the organization as well as for the employees.in the other words we can say
that innovation is the key factor the success of entrepreneurship. Basically there are three types
of models in business innovation which are taken by companies for the betterment of their
performance and productivity. The first model for business innovation is revenue model
innovation. This model looks for the revenue and accordingly innovate the changes for
generating more revenue and profit (Parrilli, Balavac, and Radicic, 2020). The example of this
model is stop selling some certain products, sell to new customers and changing the price of the
products. The next model is business model innovation that innovate the business like changing
the software, or from selling physically to selling online .the last model used for business
innovation is industry model innovation.in this model they look for the innovations in industry
like how they can make the industry more innovative as compared with other industries.
Innovation is the biggest reason behind any successful business because innovation helps in
growing the business and therefore also increase the revenue (Kahn, 2018). Successful
innovation increase the value of the business and helps in earning higher profit. Innovation helps
in staying ahead of the competition.it helps in making the employees up to date and know the
needs of the customer and took the initiative of changing the existing system accordingly.
Innovation also helps in taking the advantage of the new technologies launching in the market
and with the help of this they can generate more business and increase the productivity of the
employee as well as of the organization.

Personal ethics refers to a certain set of rules, regulations and principles which are used
by an individual in order to carry out their business operations on the regular basis. There are
certain personal ethics with Apollonia which influenced her into taking over her family business.
These personal ethics includes the mentioned ethics:
Honesty:
It has been determined that Apollonia is honest and therefore she decided to take over her
old family business. She has the potential and calibre to achieve great heights by taking her
family business to next level (Wittmer, 2019). Her honesty towards taking up the plan to utilize
her abilities and making its optimum use in order to expand her family business to countries like
USA, Japan and Saudi Arabia.
Dedication:
On the basis of the present study, it has been determined that Apollonia is highly
dedicated and determined towards becoming a great entrepreneur. This personal ethic has helped
her in making the decision of taking up the family business. Her honesty and dedication towards
becoming a great entrepreneur has helped her in formulating various strategies which could help
her in increasing its sale and profitability within the region where it operates. Also, the
innovative techniques helped her in building a great business and attracting a range of customers
that belongs to 20 different countries all over the world.
Integrity:
Another personal ethic that influenced Apollonia into taking up her family business is the
ethics of integrity. Integrity refers to the combination of factors which includes thoughts, visions
, words, feelings and lastly, actions. Apollonia has the feeling of integrity, that means she has
developed a feeling to maintain the brand image of her bakery and also improve it in order to
expand the business. Earlier, when her parents were alive, they would put their heart and a lot of
efforts in order to make the bakery popular among the customers and develop a goodwill of the
bakery all over their country(Dror, 2020.). Apollonia did not want to ruin the business owned
her family. She wanted to enhance the current brand image of the bakery and take it another level
by implement the use of innovation within their bakery and expanding its business all over the
world.
Caring:

On the basis of the case study, it has been identified that Apollonia has the personal ethic
of caring which was a major factor that led her to making a decision with respect to taking up her
family business. She cared for her parents as well as the grandparents and took care of the things
that were essential for them and close to their heart. This included the bakery owned by her
family. Therefore, she decided to take up her family business, determined various strategies
which can be used by her in order to enhance the brand image of the bakery and making it
popular among the target customer and thus, increasing the profitability and sales of the business.
Characteristics of a successful entrepreneur
There can be many important personality characteristics that defines a successful business
owner. There exists many necessary factors that performs an important role in the success of the
entrepreneur while they introduce, operate and execute their business. These factors involves the
timing of the launch of the business, the magnitude of the competitive market, the supply chain
and its reliability, the capital amount that they are able to procure and the present economic
climate. Moreover, there are also various traits of the successful entrepreneurs that they have in
common which contribute their part to the success of the business. The characteristics that made
Apollonia successful in the family baking business are as follows-
Driven- Most of the business owner are very much driven to be successful as they want to make
their business grow. Drive is a very common trait among the entrepreneurs that are successful
because initiating a business is very challenging task, and they also require some amount of
competition, motivation and determination (Lee, 2018).
Goal-Oriented- Apollonia's goal included some targets that need to be achieved and without any
smart goals or objectives, the ability to reach to the success can become elusive so most of the
successful entrepreneurs are goal-oriented as they have clarity about their goals about where they
are going, how they will achieve the goals and the intentions through which they will be
achieving these goals.
Confident- Apollonia was very confident about her goal of starting a baking business. This
powerful trait of her compelled her to trust, increased respect and which also lead her to the
improved success of her business. Without any ego or arrogance she was able to have a
confidence about her goals (Adrian and Zulvia, 2020).

Passionate- Apollonia was very passionate about initiating the bakery business and also was
able to overcome the challenges and the obstacles that came through it. As she was passionate
about her goals and objectives, she was able to incorporate things and implement the daily
operations in her business.
Budget-Minded- Financial success is an important part of the businesses' success, so Apollonia
was very savvy at creating the budgets and through the time she sticked to that particular budget
plan while she also managed the operational activities of the business. She knew very well about
the availability of the funds, in which matter to reduce the expenses and how to take the smart
decisions when it comes to the financial planning and being budget-minded (Banda, 2018).
Humble- Apollonia went through a lot in her life on her own which led to becoming her self-
reliant. She was able to ask for help when she needed it, gave the credit to them, admit when she
was wrong at any time and was also able to accept the constructive criticism. She kept her feet
on the ground when she accomplished and satisfied with her work and never forgot where she
started from the scratch.
Resilient- Apollonia faced many ups and downs in her business while she received victories,
confusion, setbacks, obstacles while executing her business operations. As she was resilient in
her work, she was able to overcome any unexpected challenge that acme in her way of achieving
the goals and also get back up after any setback.
Focused- There comes numerous responsibilities for the entrepreneurs, so they need to be very
much focused in their work by cutting the distractions and focus on the issues arising. Apollonia
was very focused which helped her to achieve her goals as soon as possible (Karia, 2020).
Open- minded- While Apollonia was very focused on achieving the goals, but she was also very
much open-minded and considered various perspectives and was able to consider different ideas
and try latest and new processes and strategies, so she was able to reach the important levels of
the success by not being narrow-minded.
Thrived on uncertainty- While Apollonia faced many new challenges that came in her way of
achieving the goals, but she was also able to keep her cool and remembered her goals, continues
to move forward despite any uncertainty.
Opportunities to improve- Apollonia looked for every new opportunity and continuously
generated new and innovative ideas, She looked around her at everything with the lens of her
goals and seek opportunities everywhere. Thinking about of the box each time she did something

like while ordering the supplies, making sales calls, developing a new product, etc. (Portales,
2019).
Risk-taker- Apollonia believed that she will succeed in her business. This type of innate
confidence helped her to take risk and allowed her to also believe that these risks will pay off to
her someday in the future. Any risk that she took can come out to be successful, so she could not
just sit and ignore the opportunities that came to her.
Great people skills- Apollonia had great communication skills which came out to be her
strength and passion, assisted her to talk to anyone and everyone about her bakery business. She
was kind of a natural leader to those around her who could motivate, inspire and create an impact
on the.
Inherently creative- That one trait that Apollonia had in abundance was that she was inherently
creative and came up with different ideas and also had the ability to convert those ideas into
profits. Whenever she faced any problem then she started by writing down the possible solution
of that particular problem which helped in overcoming the obstacles and achieving the goals in a
successful way (Kamberidou, 2020).
Positive attitude- Apollonia had a very positive as she genuinely loved what she was doing and
was willing to put any kind of extra efforts into her baking business and make her business grow.
Through this, she also got a sense of satisfaction which impelled a kind of positive attitude into
her and made her optimistic.
Discipline- Being an entrepreneur, it requires to be accountable and take responsibilities for the
actions. Those who are able to develop and implement the plans without any external factors
need to be accountable to have a competiitve side in the business. Apollonia was very self-
disciplined that was why she was able to manage the choice to procrastinate and could take the
decisive actions that she needed. Focus and discipline are very crucial for initiating the business
which was one of the quality that Apollonia had in her (Herron, 2020).
Self-awareness- To achieve the success of the business, the entrepreneurs need to be self-aware
about themselves. When they have this quality or personality trait in themselves, then they are
able to own their strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, they are also able to apply their skills
professionally and achieve the success of their business.
Resourcefulness- Many entrepreneurs faces the tasks, challenges and the obstacles that they
have never faced before. The resourceful mindset helps these entrepreneurs to reach their goals

without a clear manner or provision to achieve them. Apollonia could effectively use her ability
of problem solving, grow and expand her business accordingly without having all the solutions
or the resources to do, when she is able to work resourcefully. As she was resourceful, so she
incurred the can-do attitude and the ability to work in a creative manner to manage the business
effectively without any immediate way of doing it. The main part of the being an entrepreneur is
that developing the resources by self as there are no shortcuts, one has to work hard and put
themselves in a position where if the luck happens then they can see the opportunity and take
proper benefit of it (Machmud and Hidayat, 2020).
Process- oriented- A process is a continuous series of steps that assists the people working in
the business to complete the important tasks. This could apply to different aspects of the business
such as the sales, recruiting new team members, production and the fulfilment of the product.
Because Apollonia had a process oriented mindset, she was able to execute the business
activities in a smarter way and not in a hard way. Executing these processes in different areas of
the business can avoid the waste, permitting the owners of the business to expand and grow their
businesses. Moreover, when the owners of the business have some kind of repeatable processes,
then they are able to teach new members to complete the necessary aspects of the business
without spending any extra time or quality.
Empathetic- Empathy is an important trait for the entrepreneurs. When the business owners are
able to manage large team of members or works with the customers directly as the high
performance solopreneur, then they must be able to relate with others on a real level. These type
of entrepreneurs can put themselves in the shoes of others while considering the employees'
perspective as they develop the main decisions related to the business. Apollonia had the soft
skills that were necessary to connect with the others. Also, the acronym HEART was used to
describe the qualities that were humble, effective, adaptable, remarkable and transparent.
Communicative- The main three communication skills for the leaders that were effective were
listening, receiving the message clearly and properly conveying the important messages to the
employees so that no chaos and confusion can be created for the future use.
Curiosity- Another important characteristics of a successful entrepreneur is being curious. The
ability of the entrepreneurs to be curious permits them to continuously ask difficult questions and
accordingly seek new opportunities and explore the various avenues. Also, entrepreneurship is

regarded as the “process of discovery” which means without curiosity, the entrepreneurs can not
achieve their primary goal that is exploring new opportunities.
Structured Experimentation- Entrepreneurs are in need of a proper understanding about the
structured experimentation. Also, with each new opportunity that they get, the entrepreneur is
required to test if it worthwhile to try or not. It means that it is important to conduct proper
market research and execute meaningful tests to examine the ideas and to test its potential.
Adaptability- As the nature of the business keeps on changing and the entrepreneurship is a
complex process so various new challenges and opportunities come in the way at every turn that
the entrepreneur take. However, the successful entrepreneurs are able to overcome this obstacle
but this is particularly for those entrepreneurs that are required to examine the situations and be
flexible in ensuring that their business keep getting success despite the fact that the unexpected
changes could occur.
Decisiveness- A successful entrepreneur need to take complicated decisions and also stand by
them. As a leader, the entrepreneurs are also responsible for the guidance of the direction of their
business involving each and every aspect from the financial funding to the allocation of the
resources.
Team Building- A successful entrepreneur is aware of his strengths as well as weaknesses.
Instead of holding back their shortcomings, these type of entrepreneurs try to build all rounded
teams that have similar type of abilities. Not a particular individual but an entrepreneurial team
helps in building a venture towards the success. When initiating the business, it is important that
the entrepreneur keep themselves with those teammates only that have suitable kind of talents
and that give their part to a particular common objective or goal.
Comfortable with failure- Along with the management of the risks and developing calculated
decisions, the entrepreneurship needs a particular level of comfort along with failure. It is also
estimated that around 75 percent of the new ventures are likely to get failure as the reason behind
this are numerous and goes through a business model that is flawed to a deficient of focus or
motivation. Some risks of this kinds can be avoided while others can not be (Eniola, 2018).
Innovation- Entrepreneurship and innovation goes hand in hand which is often true as most of
the successful startups takes the prevailing products and services and eventually improved them
to meet the ever changing requirements of the market. Not all the entrepreneurs posses this
quality of being innovative as it is a kind of strategic mindset that needs to be created. By

creating skills related to the strategic thinking, the entrepreneurs can be properly equipped with
the innovative opportunities and accordingly place the venture for the successful execution.
Lead by example- The successful bakery owners are kind of experts in crafts and can tackle the
production when the bakers do not come up whenever there is a scheduled shift. These
entrepreneurs are able to identify the customer and accordingly orientate, teach, train, work with
the customers and seem to excel in their work. Once they are able to perform these functions
then after that they can delegate the instructions to the people that will lead them in their way
(Dharani and April).
Attention to detail- Proper measurements and the temperatures are the main elements for
achieving the successful baked cake crumb. Giving an eye to the details helps the making of the
cakes to be eye catching and increase the sales and accordingly assists raising the revenues that
leads to the successfulness of the venture.
Incredible networks- Successful entrepreneurs need to have a vast and incredible network and
accordingly develop a suitable attitude or behaviour for the particular type of network. The
contacts need to be of utmost influence in several ways and should have the ability to expand and
grow the business of each other in different ways. Sharing time and energy in the networks,
giving more than taking and taking particular actions without expecting anything in return or any
kind of reciprocation (Bakri, 2020).
CONCLUSION
From the above report it has been concluded that entrepreneur should have good skills and
attributes for establishing and operating the business. All the factors like adaptability, flexibility,
trustfulness, versatile , goal oriented makes the entrepreneur more successful and helps them in
making the business more productive.it is very essential for the entrepreneur to know the
strength and weakness of the business for which they are working so that they can provide a
better solution to the team members. Similarly for staring any venture it is very beneficial for the
entrepreneur to have innovation qualities in them. Innovation make changes and changes helps in
the growth of the business. This helps in generating more revenue and profit for the business

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Singh, S.K. and Gaur, S.S., 2018. Entrepreneurship and innovation management in emerging
economies. Management Decision.
Berger, E.S., and et.al, 2021. Digital or not–The future of entrepreneurship and innovation:
Introduction to the special issue. Journal of Business Research, 125, pp.436-442.
Castro, M.P., Scheede, C.R. and Zermeño, M.G.G., 2020, April. Entrepreneur profile and
entrepreneurship skills: Expert's analysis in the Mexican entrepreneurial ecosystem.
In 2020 International Conference on Technology and Entrepreneurship-Virtual (ICTE-V),
San Jose, CA, USA. doi (Vol. 10).
Sandoval, L.A., 2022. The Knowledge and Skills Required to Be a Successful
Entrepreneur. Applied Economics Teaching Resources (AETR), 4(1), pp.TBD-TBD.
Loué, C., 2018. Firms and internationalization: an approach based on the skills and the profile of
the entrepreneur. Journal of Small Business & Entrepreneurship, 30(5), pp.345-374.
Ratten, V. and Dana, L.P., 2019. Societal entrepreneurship and competitiveness. In Societal
entrepreneurship and competitiveness. Emerald Publishing Limited.
Kahn, K.B., 2018. Understanding innovation. Business Horizons, 61(3), pp.453-460.
Parrilli, M.D., Balavac, M. and Radicic, D., 2020. Business innovation modes and their impact
on innovation outputs: Regional variations and the nature of innovation across EU
regions. Research Policy, 49(8), p.104047.
Adrian, A. and Zulvia, Y., 2020. The Impact Of Core Values, Character And Entrepreneur
Leadership In Successful Of Minangkabau Leaders And Javanese Leaders. Jurnal
Ilmiah Poli Bisnis, pp.14-26.
Bakri, A.A.A., 2020. What it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur: the self-assessment.
International Journal of Entrepreneurial Venturing.12(5).pp.547-573.
Banda, J., 2018. Personal characteristics of successful women entrepreneurs in Mexico: A
conceptual exploratory study. Small Business Institute Journal.14(1). pp.19-30.
Dharani, B. and April, K., Locus of Control and The Happy Entrepreneur.
Dror, I.E., 2020. Cognitive and human factors in expert decision making: six fallacies and the
eight sources of bias. Analytical Chemistry, 92(12), pp.7998-8004.
1

Eniola, A.A., 2018. Entrepreneur-sme manager traits and sources of financing. In African
entrepreneurship (pp. 223-259). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Hameed, I. and Irfan, Z., 2019. Entrepreneurship education: a review of challenges,
characteristics and opportunities. Entrepreneurship Education.2(3).pp.135-148.
Herron, L., 2020. Do skills predict profits?: a study of successful entrepreneurship. Routledge.
Huarng, K.H. and Yu, T.H.K., 2021. Complexity theory of entrepreneur characteristics.
International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal.17(3). pp.1037-1048.
Kamberidou, I., 2020. “Distinguished” women entrepreneurs in the digital economy and the
multitasking whirlpool. Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship.9(1).pp.1-26.
Karia, N., 2020. A comparative benchmark model for SMEs: viable entrepreneur emotional
intelligence. Benchmarking: An International Journal.
Lee, B., 2018. Human capital and labor: the effect of entrepreneur characteristics on venture
success. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research.
Machmud, A. and Hidayat, Y.M., 2020. Characteristics of Islamic entrepreneurship and the
business success of SMEs in Indonesia. Journal of Entrepreneurship
Education.23(2).pp.1-16.
Portales, L., 2019. Characteristics of the Social Entrepreneur. In Social Innovation and Social
Entrepreneurship (pp. 81-95). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Wittmer, D.P., 2019. Ethical decision-making. In Handbook of administrative ethics (pp. 481-
507). Routledge.
2

3