David Muir: Entrepreneurship Case Study - Business Innovation & Growth

This case study delves into the entrepreneurial journey of David Muir, an Australian businessman known for transforming his father's retail shop into a major brand, Good Guys, and for co-founding Best Friends Pet Care. It examines Muir's application of various innovation theories, including sociological, high achievement, and entrepreneurship innovation theories, to his ventures. The study highlights his risk-taking approach, rebranding strategies, and his ability to identify and capitalize on market gaps, particularly in the pet care industry. It also classifies Muir as an opportunist, drawing from Joe Abraham's 'Entrepreneurial DNA' framework. The case study further acknowledges the challenges faced by Good Guys and underscores the importance of community engagement and teamwork in business success. Ultimately, it positions Andrew Muir as a role model for aspiring entrepreneurs, emphasizing the significance of innovation, patience, and social responsibility. Desklib provides access to similar case studies and solved assignments for students.

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Entrepreneurship Case Study David Muir
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Entrepreneurship Case Study David Muir
Entrepreneurship can be defined as the capability and willingness of an individual/s to
develop, organize and manage a business considering all the risks involved with a goal of
making a profit (Drucker, 2014). One of the best examples of entrepreneurship is starting a
business which is characterised by innovations and risk-taking. There are various theories of
innovation which include:
Sociological theory
Here an entrepreneur is likely to benefit from his/her innovations from a specific
social culture. He/she depends on the society's values, religious beliefs, customs and taboos.
Psychological theory
Applies in a society where there are many individuals with the desired psychological
characteristics. These characteristics include; desire for high achievement, a vision and the
ability to withstand/face the opposition (Brenkert, 2017). These characteristics are developed
by individuals during their upbringing.
Entrepreneurship innovation theory
This theory is by Joseph Schumpeter and depicts an entrepreneur as a person who
helps grow the economy. He farther claims that entrepreneurs are those individuals who are
innovative, creative and a foresight. (Kuratko, 2016). Schumpeter believes something is an
innovation when it is a new product, a new production method is introduced, uses a
different/new raw material supply, introduces a new market and introduction of a new
organization in any type of an industry.
This theory majorly focuses on innovation, risk-taking and establishing the best
abilities of an entrepreneur. This theory is not often found in developing countries where the
available entrepreneurs' practice businesses in small scale and most of the time depends on
imitating others rather than innovating.

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Theory of high achievement
This theory is by McClelland who stated that there are two characteristics of
entrepreneurship which include; undertaking activities in new and better ways and making
verdicts under doubt(Meyer, Neck and Meek, 2017). He insisted that those people with a high
need for success are most likely to become entrepreneurs. He farther stated that such kinds of
people are not money oriented but they measure their success and competency by how much
profit one gets.
Motivation Theory
McClelland also suggested that there are three types of needs that individual dreams
of at any given time; desire for achievement, power and the need for maintaining friendly
relations with others (Storey, 2016). McClelland suggests that the need for achievement is the
desire and a target goal for any entrepreneur.
In this paperwork, we are going to analyse about one great entrepreneur called David
Muir. He was born in Melbourne, Australia and before his success; he was working at his
father's retail shop. After completing his studies, he worked at Cooper's and Lybrand for three
and a half years before he quit and took over his family business as a financial accountant. In
the year 1993, he took over as the CEO where he made a series of changes in the company
like renaming the brand from Mighty Muirs to Good Guys, turning it into one of Australia’s
largest retailer and making him a successful business leader, entrepreneur and philanthropist.
(Frederick, Kuratko and O'Conno, 2015). He stepped down as the company' CEO in 1996
when it was acquired by JB HI-FI. This was after sixty-four years since his father started the
business. He then became a co-founder of Best Friends Pet Care after realising there were a
potential business idea and a gap in pet care brands. He initialized his idea, and currently,
there are twenty-seven pet care centres across Australia that offer any pet associated issue.
The centre is fully modernised with a qualified veterinarian, offer grooming services and

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equipped with a puppy school. In 2016, he had a new invention, Momatu, which is a free
digital timeline tool in which people can interact together. This tool is available on desktops
as an app.
Using Andrew Muir as our case example, it is evident that we can relate a number of
things with the theories of innovation. In his innovation of establishing pet care centres, the
theory of sociological theory is fully depicted here. Muir had noted that people had a lifestyle
of owning pets and there were no facilities of taking care of the pets. He took advantage of
the gap and established his company which is all over Australia. The theory of high
achievement can be explained whereby Muir decided to rebrand, formerly his father’s
business to a new brand (Al‐Aali and Teece, 2014). This itself was risk-taking since he had
doubted whether the public will be appeased by his work. He also made a risk of having a
major overhaul of the company whereby he placed a new team and changed the way of
running the company. His risk-taking activities later paid off as the company become one of
the largest and successful consumer household appliances and electronics retailers.
In the theory entrepreneurship innovation theory, we can clearly see that Muir's
innovation helps grow the economy of Australia since his businesses all over the country.
The only difference in the theory of Entrepreneurship innovation theory is where Joseph
suggests that something becomes an innovation by introducing a new market (Cuthbert and
Molla, 2015). Throughout Muir’s innovations, the market still remains the same only that he
introduces new services to the people of Australia.
According to the definition of an entrepreneur and the various theories of innovations,
we can clearly conclude that Andrew Muir is a successful entrepreneur. This is because he
took the risk of rebranding his father’s retail shop, he was a co-founder of best friends’ pet
care and innovation of Momatu. Joe Abraham in his book ‘Entrepreneurial DNA’ studies
over one thousand entrepreneurs and discovered that they appeared in four distinctive groups

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(Santos, Mitchell and Landstrˆm, 2017). These groups include a builder who has the drive to
build highly scalable businesses very fast, an opportunist who jump to any money making
opportunities, a specialist who make their innovations through their area of expertise and
lastly an innovator who innovates something they love and then business follows it like for
the case of Mark Zuckerberg. We can classify Andrew Muir as an opportunist. This is
because, in his invention of best friends pet care, he noticed that there as a gap in the area and
he did not hesitate to venture into the business.
Throughout the research, I have come to realise some of my major talents in
entrepreneurship. This includes loving to take risks in business idea where I have had my ups
and downs, loving teamwork and being innovative. It has also dawned on me that imitating
done inventions is one of the problems I have as an entrepreneur. Andrew Muir has
encouraged me a lot throughout his entrepreneurship businesses. He has taught me to be a
risk taker and an ‘opportunist’ in any business opportunity available. I also learned a few
attributes from him like the techniques of rebranding and introduction of a new organization
in a company. One of the surprising things about Muir is his desire to be successful. He had a
humble beginning whereby he started as a financial accountant but that did not discourage
him from achieving his dreams of becoming one of the best entrepreneurs in Australia.
There are various challenges and shortcomings that faced Good guys under Andrew
Muir. For example, the company had been on sale unofficially for five years but it had not
found a suitable buyer. This is because of its business model whereby its stores were jointly
owned by individual store managers. The sale of Good Guys is one of the shortcomings of
Good Guys Company since they could have stayed on and offered a stiff competition to their
rivals like JB HI-FI. Muir as the CEO could have thought of strategies of competing with HI-
FI instead of selling the company to them.

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Andrew Muir Company Good Guys was of great help to the local community. The
company had initiatives like The Good Foundation in which it was a partnership between
Jamie Oliver who was a cook and the Queensland state government (CHEN, 2017). This
foundation helped the surrounding community by improving their health and social welfare.
The foundation aims at eradicating obesity, avoiding poor nutrition and diet through creating
public awareness programs. All stores at Good Guys had a program in which they would
assist the community. These services of doing well to the community have taught me that it is
important to remember the community which is part of your organization.
Teamwork has been a contributing factor towards the success of good guys. Andrew
Muir after rebranding his father’s business, he selected a team in which it could help him run
the business. This was a success as his technique worked and bore him good fruits.
Teamwork helps whereby as a company gets bigger, work will become smaller and more
focused (Ibrahim and Kurilovas, 2016). One has the privilege of becoming a manager of
managers and thus the company will be easy to manage to result in success.
In conclusion, Andrew Muir as an entrepreneur is a great example of how future
entrepreneurs should be. The research about him reveals many techniques in which people
should follow in order to be successful in taking risks, being patient, teamwork and giving
back to the community. This research is of great help to future entrepreneurs and should be
put into considerations by any person aspiring to be an entrepreneur.

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References
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