SEB725 Engineering Entrepreneurship: Comparative Analysis of Leaders

This report explores the concept of entrepreneurship and leadership through an analysis of Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Inc., and Nigel Ang, co-founder of Kepler Analytics. It discusses the common traits of successful entrepreneurs, such as risk-taking ability, adaptability, effective planning, product and market knowledge, and strong money management, highlighting how these traits have contributed to the success of both leaders. The report also examines their democratic approach to leadership and offers recommendations for improvement, including product diversification for Apple and continued investment in research and development for Kepler Analytics. The analysis emphasizes the importance of innovation, strategic decision-making, and adapting to market trends for sustained success in the competitive business landscape. Desklib provides access to this and other solved assignments to aid students in their studies.

Running head: ENTREPRENEURSHIP
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction:........................................................................................................................3
Discussion:...........................................................................................................................4
Common traits of the entrepreneur:.................................................................................4
Justification for selecting the entrepreneurs:...................................................................8
Approach towards the organization:................................................................................8
Recommendation:............................................................................................................9
Conclusion:........................................................................................................................12
References:........................................................................................................................13

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Introduction:
This assignment will explain about
the concept of entrepreneur and leaders
based on two entrepreneurs from the
engineering background. One of the
entrepreneurs is the co-founder of the Kepler
analytics. Kepler analytics was established
in the year 2014 in Melbourne by a group of
talented engineers whose aim was to provide
solutions that will help the retail store to
enhance the customer experience and will
also help the organization to manage its
operation effectively. Nigel Ang the co-
founder and the leader of the Kepler
analytics have been working hard to give the
organization a worldwide recognition. The
organization invested 2 million dollar in
their research and development process so
that they can come up with better solution
for the customer as well as for the
organization. Another entrepreneur is Tim
cook. Tim cook is the present CEO of Apple
inc. He has been the face of the Apple for
last few years as during his tenure he have
brought some of the revolutionary change
and also come up with some technologies
that have gather the attention of the
worldwide population. Some of the notable
technologies that he has come up with in the
last few years are the face recognition and
the bezel-less display. Nigel Ang and Tim
Cook have shown how to lead a company to
success. This assignment will discuss the
common traits that are necessary to become
a successful leader or entrepreneurship and
will also discuss how these traits affected
these entrepreneurs in achieving success.
This assignment will also discuss about
some of the recommendation about how
these leaders can improve their leadership
style.

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Discussion:
Entrepreneurship is the process of
creating and operating a business or
businesses by scaling it to produce a profit
(1). An entrepreneur is an individual who
creates a business with the motive to earn
profit. The main aim of the entrepreneurs is
to develop the organization and bring some
product which is innovative and will create
buzz in the environment.
Tim Cook is an industrial engineer
and an American business executive. Tim
Cook, the present chief executive officer of
Apple Inc. has served as the Chief Operating
Officer under the leadership and the founder
of Apple Steve Jobs (2). Tim Cook joined
the Apple inc. in the year 1998 as the senior
vice president. In his tenure as the chief
executive officer of Apple he has focused on
the political reformation of domestic and
international surveillance, corporate
taxation, cyber security and environmental
preservation.
Nigel Ang is the co-founder of the
Kepler Analytic (3). Kepler analytics was
established in the year 2014 in Melbourne,
Australia by a group of dedicated engineers
and former retail executives with an idea
that the retail experience can be improved
by data collection process. The organization
started by assessing all the vital and major
approaches taken by all the retail stores and
then providing technologies based on that. A
technology or a solution will be useful if it is
powerful and yet practical and quite easy to
implement in the organization. The
organization has spent nearly 2 years and a
huge amount of 2 million dollars in the
research & development process to make the
Kepler Customer Behaviour Sensor.
Common traits of the entrepreneur:
To become a successful entrepreneur
an individual should have some of the

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unique characteristics that will define why
they are different from one another and why
they will achieve success. Tim Cook and
Nigel Ang has become successful for some
of the unique characteristics that they have,
which helped them in assessing and
understanding what is required to be a
successful entrepreneur. The common traits
that these two leaders have in common and
with all the other entrepreneurs are:
 Risk taking ability: Both the
entrepreneurs are not afraid to take
risks, which can be seen by their
activities in the organization (4).
Every entrepreneur should be risk
takers and should be ready to dive in
the future of unexpected outcomes.
Under the tenure of Tim cook Apple
have come up with many
technologies that was seen as a threat
for the organization and got many
criticism from its competitors and
the critics. When Apple removed the
fingerprint sensor from their device
and added the face recognition
software it was said to be disastrous
move by the Apple Inc., but now it
has proved to be revolution in the
technology world (5). Similarly
Nigel Ang has also come up with an
idea that will change the retail
experience in the market. The
solution or the software that the
organization provides has helped
many organizations in managing
their inventory and increasing the
customer experience. An
entrepreneur should not be afraid of
failure and if they fail they should
start again from the beginning.
 Adaptable and flexible: An
entrepreneur should be adaptable to
every situation in the business
organization (6). While taking risk
the organization might face a number
of failures, however the

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entrepreneurs should manage the
situation and his employees so that
they do not get demotivated. An
entrepreneur needs to be very
flexible in every situation. He should
be able to take complex and hard
decisions (7). Tim Cook and Nigel
Ang both are very flexible in the
tough situation and are quick at
making decisions in the organization.
They have taken decisions for
example introduction of the bezel-
less display and many other difficult
decisions that have changed the
company’s image and helped them in
gaining a brand image.
 Effective planning: A good leader or
an entrepreneur should come with
effective planning for the products
and other important operational
function (8). Effective planning will
help the organization in making huge
revenue in the organization without
much failure. An entrepreneur
should forecast the future and should
make decisions according to that.
The entrepreneur should assess what
changes can happen in the industry
and what needs to be done so that the
any major failure can be avoided.
Tim Cook has highly focused on the
security of their devices and has
made Apple a most secured device in
the market (9). However, nowadays
the level of cyber crime has
increased and Apple has proved to be
the key for the corporate world.
 Product and Market knowledge:
Entrepreneurs should have a great
product and market knowledge.
Understanding the trends in the
market and what the customer is
wanting from their products is a key
to success (10). An entrepreneur
should research about the market in
which they are operating. They

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should understand the market
statistics, their rival competitors, and
all the different environmental,
social and economical factors that
will affect the organization. They
should research and bring something
new in the market that doesn’t exist
in the market. They should
incorporate some features in their
product which will prove to be the
unique selling proposition (16).
Remaining unaware of the
competitor moves, changing in the
market needs and other external
factors may even lead the great
products to failures. Nigel Ang and
Tim Cook has a great product and
market knowledge which helped
them in staying with the changing
trends in the market as well as
helped them in managing the needs
of the customer.
 Strong money management: Apple
Inc. and Kepler analytic are great in
managing the cash flow in the
organization. Apple has been in the
highest grocessor’s list. They earn
huge revenue from their sales, which
helped them in expanding their
business globally. Poor money
management can lead the
organization to surplus. This will
affect the organization badly and
lead them towards shutting down the
whole operation. This requires a
good knowledge in the money
management. The money
management skill should be accurate
fir the new entrepreneurs. One of the
main reasons behind the success of
Kepler analytic is that the money
management skill of Nigel Ang.
Nigel has invested a huge amount in
the research and the development
process, which has proved to deliver

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good results and also improved the
product of the organization (11).
Justification for selecting the
entrepreneurs:
Nigel Ang is selected because of his
great leading skill and how he has helped
Kepler analytics to get a huge reputation in
the market in such a short period of time.
Apart from this Kepler analytics is based on
Melbourne, which is one of the key
requirements of this assignment.
Tim Cook has done extremely well
in leading the organization with his
innovation. The main motive of choosing
him is to understand how innovation can
help an organization and how he managed to
lead so well.
Approach towards the organization:
Both Tim Cook and Nigel Ang have
applied the democratic approach towards the
organization, which has led them to success
under different situation (12). The
democratic leadership style can also be said
as the participative leadership. In this
approach, the leader gives the opportunity to
the member of the organization to share
their values and ideas, which motivates them
in attending the goal of the organization.
Researchers have seen that the most
effective types of leadership style among all
other leadership style is the democratic
leadership style and it has also given higher
productivity, increased the morale of the
group and better contributions from the
employee (13). When the group members
and other individuals in the organization
share ideas in the organization it brings out
innovative ideas and helps in understanding
what the other individual wants from them.
Past researches have seen that the
democratic leaders have the following traits
in them- Honesty, Intelligence, creativity,
competence, fairness and courage. Tim
Cook and Nigel Ang have approached the

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organization in a democratic way and have
proved to be highly useful by this approach.
However, the democratic leadership style
can be sometimes very time consuming. The
consulting process with the employee of the
organization can be very ineffective at
times. Tim Cook also faced many issues by
his democratic approach. One of the issues
is that sometimes the employee feel
demotivated when his/her idea is not
implemented in the organization. This is a
major issue in the organization and may lead
to decreasing the effectiveness and the
productivity of the worker. Tim cook had to
manage his employees carefully so that this
does not affect the workplace of the
organization.
Apart from this, both the
organization focused on providing better
quality of goods. Apple produces expensive
and durable products, which differentiate
them from its competitor (14). They charge
relatively higher price for their products but
in exchange the service that they provide are
of greater quality. This has helped them in
gaining recognition and increasing the brand
reputation. Apple has been successful in
expanding their business globally and they
have changed the way of doing business.
Nigel Ang is hopeful that they will also
expand their business in the near future.
Recommendation:
Both the leaders have been sharp in
the planning and taking the managerial
decisions. Both the leaders have led the
organization beautifully and it can be said
that the success of the organization is highly
dependent on them but there is some
changes that need to be done or corrected
that can help them in gaining competitive
advantage over their rivals. Apple has been
excellent in innovating new technologies
and had also been successful in operating
their business globally. However, the Apple
products are limited and the organizations
have not done much product diversification

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(15). They could invest more in the research
and development process and bring out more
products for example they can bring their
own television or gaming consoles.
On the other hand, Kepler analytics
have invested a lot in the research and
development process but they have failed to
expand their business globally. Expanding
the business globally will help them in
increasing the brand recognition and will
also help them in increasing their customer’s
base (17). Nigel Ang needs to discuss and
make proper plans to target the market of the
specific countries, which will help them in
gaining recognition in the market and which
will help them to expand their business
revenue. Gaining more profit in the
environment will provide them more
opportunity to invest in the other activities
like employee training and other functions
of the organization. Nigel Ang need to
experiment more and should look to
diversify the product which is also missing
for Tim cook.
Both the leaders have been
remarkable in their leadership style and they
have been an inspiration to the youth. A lot
can be learned from them, the way they
managed both the organization and created
some of the revolutionary technologies have
been outstanding. Tim Cook helped to
understand how innovation can help the
organization in creating a brand image and
how it can help the organization in
increasing the USP of the product (18). The
democratic leadership approach that they
follow has been the best, which can be seen
by the increased productivity of the
employees. They helped to understand how
the employee contribution can be increased
in the organization and how the
understanding the ideas of the employee can
help the organization in making better
decision and how it can affect them in
motivating themselves. Both the leaders

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have been phenomenal by the way they
experiment and take risks in the organization
(19). This motivates the youths of the
generation to invest their skills and come up
with innovative business ideas. They have
been the role model of how an organization
should be managed and how the
organization can be successful by
implementing their own ideas effectively.
Both the leaders have shown that the
decision taking should be flexible so that an
individual can adapt to any situation in the
market (20). They have failed many times in
the market but they have compensated the
loss by not giving up and bringing more
innovative products.

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Conclusion:
This assignment discussed about the
two successful entrepreneurs who have
inspired us by their leadership style and who
have brought change in the environment by
bringing some of the revolutionary services
and product. Tim Cook and Nigel Ang have
been excellent by their democratic approach
towards their organization. Apple after the
demise of Steve Jobs has brought some of
the exceptional products that have created
buzz in the telecommunication industry. On
the other hand Nigel Ang has come up with
solutions that will enhance the retail
experience. Nigel Ang and Tim cook
follows the democratic style of leadership,
which has proved to be the best leadership
style as this leadership approach has helped
in increasing the employee contribution and
has also helped in increasing the
productivity of the customer. However, both
the leaders have been excellent but there is
some areas that can be improved for
example Tim cook can diversify the Apple
products and Kepler analytics can expand
their business globally, which will help them
in increasing the brand recognition and will
ultimately lead to increasing the revenue of
the organization.