Entrepreneurship and Innovation: A Case Study of Garrett Camp's Uber

This report examines the entrepreneurial journey of Garrett Camp, the Canadian founder of Uber and StumbleUpon. It identifies his key characteristics, including creativity, innovation, and risk-taking, which contributed to his success. The report analyzes Camp's opportunity recognition and idea development process, highlighting his ability to identify market needs and develop innovative solutions. It further explores Uber's competitive advantages, such as customer loyalty, advanced technology, and high revenue generation, while also considering the competitive landscape. Finally, the report recommends acquisition strategies for Uber to expand into new markets, especially where the company faces challenges, and concludes by emphasizing the importance of Camp's entrepreneurial traits and market analysis in achieving his success. The paper includes references to support the analysis.

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Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Student’s Name
Course
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Introduction
An entrepreneur is defined as an individual running a small business, assumes all the
risks, and rewards rather than working as an employee in a company. In a business perspective,
an entrepreneur is seen as a source of new ideas, services, goods, procedures, business and
innovations. Entrepreneurs play a great role in the economy as they have skills and initiatives
essential in anticipating future and current needs in order to come up with innovations.
Therefore, the paper seeks to identify an entrepreneur in Canada, describe the entrepreneur
characteristics or traits, opportunities and competitive advantage he or she has in the market.
Background of the entrepreneur
Garrett Camp is a Canadian entrepreneur born in 1978. Camp pursued a bachelor's degree
in electrical engineering although he later changed his career to Software engineering a field that
helped him to design platforms such as Uber mobile application. Coming from entrepreneurship
family, Camp followed the footsteps of his father who he termed as his “role model” to venture
into entrepreneurship. The skills and experiences he gained while operating his father’s business
inspired him to come up with ideas of starting his own company. Furthermore, Camp’s
entrepreneurship started at University as he used to get ideas from the colleagues and later
implemented them. Furthermore, he started his first business while still at university.
The camp is the founder of StumbleUpon which is a web-discovery platform.
Furthermore, he also founded Uber which operates as a transportation network company in
countrywide since 2009. In 2013, Camp also formed Expa which is a startup video studio that
develops and launches new products. Currently, the net worth of Camp is estimated to be $US
4.9 billion and he is serving as a chairman of both Uber and Stumble companies.
Entrepreneur traits or characteristics

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Creative and innovative are the most desirable characteristics of an entrepreneur. Creative
involves coming up with original ideas that are unique in order to introduce a new product or
services that have a competitive advantage in the market. Through the creativity of Camp, many
consumers worldwide are happily enjoying the services of Uber. Furthermore, upon inventing
physical Uber services, Camp was creative to introduce a supporting mobile application features
that helped customers to order for the services online conveniently. Risky taker is also an
entrepreneurship characteristic of Garrett Camp. A risks taker is “an entrepreneur who is willing
to take risks such as financial losses in order to grab an opportunity in the market and achieve a
goal. Garrett Camp’s ability to take risks while university-assisted him to become a successful
entrepreneur in the future. Despite his friends having good ideas of generating income, they
lacked risk-taking traits to implement them. Instead, they sold ideas to Camp who converted
those ideas to actions. Research conducted by Hammond, Neff, Farr, Schwall and Zhao (2011
p.90) shows that 80 percent of ideas and the most profitable business in the world today came
from people who feared to risks their finances to invest on their ideas.
Opportunity recognition and idea development process
Opportunity recognition is defined as a continuous cognitive process of analyzing
opportunities to create new products and services that generate economic value. According to Lu
and Gou (2009 an idea development is a process of creating an idea, innovating the concepts and
developing a process that brings the concepts to reality. Garrett Camp began its opportunity
recognition by conducting market research to identify the arising consumer needs. After
thorough market research, he realized that consumers needed a reliable and accessible means of
transport. With some people not able to access personal cars and other in need of emergency
transport services, Camp identified this opportunity and generated an idea of introducing Uber

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services. Furthermore, with advancement in technologies and majority of people switching to
internet services, Camp used the opportunity to come up with effective Uber mobile application
because the majority of internet users were able to use their phones to locate the uber services.
Ideas development process consists of six stages or phases including creation,
assessment, planning, development, assessment and launching (Sandstrom and Bjork, 2010
p.310-324). After spotting the opportunity, an idea development process begun at phase one
“creation” where Camp tracked down all ideas generated, reviewed all the ideas to determine
their appropriateness and later decided to come up with the most valuable idea that was investing
“Uber Transport System”. The second phase was “assessment” where Camp was involved in
market research to determine the viability of the idea and understand the target market and needs.
The third phase was “planning” where Camp created a business plan to identify business goals in
order to increase the possibilities of having a successful business launch. The fourth phase was
“development” where Camp was involved in taking the idea into the concrete form as he
developed a prototype of Uber Transport System to be offered in the market. According to
Frankenberger, Weiblen, Csik and Gassmann (2013 p.273) through the “development phase,” an
entrepreneur creates an operational process, marketing launch plans and testing plans. The fifth
phase was “testing phase” where a test is conducted in the market that is close to a real market
situation. (Mader and Eggink, 2014 p.1). At the “testing” stage, Camp released a prototype into
the public marketplace. He tracked the prototype and market results revealed that the idea was
valid to forward a product. The six phases are “launching” which involves the introduction of the
real product in the market (Hossain and Islam, 2015 p.611). At this phase, Camp launched Uber
transport system that was correctly planned, marketing activities and appropriate documentation

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developed. Furthermore, the employee of the product was well trained and ready to support the
new product.
Competitive advantage
Uber operates a partnership type of business with Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp
being the main shareholders. The Uber business has significantly expanded to 76 countries and
facilitated to more than 5 million rides and has sales estimated to be 6.5 billion by 2016
(Griswold, 2019 p.1). Countrywide, Uber accommodates 16,000 employees from in 2019
(Clifford, 2019) which significantly shows the company is growing and penetrating to new
markets. Furthermore, despite its rapid growth, Uber operates in a very competitive environment
consist of both direct and indirect competitors. Ubers indirect competitors include public
transport and local taxis. Ubers direct competitors include lyft, curb, Grab, ole cabs and
DidiChuxing. Some competitive advantage the company is experiencing including customer
loyalty, high revenue generation, dominant in the market, use of new technologies and low-
pricing strategy.
Customer loyalty remains a great competitive advantage for the company. With the
organization having a well-established brand as compared to competitors, the company has
maintained the existing customers and attracting new customers. The advanced technology and
differentiated product is also a competitive advantage of the company. The evolvement of the
App to accommodate other key features that make app user-friendly than competitors’ has
attracted the attention of customers. For example, with the application having features such as
“suggestion” has enabled the company to assess the competencies and skills of drivers in order to
improve customer experiences. Furthermore, the app has also provided safety features for
informing family members about directions a person is heading to. The trend that the Uber is

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planning to invest in self-driven technology and urban air technology shows the company is
likely to have a higher competitive advantage in the future.
High net income to run the business is also a key competition of the company as
compared to its competitors. The company has a net worth of about $3 billion and a valuation of
$48 billion (Zwick, 2018 p.479) which is far higher that lyf’s 2.1 $US billion (Ming, Tunca, Xu
and Zhu, 2019 p.6). Furthermore, with Uber having raised $12billion from silicon billionaires,
the company has been able to lower the prices significantly for the services and paid drivers well
as compared to competitors. The cheap services and skilled drivers have attracted the attention of
many customers in the global market.
Recommendation
With Uber facing high competition outside the North American continent where the
numbers services are not popular, Camp should come up with an acquisition strategy. According
to Lee and Lieberman (2010 p.140), acquisition strategy involves a company purchasing other
company and having control of its operation. For example, with uber experiencing difficulties in
Chinese markets, Camp should acquire Didichuxing Company that is among the most
ridesharing companies in China. Furthemrore, Camp should also consider rebranding its name in
unpopular countries or countries with long-term oriented cultures (people highly supporting their
own country’s production). For example, after acquiring Didichuxing, Camp could opt to
negotiate with copyrights and trademark authorities to retain the name “DIdichuxing” or opt to
rename the company to a name related to Chinese cultures.
Conclusion
Camp’s development of entrepreneurship passion, skills, experience and abilities gained
from his parents was the main strengths he possed for venturing into the entrepreneurship. The

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entrepreneurship characteristics such as creative, innovative, confidence, risk-taking and
endurance assisted Camp to be successful in the industry. The market research and identification
of market needs was an essential element for Camp identifying opportunity and developing
ideas. High valuation in net income, advanced technology and customer loyalty are a key
competitive advantage for uber services. Camp should utilize an acquisition strategy for easier
market entry in countries the company is facing low market shares.

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References
Clifford, C. (2019). Uber CEO: What scares me the most is how much the company depends on
me. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/07/ubers-dara-khosrowshahi-reveals-
biggest-fear-as-ceo.html
Frankenberger, K., Weiblen, T., Csik, M. and Gassmann, O., 2013. The 4I-framework of
business model innovation: A structured view on process phases and challenges. International
Journal of Product Development, 18(3/4), pp.249-273.
Griswold, A. (2019). It’s time Uber gave up on conquering the world. Retrieved from
https://qz.com/1037140/amid-internal-turmoil-uber-needs-to-retreat-and-focus-on-markets-
where-it-can-win/
Hammond, M.M., Neff, N.L., Farr, J.L., Schwall, A.R. and Zhao, X., 2011. Predictors of
individual-level innovation at work: A meta-analysis. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and
the Arts, 5(1), p.90.
Hossain, M. and Islam, K.Z., 2015. Ideation through online open innovation platform: dell
ideastorm. Journal of the Knowledge Economy, 6(3), pp.611-624.
Lee, G.K. and Lieberman, M.B., 2010. Acquisition vs. internal development as modes of market
entry. Strategic Management Journal, 31(2), pp.140-158.
LU, J.X. and GOU, H.F., 2009. Basic Idea and Development Process of Finite Element Method
[J]. Mechanical Management and Development, 24(2), pp.74-75.
Mader, A. and Eggink, W., 2014. A design process for creative technology. In DS 78:
Proceedings of the 16th International conference on Engineering and Product Design Education

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(E&PDE14), Design Education and Human Technology Relations, University of Twente, The
Netherlands, 04-05.09. 2014.
Ming, L., Tunca, T.I., Xu, Y. and Zhu, W., 2019. An Empirical Analysis of Market Formation,
Pricing, and Revenue Sharing in Ride-Hailing Services. Pricing, and Revenue Sharing in Ride-
Hailing Services (February 15, 2019).
Sandstrom, C. and Bjork, J., 2010. Idea management systems for a changing innovation
landscape. International Journal of Product Development, 11(3-4), pp.310-324.
Zwick, A., 2018. Welcome to the Gig Economy: neoliberal industrial relations and the case of
Uber. GeoJournal, 83(4), pp.679-691.