MNG91002: Fairphone Case Study - Entrepreneurship Analysis

This report analyzes the entrepreneurial traits and challenges faced by Fairphone, a Netherlands-based smartphone start-up. It explores the company's commitment to ethical manufacturing, including its fair supply chain and modular phone design. The analysis identifies key entrepreneurial characteristics such as ethical considerations, open-mindedness, determination, and vision. The report discusses how these traits contribute to Fairphone's success in creating a distinct market and building long-lasting relationships with consumers. Furthermore, it examines the challenges of social entrepreneurship, including securing capital, leveraging partnerships, maintaining product quality, and accessing innovative technologies. The report concludes by highlighting the importance of entrepreneurship in business operations and emphasizing the need for social enterprises to overcome challenges to thrive in a competitive market.

Running head: ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN FAIR PHONE
Entrepreneurship in Fair phone
Name of the student
Name of the University
Author note

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Executive Summary
The main purpose of this report is to discuss about the traits in the entrepreneurs of Fair
phone. The report also talks about the challenges pertaining to social entrepreneurship that
can hinder the work of a social enterprise.

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Introduction
Entrepreneurship refers to process of the designing and the running of a new business.
Entrepreneurship is indicative of the capacity of the individuals that can help an individual in
managing the business venture that can help them in making a profit. Entrepreneurship refers
to an entity that helps an individual in acting upon the opportunities that can help in
translating inventions into that the new products. An entrepreneur identifies the opportunities
and assembles the man power that helps in operation of an enterprise. An entrepreneur takes
the psychological enterprise that helps in managing an enterprise in the successful manner.
Fair phone refers to smart phone start-up that is based in Netherlands that has helped in
changing dynamics pertaining to mobile phone industry (Fairphone.com 2019). Fair phone
produces the smartphones that have been ethically manufactured. Fair phone makes use of a
fair supply chain that helps them in creation of the modular smartphones built on the ethical
lines. This report discusses about the entrepreneurship traits of the managers of Fair phone.
The report also talks about the challenges pertaining to social entrepreneurship of Fair phone.
Analysis of the Entrepreneur traits
The entrepreneurship traits that can be found in Fair phone are ethical, open-minded,
determination and vision. Van Abel was the founder of Fair phone and he was responsible for
producing the phone that lays emphasis on the human values. It helped in growing the
customer base of the company and catered to the needs of the modern day consumer. The
entrepreneurs of Fair phone has made profit by providing help to the marginalised
communities. They have made products that can reduce effect on the environment. The
entrepreneurship characteristics in relation to Fair phone is that it has produced phones that
are aesthetic and which has been priced in a competitive manner (Kirzner 2015). The
company has established the long-lasting relationships with the employees by providing the

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fair working conditions within the East Asian factories. The entrepreneurs of Fair phone are
ethical and open-minded and they do not want the people to upgrade to the new model unlike
Apple (Dees 2017). This has helped the company in creating a distinct market that has helped
it in rising above the competitors.
The entrepreneurs of Fairphone have the determination that has helped them in
producing the eco-friendly products. According to Kuratko (2016), the determination on the
part of the business owners helps in taking care of the fact that production pertaining to the
phone is devoid of any kind of exploitation within the ambit of manufacturing chain .The
entrepreneurs of Fair phone have the vision that taking into consideration the working
condition of the employees can help in ensuring the sustainability of the company. The
factory workers of the company are paid fair amount of wages and the raw materials of the
company are mined with the help of the local companies that helps in benefitting the
community. It has been stated by Burns (2016) that the decisiveness on the part of the
entrepreneurs of the company can be understood from the fact that it makes use of small-
scale mines that can help in making the policies of the company transparent. There are a large
number of companies that makes use of cobalt that acts as a material for the batteries of the
cell phone. The companies mine the cobalt from Democratic Republic of Congo and it has
been found that the mining is done by the children. The entrepreneurs of the company with
the help of their vision ad their decision making abilities have been successful in improving
mining sector (Storey 2016). This has helped them in successfully contributing to the
betterment of the society.
There are big companies like Apple and the Sony who manufacture the products in
the Foxconn factories of China that has dismal working conditions. Fair phone manufactures
within China by making use of the Singapore company called the Hi-P that has better
working conditions. The workers of Fair phone have to work more than 60 hours within a

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week and they are not given any kind of weekly off. The entrepreneurs of Fair phone are
open-minded and they are carrying out investigations in the working conditions of the Hi-P
factory of China.
Challenges in the Social Entrepreneurship
Social entrepreneurship helps the entrepreneur in leading the organization and taking
initiatives that can help in the process of the social change. There are challenges in relation to
the social entrepreneurship that impedes the work of an entrepreneur. Firstly, the social
entrepreneurs find it difficult to get the capital that can help them in the effective running of
the business. According to André and Pache (2016), the enterprises need a large amount of
fund that can help them in the successful running of the business. Secondly, the challenges
pertaining to the social entrepreneurship arises on account of the fact that they find it difficult
to leverage the partnership that acts as an impediment for the social enterprise. The social
entrepreneurs have to identify the partners that can help in bringing economic value to the
companies. The social entrepreneurs have to face the difficulty in maintaining the quality of
the products. The social entrepreneurs looks into the aspects of the social welfare and this
makes them overlook the aspect of quality of the products (Wry and York 2017).
Thirdly, the social enterprises do not get the relevant amount of the support that can
help them in bringing about innovations of their products. The social entrepreneurs has to
makes use of eco-friendly models that can help them in bringing about improvements in the
quality of their products. It has been found that most of the business in the present age are
interested in making the profits and the social enterprises find difficulty in the arena of
making the collaborations (van Osch, Steinfield and Balogh 2015). The running of the social
enterprise has challenges as it cannot get the technologies that can help them in making
superior quality of the products. A social enterprise lays emphasis on the needs of the society
and they look after the aspects of welfare of the community. The social enterprises do not get

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the fund and the capital that can help them in taking the advantages of the innovative
technologies that can help them in succeeding with the competitive market. The dearth of the
use of the innovative technologies throws challenges on the business (Ridley-Duff and Bull
2015).
Conclusion
Entrepreneurship is indicative of the process that helps in the functioning of a
business. It refers to capacity of individuals that helps in the proper management of business
venture. The traits pertaining to entrepreneurship that can be found in Fair phone is vision
that helps them in manufacturing aesthetic products that are offered with competitive pricing.
This has helped the company in establishing relationships that are long-lasting with the
consumers. The company has provided fair working conditions to the employees in the
factories that has ensured the sustainability of the company. Factory workers of Fair phone
are paid decent wages and the raw materials of the company being sourced from the local
sources has helped in providing benefits to community. Social enterprises need a large
amount of funding that can help in the effective functioning of business. Challenges rise in
the arena of social entrepreneurship as they cannot leverage partnerships that can help in their
effective running. They do not get the right kind of the support which can help in innovating
the products.

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References
André, K. and Pache, A.C., 2016. From caring entrepreneur to caring enterprise: Addressing
the ethical challenges of scaling up social enterprises. Journal of Business Ethics, 133(4),
pp.659-675.
Burns, P., 2016. Entrepreneurship and small business. Palgrave Macmillan Limited.
Dees, J.G., 2017. 1 The Meaning of Social Entrepreneurship. In Case studies in social
entrepreneurship and sustainability(pp. 34-42). Routledge.
Fairphone.com (2019). Fairphone. [online] Fairphone. Available at:
https://www.fairphone.com/en/ [Accessed 7 Apr. 2019].
Kirzner, I.M., 2015. Competition and entrepreneurship. University of Chicago press.
Kuratko, D.F., 2016. Entrepreneurship: Theory, process, and practice. Cengage Learning.
Ridley-Duff, R. and Bull, M., 2015. Understanding social enterprise: Theory and practice.
Sage.
Storey, D.J., 2016. Entrepreneurship and new firm. Routledge.
van Osch, W., Steinfield, C.W. and Balogh, B.A., 2015, January. Enterprise social media:
Challenges and opportunities for organizational communication and collaboration. In 2015
48th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 763-772). IEEE.
Wry, T. and York, J.G., 2017. An identity-based approach to social enterprise. Academy of
Management Review, 42(3), pp.437-460.