MNG91002: Entrepreneurship Trends Analysis of GoPro Company Report

This report examines entrepreneurship trends, using GoPro as a case study, focusing on the challenges and strategies associated with the business. It begins by exploring the 'dark side' of entrepreneurship, highlighting despair, uncertainty, and financial constraints as key hurdles faced by entrepreneur...Read More

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ENTREPRENEURSHIP TRENDS
Name
University
Date

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Entrepreneurship Trends
Executive Summary
Entrepreneurship is a discipline that is evaluated in this paper, using the angle of Woodman’s
GoPro Company. This paper undertakes the examination by first looking into the dark side that is
associated with entrepreneurship. Woodman was apprehensive in running with the idea of GoPro
kind of an idea because three things stood on his way; despair, resource and financial constraint
and uncertainty. Given the dynamic business and economic environment, GoPro, like any other
company faces a lot of threats in its undertaking as has been deliberated in this paper. Looking
into the competitive advantage that GoPro has had in its marketing processes, this paper sheds
light on some of its strengths. Some of the competitive advantages leveraged by GoPro include;
strong distribution networks, bearing of a strong brand name and its ability to venture into new
markets. On the other hand, the paper identifies the threats facing GoPro and the ways of
tackling them.
Introduction
In basic terms, entrepreneurship refers to the ability, willingness and the capacity to work on a
new venture despite the risks associated with it, for purposes of generating a profit.
Entrepreneurship entails a lot of things in the process of shaping a baby idea into a fully blown
business. The case of GoPro’s Woodman provides a deeper and closer perspective into the issues
associated with entrepreneurship. This field has its dark side as is well demonstrated by
Woodman’s allusion that if he failed in GoPro business, he would opt for the workforce. For one,
he was very uncertain of whether he would succeed. Other issues like business threats hamper
the success of entrepreneurship businesses. As put forward in this paper below, businesses need
to be proactive enough to lay out feasible strategies for countering the threats.

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Part A
Question 1
Despair
Giving up is a common trait that is associated with the dark side of entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship is a hard venture and requires more than normal patience. Ideally, it requires
that a person creates an idea from scratch and develop it to the point of realizing success. Unlike
employment, an entrepreneur needs to be a jack of all trades, right from the beginning. Nick
Woodman had tried on online gaming before and had failed terribly registering a loss of $3.9
million of investors’ money. He thus opted that if the GoPro project failed, he will give up on
and joins the workforce (Kuratko 2016). Entrepreneurship can take a person a very long time to
break through and succeed. The tricky part of it is that the entrepreneur will not know if he/she
will succeed or not. That is, with entrepreneurship, there is no soft landing and if a person fails,
he/she would have wasted a long time in life, that cannot be redeemed (Zahra and George 2017).
In that case, entrepreneurship needs a very high amount of tolerance and perseverance to realize
success. Many people start start-ups but a majority of them fail to make it succeed because they
give up on the way. Despair is thus a trait that serves best the characterization of the dark side of
entrepreneurship.
Uncertainty
Another trait that characterizes the dark side of entrepreneurship is uncertainty. With
entrepreneurship, there is no point to bank on its success. The future is not based on tangible
proof of success but trial and error. It all relies on the faith of an entrepreneur that everything is
going to work out to the full realization of success. What led or inspired Woodman to think about
the workforce as an alternative to his work on GoPro was the fact that he was certainly unsure of

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the fate of his entrepreneurial work. He had failed before and therefore his chances of failure
were possible (Bhachu 2017). In that case, Nick Woodman was trying to find solace with the
workforce as an alternative solution. For the case of employment, the chances of earning salary
or commission are high because of the certainty that has been built by employers through strong
and reliable organizational structures. An entrepreneur, on the other hand, has to create
everything from scratch and in many cases; he/she will be working on his/her own ideas solely.
In that case, the uncertainty level of the entrepreneurship is high.
Financial and Resource constraints
The process of developing a start-up company requires a high amount of resource
investment. Since everything needs to be created from scratch, it can take a high amount of
resources to achieve a reasonable outcome. Woodman was worried about the fact that he might
fail to bear the financial needs of the entire project. For one, as a person works on an idea, it
takes all the time and energy of that entrepreneur to the extent that he/she has no time for other
activities that might inject money. For another, the process of developing the idea requires
constant use of money. Therefore financial and resource constraints are one of the traits that
characterize the dark side of entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship can be learned like any other discipline. Most of the successful
businesses today are products of entrepreneurship trained people. For instance, Joshua Revees is
the founder of Gusto, a startup for payroll and benefits. He attests to the fact that his ideas were
born when he attended the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar at the University of
Stanford. The founders of Instagram are also the products of learning and training on
entrepreneurship (Eckhardt, Ciuchta and Carpenter 2018). They are Kevin Systrom and Mike
Krieger who met each other as students. It was an entrepreneurship study/work program

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combining mentoring, classes and other experiences that brought the students together.
Entrepreneurship requires more than a talent with which one is born with, but also other
characteristics that should be learned. For example, an entrepreneur needs to be passionate about
solving a specific problem, he/she must also possess the ability to inspire the people around,
he/she must possess the tenacity to iterate, pivot and seek feedback on a constant basis, an
entrepreneur must have a vision of what is innovative and a personal passion for solving
problems (Hitt and Duane Ireland 2017). Even if a person may claim to have the innate spirit of
entrepreneurship, he/she must also be able to possess relevant skills that can only be learned. For
example, without an ability to focus on goals and set priorities, it will be difficult to sustain an
idea to its success. The key, in this case, is discipline. An entrepreneur must be a person who
possesses a great amount of discipline to continue even in the hard and tempestuous moments
(Davidsson 2015). Woodman developed the discipline of carrying forward with his project even
after he failed terribly on his first venture of a computer game.
Question 2
Entrepreneurship is a discipline that is characterized by a person who has the ability to
spot or identify issues that are important. Woodman’s idea came about as a result of a need. It
was during his surfing expedition in Indonesia and Australia that he discovered that there was a
problem mounting a camera on the wrist. Therefore, any person who is able to effectively use
common sense in the identification of important issues can be an entrepreneur (Huda et al 2019).
Since there are many things or forces that compete for attention on a daily basis, a person ought
to have the wisdom of ignoring most of them and settling on few if not one, of the most
important once. That normally requires the skills and abilities of knowledge and experience, as
opposed to genes. A person also needs to use the skills of training for him/her to be an advocate.

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The reference of an advocate, in this case, means turning passion into action and using that to
persuade other people to make the right decisions. Dana recalls how Woodman would express
his ideas to his friends through the following statement of Woodman, “Dude, check this out, this
is how we’re going to become millionaires!” The entrepreneurship field also requires a broad
knowledge and experience. Therefore, a person will need to undergo training and try on the
entrepreneurial chances to gather experience. That is because a person should have the ability to
handle challenges with a great level of confidence (Terjesen, Hessels and Li 2016). It will also be
helpful in avoiding some challenges or problems through correct decision-making processes.
Other skills that are normally useful in entrepreneurship and cannot be acquired by birth include;
active listening, having sound judgment and pleasant skepticism.
Part B
Question 1
GoPro has gained a high competitive advantage in its marketing strategies because of
many reasons. For one, the company has been able to register superb performance in New
Markets. The company knows well how to venture into new markets and creating success out of
them. The expansion into the new markets has been helpful for the company to create new
streams of revenue and create diversity on the economic cycle risk in the markets in which it
operates. Another reason for gaining a competitive advantage is the fact that the company has a
strong distribution network (Cooper and Folta 2017). The distribution networks that the company
has built over the years have helped the company to reach a majority of the markets that are
potential. GoPro has made a major target on the surfing and sporting world. The company sells
the idea of creating an experience for the users of its products in the most convenient, easy and
cost-effective way. With a strong network of distribution, the company has been able to conquer

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all kinds of markets while edging out its competitors. GoPro has also gained a competitive
advantage in its marketing because of its strong brand portfolio. The company has developed a
very strong brand such that it is very easy for it to expand into other markets and product
categories (Schaper 2016). The strength of the product’s brand goes a long way in creating a
strong image for the company. For example, Coca Cola is a very successful majorly because of
its strong company brand. A strong brand in itself is a useful tool for marketing. It needs quite a
considerable amount of time to build it. Also, GoPro has been able to do well in the automation
of activities that later created the consistency of quality to the products of GoPro, Inc. More
importantly, the automation process has made it possible for the company to scale down and
scale up, on the basis of the market demand conditions. GoPro also has a highly skilled
workforce which has been able to propel the company forward. Through its investment in
training and developing its employees, the company has been able to translate that into success in
the quality of its products (Nambisan 2017). Product quality is one of the most selling aspects of
the company, more than other marketing activities. That is because a good quality product is like
a picture which tells a thousand words of positivity about the product and the company as a
whole. In that case, GoPro has leveraged on quality right from the workforce boiling down to its
products.
Question 2
Threats faced by GoPro
In as much as GoPro has been performing well, it also faces a lot of threats in its
operations. One of the threats that GoPro faces is the shortage of skilled workforce in some
global markets. The insufficient skilled labor in those markets affects the steadiness of profit
growth for the company in those low skilled labor markets. Another major threat for GoPro, Inc

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is the development of new technologies by competitors such as Sony. The new technologies
could overtake the relevance of GoPro is it does not brace itself for change. Another serious
threat to the company is the change in consumer purchasing behavior. The online channel
purchasing culture could render the physical infrastructure for the supply chain irrelevant and the
company will lose. Since GoPro’s strength is mainly pegged on seasonal demands (Aldrich
2017). When the season for adventure and sport is high, its demand also rises. Therefore the
unsteady nature of the demand for GoPro products serves as a great threat to the business. The
nature of liability laws in different countries to be varying is also a hurdle for the GoPro
Company. The different laws expose the company to various claims of liability as a result of
policy changes in those markets. There is also another trend that is fast gaining traction in the
economy of America. The increasing culture of isolationism could lead to creating a ripple effect
from other government and in the event impacting negatively the international sales (Cooper
2017).
Strategies
GoPro should take advantage of the new customers from the online channel. Given the
new trends of customer behaviors to buy products through the online channel, GoPro should take
advantage of the trend to invest most of its money in the online platform by creating cutting-edge
online shops websites and marketing the websites to its consumers among other activities.
Another strategy for the company is to utilize the cost that would have been used in
transportation for new research into new technologies. Since the GoPro Company would have
invested most of its markets online, it will lead to a situation of decreasing shipping prices. The
money that would have been used for transportation would then be used to expand markets.
GoPro should also utilize the technology of big data and artificial intelligence to target its market

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audience, especially the online audience. Using the data analytics technologies big data should
be analyzed and interpreted to better understand the customer preferences and the kind of market
to target (Shepherd and Zacharakis 2018). Another strategy for the GoPro Company should be
the utilization of new technology to provide it with the ability to provide differentiated pricing
strategies for new markets. It will let firms to maintain their loyal customers with great services.
It will also enable the luring of new customers through other propositions that are value oriented.
GoPro, Inc. should also place itself strategically to enter a new emerging market because of the
government’s agreement to adopt new technology standards and agreements of free trade.
Conclusion
The resilient trait of Woodman explains in a great deal, what it takes to successfully
accomplish the entrepreneurship dreams. The discussion above clearly articulates the
components of entrepreneurship the threats to the strategies of mitigating them, using the
case of Woodman’s GoPro. As put forward above, GoPro should not bask in the beach
enjoying its days of glory. That is because of roaming threats posed by rival companies like
Sony. More efforts should be placed on research on the most relevant technology that will
resonate well with consumers.

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