Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice: Zuckerberg's Economic Impact

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of entrepreneurship through the lens of Mark Zuckerberg's career as the CEO of Facebook. It begins by outlining the significant roles entrepreneurship plays in fostering a strong economy, including economic integration, employment generation, wealth distribution, innovation, and export trade. The report then delves into a critical analysis of Zuckerberg, highlighting his vision, difficult decisions such as rejecting Yahoo's acquisition offer, and the ethical challenges he faced, including privacy concerns and the spread of fake news. Furthermore, it addresses the legal disputes involving data privacy and allegations from ConnectU founders. The report emphasizes the importance of ethical leadership and strategic decision-making in maintaining a competitive edge and ensuring long-term success in the dynamic world of entrepreneurship. Desklib provides a platform for students to access similar solved assignments and past papers for further study.

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Entrepreneur theory & practice
3/20/2019

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Introduction
Entrepreneurship is a significant part of social development and economic growth. It is the
way towards planning, maintaining, and establishing another business, which is capable to
create and deal with a venture after keeping risks in mind to achieve the desired objective. It
results in the generation of business in managing physical, human, and financial resources,
which leads to rapid growth in the company (Kuratko, 2016). An entrepreneur is an
individual who undertakes a business by carrying some amount of profit along with a
considerable amount of risk in starting a new business. It is stated that a good entrepreneur
realizes the fact that very condition can be a business opportunity, which can provide a
competitive advantage to the company. It involves innovative ideas and examines the
business operations and new methodologies efficiently and effectively (Cooper and Folta,
2017). In the following, an effort has been made to discuss the role of entrepreneurship in
developing a strong economy. In addition, provide a critical analysis of well-known
entrepreneur, which is to be done on CEO of Facebook i.e. Mark Zuckerberg. In the tenure
of his economic growth and success, he had made a significant contribution and faced many
challenges. This report also concentrates on the ethical challenge and legal dispute faced by
the entrepreneur.
Roles of entrepreneurship in generating a strong economy
It is stated that entrepreneurship is the significant input in the economic growth and
development of a country. The important role that entrepreneurship plays in the regional
development of an economy in a more orderly and systematic manner as described below-
 Economic Integration- The entrepreneur decreases the concentration of power in
generating an equitable distribution of income and employment opportunities. They
also encourage economic integration in the country by embracing certain economic
policies and regulations framed by the administration. They assist in removing the
economic disparity among the rich and poor by adopting the principles regulated by
the administration for the effective operations in the country (Augier and Teece,
2009).
 Generates Large-Scale Employment Opportunities- Entrepreneurs offers large-
scale employment opportunities to the unemployed, which is a big concern
underdeveloped country. It is stated that with the settling of establishing more and

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more branches, the entrepreneur generates job opportunities on small as well as large
extent. After that, these enterprises develop rapidly and offer both direct and indirect
employment opportunities to other people. Therefore, the entrepreneur plays an
effective role in decreasing the unemployment problem in the country, which moves
the path towards regional development of the country (Zahra and Wright, 2016).
 Wealth generation and distribution- It encourages equitable distribution of income
and wealth in the interest of the nation to more people, which gives an advantage to
greater sections of the community. It is stated that entrepreneurial activities also
provide a multiplier impact on the economy (Stiglitz, 2016).
 Generate innovation- The entrepreneur always encourages change, generate new
ideas and constantly introduces new techniques in the creation of economic growth
through innovation. The entrepreneurship assists in enhancing capital formation and
productivity of a country (Christopoulos and Vogl, 2015).
 Facilitates overall development- The entrepreneurs create demand for several units,
which needs the productivity of this unit. It leads to overall growth because of
increase in demand and multiplies their entrepreneurial activities by generating
enthusiasm among the people of the country (Leyden, 2016).
 Entrepreneur generates social change- It is stated that through their innovative
offering of new goods and services, entrepreneur indirectly encourages freedom by
decreasing reliance on old technologies. It leads to generate motivation, economic
advantage, and enhanced quality of life (Malecki, 2018).
 Encourages Nations Export Trade- Entrepreneur assists in encouraging a nation’s
export trade, which is a significant part of economic development. They generate
goods and services largely for the main objective of earning huge amount of foreign
exchange in order to decrease the import dues. Therefore, export promotion and
import substitution make sure that economic growth and development is to be attained
(Capello and Lenzi, 2016).
Critical analysis of the entrepreneur
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is the most successful American internet entrepreneur and computer
programmer as in the young age of 24, he has provided a new horizon to the world of virtual
reality i.e. Facebook. With the initiation of his social networking site, his vision of creating
the world a much smaller place, which has gradually taken shape. Mark Zuckerberg is the co-

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founder and CEO of Facebook, which has a specific mission to provide every individual the
power to share, connects with friends & family, and with the whole world. He has a clear
vision in his mind before starting his venture. This is one of the significant reason because of
which Mark Zuckerberg deal with so many problems in order to maintain a competitive edge
and technological development (Hoffmann, Proferes and Zimmer, 2018).
The difficult decision they have made
Mark Zuckerberg takes the toughest decision in building Facebook brand image and
competitive edge. He has a strong vision to make the right move, connect several users, and
develop the future of the company. The most difficult decision was made over a $1 billion
offer from Yahoo. As Yahoo want to purchase Facebook but the offer was turned down by
CEO of Facebook, i.e. Mark Zuckerberg This generated huge chaos among investors and
company. In the end, the final decision was to be taken by the Zuckerberg. This was stressful
due to the reason that many people believe that he would sell the company to Yahoo. Now, it
is the time when the Zuckerberg has made his tough decision to reject the offer and choose to
hold the company as in early days he perceives that the venture he has established would
have a promising future. On the other hand, saying no to that money is not an easy task
(Reymen et al., 2017).
It is stated that by refusing the offer of Yahoo, Zuckerberg had lost his full management team
in a year and he accepts that this all was happening due to his own failure to communicate
effectively and efficiently about the long-term vision, goals, and objectives for Facebook. In
addition, the company is lacking in providing the effective organizational strategy and culture
to the employees of the Facebook and it is evident that both of these play an important part in
inducing the employees so that they believe in long-term vision and purpose of the Facebook.
He realized that the decision made by him was the right decision, with so many struggle and
achievements, Facebook has a market capitalization of $US363 billion (Emanuelson, 2017).
Hence, proved that decision can be tough sometimes, it is to be taken effectively. He is
productively operating the social media giant which letting his management team agree all
the time. An entrepreneur should always learn new things and lead the social media giant in
an effective manner. He should understand the method and procedures on a day-to-day basis
and incorporate employees effectively. It is stated that someone who wants to achieve
something needs to make tough decisions and allow people to agree with the same as
ultimately it provides a competitive advantage to the company. They need to try different

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things potentially in the future to get the best eventually it provides benefits to the employees
as well as the whole organization (Katsirea, 2019).
The ethical challenge that has been encountered
It is stated that Mark Zuckerberg faced ethical challenges in his journey from ‘Facemash’ to
‘Facebook’. The major challenge that has been faced by the Zuckerberg in his beginning
phase was to deal with the criticism and getting the blame of having stolen the idea of
Harvardconnectins.com and maintaining a competing product. The next challenge that has
been faced by the Zuckerberg was to attract the stakeholders and bring money to the
organization so that it fulfills the needs of the customers, as its main aim is to build a
relationship and generate awareness among them. He is facing the ethical issue of identifying
the potential investors so that they can reach 1.4 million customers and agree partners to
make venture capital investment deal with Facebook, expanded its board, and justify big
valuation (Amaral, Nathanson and Feudtner, 2016).
The next ethical issue faced by Zuckerberg is the invasion of privacy to several million
customers. It is stated that with the launch of every innovative product on its website,
Facebook assists the customers to share more and more of their private information. It was a
claim on Facebook that it sells the information of customers in respect to make money (Al-
Saggaf and Islam, 2015). After that, the Federal Trade Commission and congress members
are discussing the matter and the privacy groups filed complaints against the privacy policy
of the website. Then, the Zuckerberg mentioned that they did not allow the applications and
do not share private information, as this is happening so that they disable this function on the
website and ensure that individuals have control on their privacy consideration. Many people
misuse this feature to create trouble for other people and need to be controlled effectively
(Zhou, Leenders and Cong, 2018).
Another ethical issue Zuckerberg has to address is fixing its problem of ‘fake news’. It is one
of the most serious issues facing the technology industry is the notion of centralization vs.
decentralization. It is stated that technology is expected to provide individuals more control
over their lives as it can be utilized to monitor them, as many people believed that it is
becoming a controlling centralized power. There are so many errors preventing misuse of the
application so he needs to learn how to balance its influence with public perception. It is a
fact that Zuckerberg is addressing the challenges in a very positive manner as he needs to
identify its power and utilizes the power for the betterment of the customers (Kizza, 2016).

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Legal dispute they faced
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg faced legal dispute associated with the public apology for a
privacy scandal that has mixed the social media giant. He faces allegations that he established
a fraudulent scheme to exploit a large amount of personal data so that Facebook can earn
billion of money. The company, which sued Facebook in a California court, entitles that it
weaponized the capability to access data from any customer network of friends. He arrives to
testify before a joint hearing of the Senate judiciary and commerce committees on the
prevention of customer data and information. Zuckerberg not only tried to maintain public
trust and stave off federal laws and float open statement for data privacy, fake news, and
social networking interference in the elections of 2016 (Robinson and Smith, 2018).
He also deals with the allegations of the ConnectU founders, which continues to maintain
legal action. In the court hearing, the Facebook legal team react to claims of ConnectU that
Zuckerberg wrongly reported the evaluation of Facebook during the first lawsuit. They
entitled to have more than $65 million in the original settlement. After that, all claims that
were asserted against Facebook and go back to the original litigation. It is stated that the
Winklevosses twins sued Zuckerberg and entitles that he captures the idea and recruited to
code their own social media site, which was later known as ConnectU. As per the leaked
documents, Facebook believed that the Winklevosses legal dispute is proved unsuccessful, as
claims depend upon faulty arguments (Nwaneri, 2016).
Some years ago, the company with Divya Narendra filed a lawsuit against the Facebook CEO
Zuckerberg that leads to two things i.e. $65 million legal settlement in which the $45 million
worth of Facebook shares and Winklevii carries $20 million in hand. This case was that the
number of Facebook shares they acquired was depended upon the false valuation that they
thought that these shares were worth $35 whereas internal Facebook negotiations put them
closer to $9. Therefore, the actual cost of the stock they delivered was closer to $11m than
$46 million. It is stated that despite the valuation of the share, they have recently traded as
high $150 after adjusting for splits. That evaluates the stock portion of the settlement at more
than $185 million. The dispute ends when Zuckerberg assist Winklevosses and Divya
Narendra as later he meant to resolve all the claims and the court also ruled the judgment in
favour of Facebook (Deeks, 2019).

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Conclusion
In conclusion, it has been reported that Entrepreneurship is the willingness to organize,
develop, and manage a business venture. If entrepreneurship can be nurtured effectively then
it can have a positive impact on the society as well as the economy in many ways. They can
significantly add to the gross national income and enable increase government earnings on
public projects. There is a significant role of entrepreneurship in building a strong economy
i.e. generating social change in the form of unique inventions, which ultimately decrease
dependence on existing processes. It also motivates equal distribution of income and wealth.
In the above, the discussion has also been made on CEO of the Facebook i.e. Mark
Zuckerberg, which has taken a difficult decision in order to maintain the brand image of the
company. He also faced the ethical challenge and legal dispute, which has made even
stronger as compared to other companies and generated a competitive edge.

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