According to Amit et al. (2015), Entrepreneur is a person or individual who aims at setting business by taking a financial risk with a hope of making profit from the proposed plan of business. An entrepreneur is known for coming up with the unique idea of business that leads to the survival of the fittest in the market of business operation. As commented by Collewaert and Sapienzr (2016), Entrepreneurs are always keen of establishing small businesses and engages in proving themselves successful in taking risks in the business to work at the right opportunity available for the business. The aim of this report is to carry out a discussion by comparing and contrasting the viewpoints of the authors of two articles. “Why there’s No Such Thing as a Corporate Entrepreneur” from the Harvard Business Review and “Corporate entrepreneurship, customer-oriented selling, absorptive capacity, and international sales performance in the international B2B setting: Conceptual framework and research propositions.” by Javalgi, Hall and Cavusgil are the two articles selected for carrying out the discussion. The key arguments and the differences of the arguments will be discussed. Based on the findings, few recommendations would be made on the concept of entrepreneurship.
The article by Kirsner gives the insight of whom we call as an entrepreneur. According to Kirsner (2018), an entrepreneur is the one who creates a haze of hokum by coming up with an innovative approach of business that is completely new in the market. There is definitely a difference between an entrepreneur who aims at coming up with completely new business idea considering the opportunity in the market and the one who is actually proposing an idea of a new product for a company in which the person works. As it has been stated, “On one shore of the ocean is certainty — the steady paycheck, the options vesting, status, the cushiness of a corporate campus — and on the other is the possibility of incredible wealth.” (Kirsner 2018). The author has given few examples of successful entrepreneurship companies that came up with a new set of ideas and have built up a business empire of its own. For example, the businesses like Amazon, Netflix, YouTube, Apple are so many other existing businesses around the world are the creation of the successful entrepreneurs.
In the article, Javalgi et al. (2014) the author highlighted the sole of a sales person in big companies. According to him, the sales person is only considered as the entrepreneur of the company as the person represents the company and explains the quality of the newly launched product. This is why the companies are focusing on establishing a corporate entrepreneurship where the sales person is the one who works on the context of the new product. The corporate entrepreneur will have to understand the need of the business and will have to gather enough knowledge in order to maximise the customer-oriented selling capabilities (Javalgi et al. 2014). While the role of the sales person in the technological companies was more prominent, it has been found that other companies are also taking this turn in their business. As stated in the article, “In an era of increasing globalization, the need for more effectual entrepreneurial behavior and for better international sales performance extends well beyond the technology sector.” (Javalgi et al. 2014). In fact, the ability of the corporate entrepreneurship increases when there is a cross B-B setting and this can in fact increase the ability of the sales person to deal with the companies and this will eventually create a competitive advantage in the business.
The main difference between the two authors is that Kirsner (2018) consider that a person can only be called as an entrepreneur only when the person comes up with a unique set of plans and develop a completely new business. On the other hand, Javalgi et al. (2014) states that in the recent time, the sales executives in big companies are eventually studying the market and the needs of the customers and then they are selling the product to the business, which is an entrepreneurial activity and the sale persons can easily considered as the entrepreneurs. Talking about the differences in the opinion, it has been found that Kirsner (2018) differentiates the founder of a company and the one who acted has acted as an innovator in an established company. He claimed that the latter cannot be considered as an entrepreneur because there are few factors that involves in the making of an entrepreneur like the bureaucracy and politics in the organisation or the Upside matching almost all the employees below the designation of CEO are the constant reminders that they are not actual entrepreneurs and that they are merely working for a big organisation in return of a fixed amount of money. Huang and Knight (2017) also keep the same view point and consider that only the one who takes the financial risk or the risk of the failure are the real entrepreneur.
Contrary to the above discussed point, Javalgi et al. (2014) claimed that we can call a person as an entrepreneur if that person has all the characteristics of an entrepreneur. It can possibly happen that the person works for another company and has not established its own business but the ability to understand the customer or the business need and thus, the author aimed at establishing this research question, “What enhances the value to the firm of the sales force’s ability to gather useful intelligence about customers, competitors, and markets?” (Javalgi et al. 2014) there are many other important works that an entrepreneur has to do and that can be done by working for an established company and it depends on how he uses the opportunity as per the best possible opportunity. However, it has to be noted as per Kirsner (2018) that an entrepreneur is always the one who comes up with his own idea of business and work as a ‘one man army’ in setting up his business. The one who comes up with innovative plans in a big company is actually working for the company in exchange of a fixed salary (Antoncic et al. 2018).
From the above discussion, it can be stated that the recent time is giving ample opportunities to people to come up with new ideas and innovative business plan. This can help a person to become an entrepreneur. As pointed out by Schaper (2016), that for any entrepreneur, the knowledge and understanding of the business and the market where the business will operate, is very important and this characteristics can develop with time and experience. Thus, it can be expected that if a person works for a big company, the person automatically enhances the ability to understand the business needs and can also estimate the expectation of the customers. Moreover, proper experience and learning can even lead to a situation where the person would no longer require guidance but would have the ability to guide others (Lavoie 2015). This is where an entrepreneur can take birth. Therefore, the core concept of entrepreneurship can be abolished and we can say that a person having the insight of a new business venture by understanding the need of the hour in the market and the one who has the ability to take risks in terms of financial or personal risks can be regarded as an entrepreneur.
Based on my personal and work experience, I can comment that there many people who works very hard in order to achieve the desired outcome from the work place. In such cases, these people are given recognition as well but they are never considered as entrepreneurs and whatever their inputs are, those are considered as a part of their job responsibility. In fact, I have also come across few people who have learned a lot by working in their respective companies and then they started their own start-up business and established them as entrepreneurs. However, this concept is common among the IT professionals and is actually growing among other professionals as well.
Conclusion:
The detailed compare and contrast of the two articles has given the insight that the definition of the entrepreneur is changing and with the increase in the globalisation process, this might take another turn as well. We cannot only consider those individuals who come up with a plan and starts establishing a business but we have to also consider those working with big companies and are coming up with new ideas every day, as the entrepreneurs. Considering all the findings from the articles and the view points of the authors, a detailed recommendations have also been given that would help in giving a better and clearer picture of the concept of entrepreneur and not only the financial risk takers would be considered as entrepreneurs
Reference list:
Amit, R., Ding, Y., Villalonga, B. and Zhang, H., 2015. The role of institutional development in the prevalence and performance of entrepreneur and family-controlled firms. Journal of Corporate Finance, 31, pp.284-305.
Antoncic, J.A., Antoncic, B. and Li, Z., 2018. Creativity of the Entrepreneur, Intrapreneurship, and the Growth of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: Evidence from China. Chinese Business Review, 17(7), pp.336-341.
Collewaert, V. and Sapienza, H.J., 2016. How does angel investor–entrepreneur conflict affect venture innovation? It depends. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 40(3), pp.573-597.
Huang, L. and Knight, A.P., 2017. Resources and relationships in entrepreneurship: an exchange theory of the development and effects of the entrepreneur-investor relationship. Academy of Management Review, 42(1), pp.80-102.
Javalgi, R.G., Hall, K.D. and Cavusgil, S.T., 2014. Corporate entrepreneurship, customer-oriented selling, absorptive capacity, and international sales performance in the international B2B setting: Conceptual framework and research propositions. International Business Review, 23(6), pp.1193-1202.
Kirsner. S., 2018 Why there’s No Such Thing as a Corporate Entrepreneur Available at: https://hbr.org/2018/02/why-innovators-in-big-companies-dont-count-as-entrepreneurs [Accessed on: 30-10-2018]
Lavoie, D., 2015. The discovery and interpretation of profit opportunities: Culture and the Kirznerian entrepreneur. Culture and economic action, 48.
Schaper, M., 2016. Understanding the green entrepreneur. In Making Ecopreneurs (pp. 27-40). Routledge.
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