Management Skills And Entrepreneurship Opportunity

Factors for Making a Business Feasible

Discuss about the Management Skills and Entrepreneurship Opportunity.

Entrepreneurs need to consider some of the specific concern while establishing a new business venture. The study would specifically highlight the issues with the startups that may lead towards failure of the businesses. The necessity of the managing the feasible commercial opportunities would be discussed in this study. Furthermore, the study would identify the common pitfalls associated with the new business model design. Every business experiences some of the risks, which are needed to be managed strategically (Sakas, Vlachos and Nasiopoulos 2014). The study would thus develop the knowledgeable insights for achieving a successful business startup. In addition to this, the study would also evaluate the necessity of maintaining integrity, trust, and governance to gain the competitive position.

A defined business idea stands for a concept that is generally used for making profits in a business. It generally centers on the products or the service offered to the customers in exchange of money. The business success depends on the fruitful and structured idea at the initial stage. However, Davidson (2015) argued that in spite of the potentiality of making profits, business ideas have no commercial values at the initial moment. Most of the startup businesses exist in an abstract form. Developing the efficient business ideas result in making profits at the end. It is important for the entrepreneurs to undergo a plausibility check to decide whether the business idea is feasible and innovative enough to meet the market needs (Brinckmann and Kim 2015). A promising business idea is developed by concentrating on several specific characteristics, such as innovation, clear focus, relevancy, uniqueness, and profitability for the long run (Sakas, Vlachos and Nasiopoulos 2014). The entrepreneurs require having the clear and concise knowledge about the necessary components that makes the business feasible. There are several factors that contribute to the feasible business opportunities. These specific conditions are discussed further:

A business opportunity becomes viable when the market demand is real. The startup business requires concentrating on the real market demands that would create more opportunities for the long run (Karimi et al. 2016). This opportunity serves for satisfying the needs of the business market. Moreover, the opportunity helps in resolving any problems that would be feasible enough for establishing a startup business.

A business opportunity can be feasible if the return on investment is profitable. The major focus of the business is to earn more profits. Therefore, the business opportunity generally intends to pursue the strong possibility of yielding a proper return on investment (Wood and McKelvie 2015). Similar to the real demand factor, the ROI is also concentrating on satisfying the need and solving a real time problem.

Common Pitfalls in New Business Model Design

The next factor that makes a business opportunity feasible is the effective competitiveness. The advancements in the current business scenario are quite challenging for the business marketers (Sakas, Vlachos and Nasiopoulos 2014). Unless the business idea is unique, every business ought to face the direct competitions with the other competitors (Bullough, Renko and Myatt 2014). The competitive business ideas have the complete chance to acquire a strengthened position in a business market. The business opportunity would thus be feasible if it is competitive enough to beat the other business marketers and gain the customer base.

Every business has to set a vision and objective before conducting the business throughout the year. In fact, prior to establish a business, it is essential to establish an aim that would intend to achieve at the end. These aims and objectives are used in the business as leverage (Karimi et al. 2016). In order to make a business feasible enough in the competitive scenario, it is important to meet the objectives of the business.

Another most necessary factor for making a business feasible is the competence skills of the business entrepreneur and the entire team. A business opportunity becomes worth pursuing by the commendable competence of the entrepreneur and effective management team (Sakas, Vlachos and Nasiopoulos 2014). A strong business team has the ability to develop the suitable and feasible business opportunity. The sharing ideas and experiences are helpful enough to manage the market needs and requirements for making the stronger business approach.

The above factors are quite important for ensuring the feasible business approaches in a competitive position. One of the major concerns of the business entrepreneurs is to manage the sequential planning for developing a startup business. Use of the effective skills would help in managing the entire set up. However, it is necessary to gather the sufficient tangible and intangible resources to accomplish the business goals and become successful.          

A Business Model consists of the necessary elements that make a business more feasible to operate in a competitive scenario. It is an important agenda to prepare an effective business model canvas that would create values for the business. According to Nabi et al. (2017), a business model consists of two major elements, such as an operating model and the value propositions. Both of these elements include three sub-elements. The model of value proposition model generally concentrates on several specific questions. It is necessary to clarify the product and the target market to offer this product or service. It usually reflects explicit choices based on three specific dimensions.

First is the target segment, which determines the target market and the needs of the customers. Second is product and service offering, which describes the product and service specifications that can satisfy the needs and requirements of the customers. Third is revenue model, which ensures the method of compensating the offerings. On the other hand, operating model concentrates on the values of the products and services that would ensure more profits for the business (Niehm et al. 2015). It generally captures the unique business ideas to create more values for the customers. There are three critical areas for the operating model that create impacts on the startup business. First is value chain, which indicates the demands of the customers and the in-house operations to meet the demands. It also specifies the product outsourcing process. Second is cost model that configures the assets of the organization and the costs for delivering the value added products and services to the customers. Third is organization, which deploys and develops the workforce strength for enhancing the competitive advantage. In spite of these effective elements, the business models implementations can go wrong in many ways. These major pitfalls in the business model are as follows:

The bottom-up innovations and the coordinated work structure are necessary for a startup business. The portfolio bloat occurs when a company has become bogged down in numerous numbers of bottom-up innovations and uncoordinated functionalities (Rahman and Day 2015). Undertaking too many innovations at one time can be riskier for the business. In most of the cases, it leads towards unbalanced, bloated, and overlapping portfolio of the experiments. It is noticed that none of these initiatives receives the adequate amount of the resources due to which the entire functions can go wrong. Moreover, the process would fail to win the favor of the senior management.

The business model may fail if it develops a value proposition for an irrelevant customer job, which is not beneficial for the company. Even when the customers are not much caring about any particular product value, it may lead towards failure of the business model. In a startup business, this mistake is widely known as the failure to achieve product-market fit. Rezaei-Zadeh et al. (2014) explained that the business model survives on the long-term product market-fit. The mistakes become prominent by an overly focused on services or products along with the features and the technologies. The business entrepreneurs require concentrating on one aspect at a time. For example, if an entrepreneur wants to focus on feature, it is necessary to understand the basic needs and demands of the customers. It is also necessary to understand the features that may harm the perspective value of the customers. If once the entrepreneur understands the specific demands of the customers, it is necessary to determine that the services or products are sufficiently alleviate pains (Robinson and Stubberud 2014). It would also ensure that the product and service value would create the substantial gains.

Apart from the issues with the inadequate product-market fit, the entrepreneur may face the challenges in establishing a flawless business model. An efficient entrepreneur needs to adopt greater technologies and a supportive business model for developing values for the offered products and services. If the business model is flawed, the technologies, value propositions, and customer demands would be affected in a significant manner. It is recognized that in some of the cases, the value propositions generate more costs than generating the expected amount of revenues (Sousa 2017). In such time, it can be stated that the business model is flawed and is not structured properly. As a result, it can be assumed that the business would inevitably disappear instead of developing the most successful value propositions. However, it has been observed that in spite of undertaking many of the safer approaches, the entrepreneurs sometimes fail to pick the appropriate revenue model or a proper pricing strategy (Welsh, Kaciak and Minialai 2017). The entrepreneur should not underestimate the costs incurred from the resources, activities, and the necessary partnerships for creating and delivering the value propositions to the target customers. Furthermore, the business model would be considered as flawed if the entrepreneur fails to establish the appropriate channel to reach or deliver the values to the target audiences. Moreover, it can be suggested that establishing the effective relationships with the customers would create more values for the business (Hatten 2015). The business entrepreneurs require concentrating on one aspect at a time. For example, if an entrepreneur wants to focus on feature, it is necessary to understand the basic needs and demands of the customers. It is also necessary to understand the features that may harm the perspective value of the customers. If once the entrepreneur understands the specific demands of the customers, it is necessary to determine that the services or products are sufficiently alleviate pains. It allows retaining the customers successfully and ensuring growth of the customer base. Finally, the business model would be considered as flawed if the entrepreneurs would focus more on wrong activities or they lack access to the adequate resource and key partners. The lack of proper partners and resources would create hindrance to reliability deliver, create or capture values for the longer time. It is essential to concentrate not just on the business, but on the customers’ demands as well.

Sometimes, it has been observed that the business model innovations may fail in spite of resolving the relevant customer jobs and remarkable business model designs. The next failure source is from the external environment. The most obvious threats are faced from the external competitors who are much potential and providing the best offers to their target customers. It becomes difficult to the entrepreneurs to understand the next value added services initiated by the competitors that would make the customers anytime switch the brands or company (Johnson et al. 2013). In addition to this, it is noticed that the desired gains, pains, and customers’ jobs evolve over time. Especially, when the competitors offer the new and innovative products, and the substitutes become most demanding, the customers make a move towards purchasing products from other companies. The changes brought to the macro environment along with the shifts to the technological, cultural, societal, regulatory, and socioeconomic trends are creating the significant impacts on the business model viability (Jones and George 2015). It becomes important to keep the focus on such viability that is created for near and distant future. Most successful entrepreneurs thus scan the business model of the competitors continuously to stay more competent of impending threats to their existing business models.

It has been noticed, in spite of structuring a flawless business model, it can still be a failure if it is not executed properly. The resources of the company, such as human resources, physical resources, and capital resources are sometimes not aligned adequately or appropriately. Many companies focus on measuring and monitoring a lot of things, but usually do not use these factors at the initial stage of developing the business model (Kasemsap 2016). It is necessary to monitor the critical success factors to follow that would lead towards developing the effective business model. In such cases, the business entrepreneurs require ensuring the appropriate alignment of the resources around the model. The effective execution of the business model would improve and refine the business models by reinventing them in a sequential way.

Apart from these basic aspects, the business model would also fail due to some of the basic factors. Considerable market problems is one of the most effective and considerable factors. The small businesses usually face the failure if the market is not feasible for the target customers and the company. The lack of the product closure and specifications is quite insignificant for the business. In many of the cases, it has been observed that the entrepreneurs fail to gather the sufficient information about the business due to the inadequate market research. Therefore, it becomes essential to conduct the feasible market research and develop the value propositions for the products and the services. However, it is important to gather the insightful ideas about the needs and preferences of the customers. The ineffective timing or the lack of time management plan is also one of the considerable factors for the business failure at the starting point. In spite of the potentiality of making profits, business ideas have no commercial values at the initial moment. Most of the startup businesses exist in an abstract form. Developing the efficient business ideas result in making profits at the end. It is important for the entrepreneurs to undergo a plausibility check to decide whether the business idea is feasible and innovative enough to meet the market needs. It is thus essential to develop a strong management team with the greater knowledge about the business functions. Accordingly, the business would ensure the considerable success in future.

The business risks generally occur from different areas, both from the external and from the internal sources. The entrepreneurs often fail to understand the exact way to manage the risks and understand the risk factors that may influence the business. It is thus essential to manage or evaluate the risk factors by developing a contingency plan (Martín-Rojas, García-Morales and Bolívar-Ramos 2013). This contingency plan deals with the risks when it starts affecting the business. It is notable that planning the risks is the most effective way of managing the business risks. There are some of the specific ways of managing the risks in the business and these ways are discussed further:

At the initial stage of new business development, it is necessary to plan up the business schedules in a sequential way. A structured business plan consists of the proper assessment, evaluation, and plan for the risks underlying within a business. These risks can be originated from anywhere or any standpoints of the business. These standpoints include financial parts, operations, and marketing field (Mason and Brown 2014). While structuring a schedule or sequential plan for the business, it would present the ideas about the probable risks originated from any of the business aspects. Hence, the entrepreneurs need to prepare a structured business plan to manage the probable risks.

Majority of the business carry the liability insurance for insuring the contents in a location where the business has developed the operational functions. The entrepreneurs should always keep the track of the business activities. According to these activities, the business would determine the other types of the insurance. It would also obtain the correct coverage for the business. In case of real estate business or legal business may obtain several errors or omissions in the structured insurance policy (Morris et al. 2013). The risks may come from the clients who may sue the company for some of the professional wrong doings. Hence, it is necessary to ensure the insurance policy for some of the uncertain risks.

The business planning should include a proper risk management plan. This risk management plan is generally separated from the business plan. This particular planned schedule includes the different probable risks that have the clear impact on the business operations or profits. Moreover, the plan also develops the ideas about the step-by-step process that intends to deal with the emerging risks (Edelman et al. 2016). It is necessary to imply that every business should concentrate on the threats coming from the potential competitors. It is essential to monitor the risks before it affects the business to the core.

The entrepreneurs always need to concentrate on the abilities of the associated employees. In order to avoid the further risks, it is essential to expose the risks at the first place. For example, if the business deals with the heavy machineries and equipment, it is important to maintain the security and the safer usage (Eesley, Hsu and Roberts 2014). Therefore, the business entrepreneurs need to train the employees about the proper usage of these technologies or equipment to avoid the emerging risks. It would even ensure the workplace safety by minimizing hazards and injuries. Employee training is thus one of the most necessary elements of avoiding risks.

In some of the cases, it is noticed that even the best planning of the business may fail. The entire efforts may fall short. In such cases, when the business is exposed to a risk, it is necessary to update the business plan accordingly. The business entrepreneur requires having the right reaction towards the risk (García-Morales, Bolívar-Ramos and Martín-Rojas 2014). Accordingly, putting a formal plan and procedure would help in preventing the risks from occurring once again.

These specific factors are effective enough in managing the probable risks in a business. However, the business entrepreneurs should be competent enough to understand the probable risks that may affect the business.

Regardless of the efficient venture planning, it is necessary for the entrepreneurs to acquire certain skills for surviving in a competitive business scenario. These skills would be effective enough in ensuring the business success for a long term. These factors or skills are presented below:

Managing the financial aspects of the business is the most critical part. It is always required to manage the capital resources in a proper way. The finances are allocated as per the business needs. The entrepreneurs need to forecast the sales and the cash flows as well as monitoring the entire loss and profit (García-Sánchez et al. 2017). Declaration of the income statement would also be beneficial in managing the financial aspects. It is notable that having a sound financial management skill helps an entrepreneur to run business successfully and profitably.

The business entrepreneurs plan for the effective business promotions for developing the business brands and earning more profits. It is thus important to provide the effective and sound customer services by having a sound marketing strategy (Griffin 2013). The unique sales ideas would be beneficial for the business to earn more profits by attracting more customers. Hence, it is one of the most critical factors to business success.

The business entrepreneurs need to negotiate and communicate with the potential investors, suppliers, employees, and the customers. It is essential for a business entrepreneur to have an effective verbal and written communication skill for establishing a good working relationship. The communicational transparency helps in developing the project towards the positive ways.

The appropriate leadership skill is the major requirement for a successful business. An efficient leader leads the business towards right direction. The leaders have the experiences and fruitful ideas about driving the business towards success (Gundry, Ofstein and Kickul 2014). The leaders require motivating the staffs for inspiring them to bring out the best efforts and improve the business productivity. The time management is thus essential for mentoring and coaching the employees in an effective way.

Encountering the problems is one of the most efficient skills ensured by a successful entrepreneur. The products and services to be offered to the customers should serve as the purpose of resolving the emerging problem (Asah, Fatoki and Rungani 2015). Initiating the ideas of resolving the problems would be beneficial for an entrepreneur to ensure a long term business success.

The time management is another most necessary aspect of ensuring the long term business success. Along with allocating the resources, it is essential to allocate the time properly for managing the business activities (Bullough, et al. 2015). The business entrepreneur needs to have the clear ideas about the utilization of the time in an efficient way. Hence, it is quite beneficial aspect of managing the business success.

The different business approaches are the key driver towards the business success. However, an efficient entrepreneur needs to manage the business functions towards the right direction. Every business should build up on the proper integrity, trust, and the governance process. The board of directors and the people associated with the governance procedures explain the rules and regulations of a business (García-Sánchez et al. 2017). Every startup business needs to follow the proper codes of conduct of the business. It is essential to generate trust and reliability among the business partners to ensure growth for the longer future prospects. The maintenance of the effective rules and regulations would minimize the risks come from the government of any specific country. Most of the startup businesses exist in an abstract form. Developing the efficient business ideas result in making profits at the end. It is important for the entrepreneurs to undergo a plausibility check to decide whether the business idea is feasible and innovative enough to meet the market needs. Managing the effective relationships with the customers build up the trust and integrity that helps the company to sustain the competitive position for a longer time. Many companies focus on measuring and monitoring a lot of things, but usually do not use these factors at the initial stage of developing the business model (Eesley, Hsu and Roberts 2014). It is necessary to monitor the critical success factors to follow that would lead towards developing the effective business model. In such cases, the business entrepreneurs require ensuring the appropriate alignment of the resources around the model. This business model should focus on proper rules and norms for managing the business functions in a sequential way.

Conclusion

The study provides the insightful ideas about the appropriate actions for managing a startup business. The entrepreneurs require having the clear and concise knowledge about the necessary components that makes the business feasible. Every business has to set a vision and objective before conducting the business throughout the year. In fact, prior to establish a business, it is essential to establish an aim that would intend to achieve at the end. Entrepreneurs are of the opinion that after spending money on website, product and service, they can easily beat a path to their door. The case is true only in case of first-time clientele but after that, it rapidly becomes an exclusive affair to attract and win customers.

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