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data on the Small Enterprise Research Team website (serteam。
co。uk)。 Based at the Open University; SERTeam; as they are known; run
both NatWest and Lloyds Bank’s long…standing small business research
programmes; among others。
216 The Thirty…Day MBA
Would you make a good entrepreneur?
All too o。。en; everyone believes themselves to be the right sort of person
to set up a business。 Unfortunately; the capacity for self…deception is
enormous。 When a random sample of male adults were asked recently to
rank themselves on leadership ability; 70 per cent rated themselves in the
top 25 per cent; only 2 per cent felt they were below average as leaders。 In
an area in which self…deception ought to be difficult; 60 per cent said they
were well above average in athletic ability and only 6 per cent said they
were below。
A mon mistake made in assessing entrepreneurial talent is to assume
that success in big business management will automatically guarantee
success in a small business。
Rate yourself against the characteristics shown in Table 8。1 and see how
you stack up as a potential business starter。 A score of over 30 suggests you
have what it takes and less than 20 should be treated as a warning signal。
Get a couple of people who know you well to rate you too; so you get an
unbiased opinion。
Table 8。1 Business starter a。。ribute check
A。。ribute Score (0–5; where 0 indicates having none of the
a。。ribute and 5 rating highly)
Self…confident all rounder
Ability to bounce back
Innovative skills
Results orientated
Professional risk taker
Total mitment
Self…sufficient
Self…disciplined
You can find out more about whether or not entrepreneurship would be
right for you by taking one or more of the many online entrepreneurial IQtype
tests。 For example:
。 Tickle Tests (web。tickle/tests/entrepreneurialiq/?test=
entrepreneurialiqogt);
。 BusMove (busmove/other/quiz。htm);
。 munity Futures; a Canadian small business help website; has a 50…
question online test to help you rate your entrepreneurial abilities as
well as a checklist of desirable traits。 See wwwmunityfutures/
cms/Starting_a_Business。159。0。html。
Entrepreneurship 217
ENTREPRENEURIAL CATEGORIES
Entrepreneurs are usually associated with successful businesses such as
those run by Alan Sugar; Richard Branson; Bill Gates or Roman Abramovich。
There are; however; several different types of entrepreneurial ventures;
not all associated either with making money or with charismatic leadership。
The following are the main subsidiary categories of entrepreneurial
organization。
Social entrepreneurs
A social entrepreneur is concerned primarily with achieving sustainable
social change; though in many respects the strategies they employ to achieve
those goals are similar to those used by other entrepreneurs。 The idea of
social business is fast being mainstream。 There is an annual Queen’s
Award for Industry for Sustainable Development; an ACCA Award for the
Best Social Accounts and a School for Social Entrepreneurs (sse。
uk) which helps would…be social entrepreneurs to get started。 The Schwab
Foundation (schwabfound) covers much the same ground in the
United States。 Columbia Business School’s MBA programme has an elective
course on Social Entrepreneurship as part of its Research Initiative on
Social Entrepreneurship (riseproject/cbsprofiles。html)。 Students
plete projects where they shadow leading social entrepreneurs and social
investors for a semester and details of all their case studies are published
on their website。 Stanford Graduate School of Business (gsb。stanford。
edu/exed/epse) with its Executive Program in Social Entrepreneurship;
Harvard’s Strategic Perspectives in Non…profit Management (exed。
hbs。edu/programs/spnm) and Cardiff Metropolitan University’s MBA in
Social Entrepreneurship (uwic。ac。uk/courses/business/MBASocialE。
asp) take the subject to the heart of mainstream business education。
According to government statistics; around 55;000 businesses trade with
a social or environmental purpose across the UK。 They contribute almost
£27 billion to the national economy and substantially benefit their local
munities by creating employment opportunities; providing ethical
products and services; and reinvesting surpluses into society。 The primary
motivation for social entrepreneurs is to build an ethical venture that is of
benefit to the wider munity。 As one social entrepreneur put it; ‘I am
trying to build a li。。le part of the world in which I would like to live。’ Money
is important; but ge。。ing rich is not。
Oneworld Health (oneworldhealth); established by Victoria
Hale; a social entrepreneur and pharmacologist based in San Francisco; is
as different from mainstream drug panies as it is possible to be。 It has as
its vision to ‘serve as a positive agent for change by saving lives; improving
health; and fulfilling the promise of medicine for those most in need’ and
218 The Thirty…Day MBA
for its values ‘Integrity; Courage; Collaboration’。 Oneworld assembles experienced
and dedicated teams of pharmaceutical scientists; identifies the
most promising drugs and vaccine candidates; and develops them into
safe; effective and affordable medicines。 It partners with panies; nonprofit
hospitals and organizations in the developing world to conduct
medical research on new cures。 Then it manufactures and distributes newly
approved therapies such as those that tackle malaria; the cause of 300–500
million acute illnesses and over one million deaths annually。
The pany scours the shelves of big pharmaceutical panies looking
for drugs that for some reason failed to get to market; perhaps because
the market proved too small; the benefits too few or that in some other way
won’t meet the needs of an affluent Western market。 Hale even persuaded
The University of California; Santa Barbara to donate a patent for a discovery
involving the novel use of calcium channel blockers to control the
schistosomiasis parasite。 Hale and her team believe that that there are
huge inefficiencies in the way Western world drugs are currently devised
and produced; and with 140 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation they intend to improve on that situation。
Intrapreneur
The Economist of 25 December 1976 carried a survey called ‘The ing
entrepreneurial revolution’ in which Norman Macrae; the magazine’s
deputy editor and considered by many as one of the world’s best economic
forecasters; contended that methods of operation in business were going to
change radically in the next few decades。 The world; Macrae argued; was
probably drawing to the end of the era of big business corporations; it would
soon be nonsense to have hierarchical managements si。。ing in skyscrapers
trying to arrange how brainworkers (who in future would be most workers)
could best use their imaginations。 The main increases in employment
would henceforth e either in small firms or in those bigger firms that
managed to split themselves into smaller and smaller profit centres that in
turn would need to bee more and more entrepreneurial。
Two years later; in an article headed ‘Intra…Corporate Entrepreneurship
– Some Thoughts Stirred Up by A。。ending Robert Schwartz’s School for
Entrepreneurs’; Gifford Pinchot III and his wife Elizabeth S Pinchot began
the process that would lead to their coining the word ‘intrapreneuring’。
Their organization; Pinchot & pany (pinchot); based around
the proposition that you don’t have to leave the corporation to bee an
entrepreneur; advanced the idea that the way for big business to adapt was
to create an environment where managers could behave as though they
were entrepreneurs; but within the business; using its resources。 By 1992
the term intrapreneur had been added to the third edition of The American
Dictionary of the English Language。 3M’s Post…It Note; a product of an
Entrepreneurship 219
entrepreneurial team ‘bootlegging’ pany resources; is an example from
one of Pinochet’s list of Fortune 500 clients。 Others include Apple; DuPont;
Cable & Wireless; Nabisco and