Definition of Entrepreneurial Opportunity and Innovation Paper Example

Introduction

The academic community shows keen interest in entrepreneurship and associated cultures as individuals and groups venture to implement innovative and creative ideas. In this regard, the concept of entrepreneurial opportunities has been deemed central to achieving success. Despite varying definition in the scholarly community, a consensus is on the fact that entrepreneurial opportunities emerge when the conditions favor imperfect competition. As such, Alvarez and Barney (2013; p. 162) proposes that economic wealth cannot be created when the competition is perfect. This is because entrepreneurs exploit the imperfections of the competition to generate income. On the same note, Davidsson (2015: p. 674) postulates that situations where goods, services or raw materials are either introduced or sold in new or existing markets at prices greater than their production costs. In other words, it is all about the difference which represents the profits an entrepreneur harvests from an investment.

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Business Idea Description

The UK presents a unique opportunity for a recycling business. The plan is to install an entity with the ability to recycle different types of waste products aiming to reduce piling in cities. The goal is to commoditize the recycling services so that customers pay so that their household wastes are handled in time. Rigorous marketing is essential for the success of this idea. After all, it aims to explore an opportunity in the UK market as many people share their concerns about environment management and protection. Implementing this idea will not only benefit the environment but the people seeking to live in clean and healthy surroundings.

The Uniqueness of the Idea

The recycling idea is not new, but the new installation is slightly differentiated from the typical services provided in the UK. The primary reason for this is the fact that the resultant business born from this idea will be able to control more than one type of waste including plastics, electrical and electronic equipment, textile, wood, and scrap metal. An all-around facility with the capacity to control unique types of waste increase the level of differentiation from the competition giving the startup a competitive edge to perform better in the market. On the same note, the recycling process model adopted in this new venture involves providing low-carbon solutions through rigorous research and development where unique products that protect the environment from voluminous carbon in the atmosphere. As a result, the business will provide even more unique and differentiated products are increasing its competitive capacity in the market.

Target Market and Value Proposition

The volume of household and commercial wastes is increasing while the means to carefully dispose them off are still lacking. According to a Department for International Trade (2014), only 40% of household wastes and 52% of commercial refuse are being recycled in the UK. This creates an exciting opportunity for a recycling company that can provide the services to maintain a sustainable and clean environment. The goal of the new venture is to serve customers with affordable recycling services and products to combat the rising levels of carbon in the atmosphere while still meeting their daily needs. In this regard, the main customers for this startup include households and commercial entities seeking environmental friendly ways to get rid of their industrial wastes.

How to reach customers

As a startup, considerable resources will be directed towards the marketing efforts. The fact that it is an existing market means that the marketing direction of the entire business should be as specific as possible. In this technological world driven by the internet and social media, an omnichannel strategy suits the needs. Providing adequate word-of-mouth is the objective of this marketing approach. As such, the omnichannel approach entails incorporating numerous platforms such as the social media, emails, a commercial website and so on (Verhoef, Kannan and Inman, 2015). The goal is to provide the customer with a seamless experience while consuming information related to the business. Social media marketing approaches like increasing chatter on popular networks like Facebook and Twitter will increase traffic for the business winning new and loyal customers.

What Customers Want

The UK has several policies that drive its efforts to maintain a clean and stable environment that promotes health. These policies control the use and disposal of different materials including plastics, metals, electronics and even emissions. In an effort to reduce the impact of greenhouse gases, the UK has initiated efforts to design and develop low-carbon solutions (Gregson, Watkins and Calestani, 2013). In addition, the government constantly revises and improves its policies concerning packaging of products and lessening their impacts on the environment. In this sense, commercial entities are required to comply with these laws yet it might prove strenuous for smaller companies. Even so, this startup aims to exploit this niche by providing affordable waste disposal intervention.

Individual consumers are increasingly becoming aware of the deteriorating environment evidenced by the increasing demand for green products and services (Miafodzyeva and Brandt, 2012). This works in the favor of the startup in the sense that its mission is to ensure a sustainable environment. Disposing off wastes using apt and environmental-friendly methods is an initiative to improving the surroundings to meet the human needs.

Providing what Customers Want

Two principles form the basis of the service provision culture this startup aims to adopt, namely, customer service and technological revolution. On the one hand. customer service will focus on the quality of the disposal and recycling of different wastes. In case of specific needs, different platforms to solve problems of individual consumers leading to customer satisfaction (Demirci Orel and Kara, 2014). This enhances the image and brand equity performance of the company. On the other hand, adopting technological revolutionary techniques will make it possible to serve not only households but commercial firms with voluminous industrial wastes building the company's reputation and image which translates to exponential growth and expansion.

Entrepreneurial Themes: Opportunity Creation

Following scholarly definitions, opportunity creation refers to the process through which an entrepreneurial organization projects current problems. Unlike entrepreneurial opportunity which denotes the imperfect conditions within a market, opportunity creation is the process of either discovery or conception of a niche to exploit. In this regard, two school of thoughts are presented describing the opportunity creation process. On the one hand, Welter, Mauer and Wuebker (2016) suggest that opportunities are discovered, hence they are viewed as part of our environment. The proponents of this perspective believe that these changes exist independently without human intervention until discovered and exploited. It is from this angle that I approached this business idea. Wastes are part of our surroundings disregarded by most who do not perceive that it could result in a lucrative business opportunity. Among the critics of this school of thought is the argument that this assumption does not hold because people would have already exploited all of them. On the contrary, it takes a proactive individual with significant levels of risk propensity to identify and exploit such unique chances. This means that some entrepreneurs are more alert than others. On the other side of the spectrum is the notion that opportunities are created in the sense that their existence is a product of human intervention. In this subjective reality, opportunities are not identified using historical information but rather involves an individual entrepreneur's ability to create new and innovative combinations (Guo, Su and Ahlstrom, 2015). From a social perspective, niches are the result of the interaction with other entrepreneurs and people in our surroundings.

Opportunity Recognition

After identifying an opportunity, it is crucial to measure or ascertain its feasibility. Entrepreneurship is the creative process of identifying, appraising and pursuing opportunities infusing innovativeness and transformations to products and services, processes and values leading to more benefits for the consumer (Belz and Binder, 2015). In this sense, it is about taking calculated risks rather than plunging ahead into uncertainty. Opportunity recognition (OR) is an important step among early stage entrepreneurs and encompasses multiple facets and subject to a variety of factors. According to Suddaby, Bruton and Si (2015), OR is basically the combined influence of numerous factors in an entrepreneur's background coupled with the effects of the general environment. In this regard, some Mary George et al. (2014) consider OR to have similar sub-processes as the creation process. This is because OR includes preparation, incubation, insight and evaluation. At the preparation phase, the entrepreneur is concerned with data gathering to inform the creative process. At this point, an individual is conscious of one's efforts because they are driven by curiosity and interests in a given issue or subject. Incubation, on the other hand, refers to the step where an entrepreneur considers or thinks about the problem of interest and plausible innovative interventions. It is at the insight phase of OR that an entrepreneur becomes aware of the solution to the problem under study. The individual then goes over the idea (evaluation) and finally lands on the last phase, elaboration, which entails the actualization of the idea.

Business Idea Development

Idea Development

It was during my young adulthood that I became aware of nature and its beauty. My inspiration grew as I watched great environmentalists and activists like David Thoreau and Julia Hill protect the environment with their words. Lacking in the writing skill only drove me to think of new and creative ways to contribute to environmental protection. The greatest challenge in coming up with a strategy was ensuring that it is sustainable. As a result, I thought of commercializing green practices so that I could get revenue to expand the idea and at the same time, gain revenue for personal sustenance. The only other problem was the risk of failure considering that most businesses in this in this industry trend for a period before the fire dies down. The solution is to increase differentiation and focus on the economies of scale (thus an expanding customer base).

Operational Plan

This business ideal also incorporates an operational plan focusing on two key result areas which are membership and process improvement. The recycling business idea will be considered successful if the customer base expands steadily. This is possible through a membership or club program where households and commercial entities sign up for the services at incredibly affordable prices (Lee et al., 2013). As a result, the marketing department will be rigorous to ensure this happens. On the other hand, process improvement refers to the proactiveness of an organization to identify, analyze and improve existing protocols and procedures with the goal of optimizing quality and reaching new heights (Jones-Farmer et al., 2014).

Resources

Human capital is a critical factor to consider in the context of this startup. The labor is required to operate the vehicles used to retrieve the waste materials from the customers' addresses to the sites for recycling. Financial resources are also a necessity bec...