Essay Sample on Entrepreneurship: Design, Launch, Profit

Introduction

Designing, launching and maintaining a business defines entrepreneurship. People who have the skills to achieve it have certain common skills but they also have many unique characteristics that define each of them. Entrepreneurship involves the willingness to start, develop and organize a business and to take risks with the final aim of making profits. In economics, entrepreneurship is combined with land, labor, capital and other natural resources, all of which are used to achieve the final goal. It is a skill that helps people to convert opportunities into business ventures and make a profit from them. The entrepreneurial skills can be inborn or learned over time. There are certain things like management and outsourcing skills that one can learn from others. Entrepreneurship also involves a lot of risk-taking and it requires a lot of planning to avoid losing resources through unproductive ideas (Kuratko, 2016). There are four main types of entrepreneurship; the first one is a small business entrepreneurship, which involves starting a small business like hairdressing and groceries. It is the most common one because it does not require a lot of resources to start and maintain. The second one is scalable startup entrepreneurship which involves starting a business that can change the world. Such ventures get funding from venture capitalists. The third one is the large company entrepreneurship which involves producing new and innovative products in large scale and the last one is social entrepreneurship that targets to solve social problems like improving medical processes (Hechavarria & Welter, 2015). All of these types are guided by the entrepreneurial skills in the starters.

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Bernard Arnault

Bernard Jean Etienne Arnault, the richest man in France, is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world and his reputation attracts and inspires many people. He was born on 5th March, 1949, in France, and is the current Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Moet Hennessy-Louis Vuitton (LVMH), the largest luxury goods company in the world. The company is worth over $96 billion. He graduated from the Lycee Maxence Van Der Meersch and later in Ecole Polytechnique in Palaiseau, with a degree in engineering in 1971 and he joined his father's company. He is also famous for his art collection and his passion for supporting international art affairs. His career in entrepreneurship has not been an easy one and he has faced a lot of criticism from his competitors over his way of doing business. For instance, people in his country have criticized his view on job creation and the way he runs the economy of his large company. One of the main entrepreneurial skills that one requires is how to deal with criticism from competitors and opinion leaders. Entrepreneurs should also criticize themselves to induce growth and changes (Munoz & Kimmitt, 2018). His journey in investment is associated with many diverse decisions that have helped his company to become the giant it is today. Apart from formal education, he got a lot of guidance from his father who also owned a company. He has good leadership skills that have assisted him to achieve most of his goals in life.

Despite having no experience or training in the fashion industry, his leadership and innovative ideas helped him grow the company. When he joined his father's company, he convinced him to make several business decisions like liquidating the construction division for 40 million francs. He became the head of development of the company in 1974 and later the CEO in 1977. By 1979, he became the president of the company, succeeding his father. All his time, he excelled in making excellent decisions for the business and attracting investors. In 1984, he acquired Financiere Agache, a luxury goods company, and this increased the ability of the company to meet the demands of the consumers. He later took control of the Boussac Saint-Freres, which was a textile company at the verge of collapsing, sold most of its assets and only retained its profitable divisions. After the formation of the LVMH, Bernard offered reliable decision-making skills and increased the confidence that investors had in his leadership. He acquired several other companies like Celine, Berluti and Kenzo, and bought La Tribune, a business newspaper, among other companies. By December 1999, the company had opened the LVMH tower in New York City to monitor the operations of the business in the United States (Donze, 2018). His leadership and success in business are in line with the models and concepts about entrepreneurship. He has a wide view of the market and he is sensitive to the changes in the market. He can predict the companies that can help his business expand into new markets. The success trend inspires many entrepreneurs across the world.

Mark Zuckerberg

Mike Elliot Zuckerberg is one of the world's most successful entrepreneurs who has made tremendous success in business. His skills in entrepreneurial processes have increased his ability to achieve his goals in business. Mike was born on May 14, 1984, in White Plains, New York. He went to Harvard University, where he studied and started Facebook with his friends Eduardo Saverin Andrew McCollum and Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. In the beginning, Facebook was meant to serve college students. However, with time, the site expanded and accommodated people from outside the colleges. Currently, it is used by people from all over the world. By 2012, the site had about 1 billion users. It also became a public company by 2012. Mark was named the world's youngest self-made billionaire in 2007, and he was aged 23 years at the time. In the 1990s, his father taught him Atari BASIC programming and also took him for a graduate course on the same. He had a passion for software management and he once made a software that allowed the computers in his home to communicate in his father's dental clinic. Some of the games that children played in his home were made by him. He was good in school and excelled in mathematics, science, and metrology (Zuckerberg, 2016). When he was in high school, he showed several entrepreneurial skills which include making games from drawings and he developed a music player for a local company known as Intelligent Media Group.

The skills seen in Mark were partly natural and others were as a result of the training he received. For example, his father hired a private tutor to teach him more about software. However, his focus on developing new software prove his entrepreneurial spirit. By the time he joined Harvard University, Mark had already excelled in several programming projects and this earned him a good reputation. He used that knowledge and reputation to build his own venture and this is one skill that most of the entrepreneurs should learn. His passion for his career is also inspiring. For example, when he was in college, he made two programs that were used by his colleagues to socialize. One of them allowed them to select the best-looking person using photos and the other one helped them to choose classes and subjects by considering what others had done. Some of his projects were for fun but he used them to grow his career and skills. Fr most of the entrepreneurs, the learning process is slow and most of them do not perfect their skills before getting into a serious entrepreneurial program. The other interesting factor about him is that he is quick to accept failure and defeat. For example, when the college complained of his website using people's faces inappropriately, he accepted the mistake and apologized publicly. When he was sued for using ideas from his colleagues to make Facebook, he agreed and settled the case with Facebook shares (Davis, Maida, & Saalfeld, 2017). He is also a focused entrepreneur. He dropped out of school during his sophomore year to focus on his venture. It shows that as an entrepreneur, one has to take the necessary risks.

Warren Buffett

Among the many investors and entrepreneurs in the world, Warren Buffett has one of the most interesting ways of doing his business. He is a speaker, a philanthropist and most of all, a successful entrepreneur. He was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and he is a graduate from Wharton School, a part of the University of Pennsylvania, University of Nebraska and Columbia Business School. The interesting part of his entrepreneurship is that he focused on value investing. He went to the New York Institute of Finance and studies economics. H started several businesses in partnership with other people in the country. One of them is the Buffett Partnership Ltd that he started in 1956, after which he acquired Berkshire Hathaway, a textiles company. From the year 1970, he has been the largest shareholder of the company and he is commonly known as the "wizard" of Omaha by the media. His enthusiasm and persistence in business has made him a reliable partner to many of his business associates and has also helped him excel in attracting investors into his business. He is largely known for his ethical disposition towards the shareholders, his focus on value creation and addition and his ability to monitor and lead others into the investment strategies. His ventures have helped many other smaller entrepreneurs to sustain their business amidst the pressures in the market (Arnold, 2018). He is closely associated with political leaders and other entrepreneurs in the world and this makes it easy for him to propose his opinion to the world.

Between 1951 and 1954, he worked at Buffett-Falk $ CO. as a salesman in investment and as a security analyst in Buffett-Partnership Ltd from 1956 to 1969. The experience he got from these chance increased his skills and he was able to run a successful investment. He took a course in public speaking and perfected his skills in leadership. One of the lessons that entrepreneurs should learn from this is that entrepreneurs should seek the skills that support their ideas. Taking a course in public speaking increased his leadership ability and provided him with the right way to approach his business associates. Some of the lessons that entrepreneurs can learn from Buffett s that they should always admit their mistakes, persist on their goals and know their limits (Arnold, 2018). As stated above, his ventures have helped other people succeed. Being a philanthropist, his work is always focused on making other people better. He also believes that for one to become great, they have to work with great people. His method of handling businesses is also based on facts and not emotions. He has been quoted advising people on how to avoid using emotions to make business deals. Some emotions may misguide and leave the investor in a worse position than before the investment. He is humble, generous and gentle even though he is rich (Finkle, 2017). He also advises people to jump on emerging trends to avoid becoming obsolete. In his business, changes in technology and economics can lead to significant changes in their business. For that reason, understanding and following the new trends helps him remain relevant and competitive.

Conclusion

The efforts of the entrepreneurs to make a successful start in business and to maintain it constitute many skills that can be learned from others. In the above analysis, it is evident that some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world have used their education to get to where they are today. For example, Warren Buffett took a course in public speaking and Mark Zuckerberg took a course in software development and programming. The knowledge and skills gained from formal education are useful for entrepreneurs to succeed. The common trend learned in the analysis is that all entrepreneurs are persistent and focused. They also specialize in one area that has the...