Success Is A Process
Success is a process. It is a step by step procedure. It consists of series of action that leads to favorable results.
In the article Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything by Steve Blanc, he said that, “new venture of all kinds are attempting to improve their chances of success by failing fast and continually learning.” It tells us that success is a game of chance but nevertheless a process. It is a process of failing, learning and moving on. Entrepreneurs, most of the time, don’t get it the first time they tried but they continue to learn from their mistakes and improve.
As mentioned in the article Feeding Business by D. Roseblum, D. Tomlinson and L. Scott, “progressive (a company) has sustained its success by continually tinkering with and occasionally overhauling business model.” This shows us that success follows series of actions or a process that pave the path to the top. The “continually tinkering” and “occasionally overhauling” are the actions that Progressive did to get its desirable result. Companies do have their own procedures to follow but they all have this to set it to action to whether achieve success or sustain it.
Also, two entrepreneurs namely C. G. Gilbal and M. J. Eyring, in their article Beating the Odds When You Launch A New Venture said that, “Success comes to those who quickly identify and eliminate risk in the right order using the right level of resources and the right method.” This also talks about success being a process. Learning to identify the level of uncertainty to knowing the appropriate method to solve it is a process.
Entrepreneurs can’t just merely wait for success because it is a process. It would not be just pop out of nowhere, one must take action. These actions consist of procedures that continuously lead to improvement. And if done right could give the desired result or simply the success that entrepreneurs want.
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Venture Management: An Entrepreneurs’ Practice of Cautious and Prudent Flexibility
In the fast changing market, an entrepreneurs’ flexibility must be cautious and prudent as possible to avoid any possible danger that will harm their businesses. Flexibility alone comes with certain risks that entrepreneurs can’t afford so they resort in using venture management. Venture management helps entrepreneurs to continuously adapt to market needs and avoids the risks of being left behind by successful development in either business or products
One way that the entrepreneurs used to continuously adapt to the fast changing needs of the market is innovation. Entrepreneurs, as cautious people, use venture management to avoid the risk that comes along with the introduction of innovation. Innovation may fail because they come to a dead end or the point that the manufacturer had run out of ideas on how to continue to develop it. The article Corporate Growth through Venture Management by Mark Hanan, said that “venturing is an attempt to make innovation more predictable and less random. It represents a corporate effort to manage its new business development as a continuing commitment rather than as a sporadic or periodic crash program.” Making the innovation predictable is making the change in market also predictable and this is what entrepreneurs need to be able to adapt to the fast changing market.
The market needs are changing too fast and some entrepreneurs are not able to cope up or adapt to it. But venture management helps entrepreneurs stay on the race of business. A process is important to entrepreneurs because something done without a process or enough analysis holds too many risks. And entrepreneurs want to ensure success as ventures. They follow the 4 phase-approach of selection, information, evaluation and recommendation as mention by Mark Hanan in the same article. Using this 4 phase-approach, entrepreneurs could gather enough data, information or even insights about the opportunities and possible problems or risk that they would encounter. And as said before, entrepreneur avoids risk that it can’t afford.
Also entrepreneurs, being prudently flexible know that its side effect of making their companies’ foundation obsolete can be used to their advantage. In the same article, Mark Hanan said that, “there are obvious advantages if the company itself does the outmoding rather having it done by others because venturing is derived from a philosophy of joining upcoming market needs, as against holding forth for a specific material or capability or an existing product line, can be regarded as a form of survival insurance”. The supposed to be tragic event for the company became one great opportunity for them. General Mill, being a manufacturer of ready-to-eat cereals and other convenience food ventured into the craft, game and toy business. And this generation of business favored big corporation who practice diversification compared
Venture management had been a great help for the entrepreneurs to be continuously stay in the field of business. There are too many risks that the fast changing market brings to the entrepreneurship. The entrepreneurs continue to adapt and improve because of this.
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Envy as Motivation to Entrepreneurial Success
“Envy is everywhere. Who is without envy? And most people are unaware or unashamed of being envious.” – T. S. Eliot
Envy can be felt by everyone and entrepreneurs can use this feeling to their advantage. According to Victor Pride in the article How to Use Jealousy and Envy to Your Advantage, “When someone has an enviable life means that he probably did something to obtain his good fortune and if you can learn from his successes and mistakes, then you may be able to obtain similar fortune. And when you study the lives of many enviable entrepreneurs you can let all of their combined advice, teachings and mishaps inform you of what it takes to be successful. Then, you can use envy as motivation”.
This feeling of desire to have what or even better what others have is to be recognized as opportunity to business. Envy gives chances to everyone to do something to be greater than others. Also, in the article Opportunity Recognition as Pattern Recognition: How Entrepreneurs “Connect the Dots” to Identify New Business Opportunities by Robert A. Baron, Baron said that, “prior knowledge of a market, industry, or customers is a basis for recognizing new opportunities”. So it is important to know the customers and customers are all human beings who can feel different emotions including envy.
Rivals also envy each other. They want to be like or better than the other companies so they sometimes resort to imitating them. But these events also increase the competition because companies want to be better than their rivals but competition is important because only in competition thus the company strive to be ahead of others. And according to What Is Strategy by Michael Porter, Porter said that, “A company can outperform rivals only if it can establish a difference that it can preserve”. That difference can be achieved by using strategic positioning. It maybe new process or innovation but the strong the strategy is the better.
This innovation or new process may annihilate or destroy others. This supports Joseph Schumpeter’s theory about Creative Destruction. In the article Principles of Entrepreneurship: 1. what is Entrepreneurship? it is stated that, “Schumpeter believe that entrepreneurs carries out new combinations, thereby helping old industries obsolete. The term “new combinations” refer to the innovation that entrepreneurs introduced. But this is not always a bad thing because in another article, The Five Competitive Forces that Shape Strategy by Michael Porter, Porter said that, “removing today’s competitors often attracts new competitors and backlash from customers and suppliers”.
Envy is not really a good feeling but depends on how you view it; it can be a good thing. Envy can make anyone struggle and persevere to get what others have or to experience what others experienced. It is not always putting others behind you but putting yourself ahead for once. And if entrepreneurs are able to control and use this feeling in good way, it can be used as motivation to entrepreneurial success.
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The Importance of Competition
Companies have been operating at its best to compete with each other for survival. They continuously improve and introduce new strategies to cope up with the rapid changes in market to be ahead of their rivals and stay in business. Unfortunately for them, in the article What Is Strategy, Michael Porter said that “according to the new dogma, rivals can quickly copy any market position and competitive advantage”. And that makes them question and reevaluate their operation and strategies. Competition inspires companies to go beyond on what they are used to just to remove or be ahead of their rivals but these event also attracts new companies to join in.
Rivalry among existing competitors is one of the Porter’s five forces models. As time goes, rivalry intensifies but because of this intensified rivalry, new ways of competing and technology innovation is introduced. According to the article Five Competitive Forces that Shape Strategy by Michael Porter, “the five competitive forces tell us that a profit windfall from removing today’s competitors often attracts new competitors and backlash customers and suppliers”. Nokia was once known in the mobile industry, mostly all people had one but because of the growing competition and technology innovation, Nokia was not able to survive. Then SamSung and Apple came into the picture introducing more advance mobile products.
Competition calls for continuous improvement. One thing that the company must always improve is its operation effectiveness. It is about performing better the similar activities that the rivals do. Having more advance technology and more motivated workers are some ways that the companies to improve operations do to get better inputs in their operations that will soon result to better profits than rivals. It relates to the article of Michael Porter’s What Is Strategy, Porter said that “constant improvement in operational effectiveness is necessary to achieve superior profitability”.
Continuous improvement in operational effectiveness is not enough in the competition as what the article What Is Strategy by Michael Porter said, “Continuous improvement has been etched on manager’s brains. But is tools unwittingly draw companies toward imitation and homogeneity.” When companies see that a certain technology or technique is good and effective, they will soon copy it because they also want their operation to be good and effective just like the first one. Strategies are formulated by companies. Companies’ strategies make them unique or different from the others. It is doing different activities or doing activities differently from rivals. Though formulating a strategy is not as easy as it may seems, there would be a lot to consider like trade-off and fits.
Companies want to be the best in their industry so they need to prove themselves in the competition. In competition, it will be about breaking the limits to be in par with other companies or even better than them. A coconut trees grow tall and firm in the ground but it sways with the wind as companies grow bigger and firm in their industries but flexible with the changes in the market. And while they last in the competition, they grow just like that.
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