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Entrepreneurship: Theory, Process, Practice Chapter 1: Entrepreneurship: Evolutionary Development Revolutionary Impact

Entrepreneurs: Who are they and what do they do?

1. What do you know about entrepreneurship? Talk to a partner and compare your thoughts. 2. Skim page 3, section 1 (Entrepreneurs Challenging the Unknown). What metaphors are used to describe entrepreneurs?

entrepreneurs are aggressive catalysts for change within the marketplace____________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________

3. Find images for all metaphors used to describe entrepreneurs on the internet. Why do you think entrepreneurs are described with the help of these images? (Hanna 2010)

4. Read page 3, section 2 (Entrepreneurs/Small-Business Owners: A Distinction). What are the distinguishing features of entrepreneurs and small business owners? Add them to the Venn diagram below.

Entrepreneurs
- principal objectives: innovation, profitability, growth -

Small-Business Owners
- independently owned and operated -

5. Why do you think the two circles in the Venn diagram overlap? Do you think that the two concepts Entrepreneurs and Small-Business Owners overlap as well? Discuss with a partner. 6. Read the following five definitions of the term entrepreneurship in small groups. What does each definition emphasize? a) Entrepreneurship consists in doing things that are not generally done in the ordinary course of business routine; it is essentially a phenomenon that comes under the wider aspect of leadership (Schumpeter 1951, 255).

b) Entrepreneurship, at least in all nonauthoritarian societies, constitutes a bridge between society as a whole, especially the noneconomic aspects of that society, and the profitoriented institutions established to take advantage of its economic endowments and to satisfy, as best as they can, its economic desires (Ronstadt 1984, 9-12). c) In entrepreneurship, there is agreement that we are talking about a kind of behavior that includes: (1) initiative taking, (2) the organizing and reorganizing of social economic mechanisms to turn resources and situations to practical account, and (3) the acceptance of risk of failure (Shapero 1975, 187).

d) Entrepreneurship is the dynamic process of creating incremental wealth. This wealth is created by individuals who assume the major risks in terms of equity, time, and/or career commitment of providing value for some product or service. The product service itself may or may not be new or unique but value must somehow be infused by the entrepreneur by securing and allocating the necessary skills and resources (Ronstadt 1984, 28).

e) Entrepreneurship is a dynamic process of vision, change, and creation. It requires an application of energy and passion toward the creation and implementation of new ideas and creative solutions. Essential ingredients include the willingness to take calculated risks in terms of time, equity, or career; the ability to formulate an effective venture team; the creative skill to marshal needed resources; the fundamental skill of building a solid business plan; and, finally, the vision to recognize opportunity where others see chaos, contradiction, and confusion (Kuratko 2009, 5).

7. Do you think the definitions above are lacking any important features? Define the term entrepreneurship in your own words and try to include missing information.

8. Find a partner and compare your definitions. Discuss the similarities and differences. Why do you think you put emphasis on the same/different features of the term?

The Myths of Entrepreneurship

1. Look at the following statements. Do you think they are based on truth or myths? Do you think someone else would evaluate these statements differently? Explain. Truth When your eye twitches, you are about to have good luck. Myths

The number 13 brings bad luck.

If your ears itch, someone is talking about you behind your back. The first star you see at night will grant you a wish.

2. Why do you think myths exist? Think about common misconceptions about your country, for example. Why do you think people have these misconceptions?

3. Compare the myths on pages 5-8 to the definitions on pages 4-5 and your own definition of entrepreneurship. Which features of the definitions can you use to dispel the myths?

4. How could you help dispel myths about entrepreneurship in your community? Find a creative way to present the truth about entrepreneurship to your community. Possible ways include designing a poster and making a documentary about business owners in your community.

Schools of Thought

1. The different schools of thought in entrepreneurship approach the study from different perspectives. Pick two schools of thought, from either the micro or macro view, and think about the kinds of things they would investigate in a business.

a) Come up with a list of questions from each school you could ask an owner/manager of a business from each perspective. Compare your questions with your classmates.

b) Find a company in your town and interview the manager or owner using these questions.

c) After the interview, ask yourself these questions: Was the interviewee able to answer all of your questions? If not, why do you think that is? Would you categorize this person as an entrepreneur? Why or why not? Should a student of entrepreneurship study only one school of thought? Why or why not?

2. What do you think makes a good entrepreneur? What personality traits are helpful? Come up with a list of questions you would ask someone to determine if they had good characteristics to be an entrepreneur.

3. The entrepreneurial trait school of thought is concerned with the personality traits that people have to become successful entrepreneurs. On page 11 there is a list of categories to identify personality traits along with some questions. How do these compare with the questions that you came up with?

4. Using questions from both lists, interview two managers from businesses in your town (can be in groups). Compare the personality traits of each manager, and evaluate their effectiveness as managers. Is one manager more effective in your opinion? Why?

Process Approaches

1. Learning entrepreneurship helps students to see opportunities and use their skills to start new businesses. Pages 14-15 talk about the integrative approach. They describe the features that are involved in starting a business. Using the features in the integrative approach, research how one of the following businesses began: Facebook, Microsoft, or Google.

Features

Actions

Environmental opportunities (Where did they see the need for innovation?) Identify opportunity (Where did they see the need for Entrepreneurial individuals (Who was involved in the project?) = Assess and acquire necessary resources (What money, skills, etc. were needed? How was the business organized?) innovation? What was the new idea?)

Organizational context (How was the business organized?)

Business concepts (What was the new idea?)

Implementation (How were the features put together to start a business?)

Resources (What money, skills, etc. were needed?)

2. Describe how the five features (environmental opportunity, entrepreneurial individuals, organizational context, business concepts, and resources) are related to each other.

3. So far you have described the input process, or the features that are invested in a new business. Looking at the chart on page 15, describe the outcomes of the business you chose.

4. A different process approach to entrepreneurship is the entrepreneurial assessment approach. Look at the chart on page 16. How would your research have been different using this model?

5. Pages 13-14 list some areas in many countries that are currently very popular. Are these true for your country as well? Can you identify any areas in your country that are currently popular?

New Ventures in the Economy The book defines the Global Entrepreneurship Monito (GEM) as a unique, large-scale, longterm project that provides an annual assessment of the entrepreneurial environment of each country (17). The 2010 GEM report can be found at the following website:

http://www.gemconsortium.org/download/1318023992497/GEM%20GLOBAL%20REPORT%2 02010rev.pdf . Read pages 7-15 and answer the following questions:

1. What is the difference between facto-driven, efficiency-drive, and innovation-driven economies? What are their relationships? (pages 7 and 15) 2. The GEM report lists its key findings in terms of attitudes, activity, and aspirations. How do these three categories relate to factor-, efficiency-, and innovation-driven economies?

Factor-driven Attitudes

Efficiency-driven

Innovation-driven

Activity

Aspirations

3. How would you characterize your country? Why?

Gazelles

1. You have already seen that metaphors are widely used to describe things. So far, you have discussed how entrepreneurs are compared to Olympic athletes, long-distance runners, symphony orchestra conductors, and top-gun pilots. Later, gazelles are introduced. What is the definition in the book? What is the definition of gazelle in the dictionary? Use the chart below to answer the questions.

Characteristics of gazelles (animal)

Characteristics of gazelles (businesses)

2. The book also uses the name of another animal, mouse, to describe businesses. Why would they do this?

Characteristics of mice (animal)

Characteristics of mice (business)

3. The book uses a lot of these nature metaphors to describe businesses. They mention that all gazelles will eventually wither and die like all animals. How else is the business world like nature?

Trends in Entrepreneurship Research

1. According to the author, the following trends can currently be observed in entrepreneurship research:

1. Venture financing 2. Corporate entrepreneurship 3. Social entrepreneurship 4. Entrepreneurial cognition 5. Women and minority entrepreneurs 6. The global entrepreneurial movement 7. Family businesses 8. Entrepreneurial education

The descriptions of these trends are very vague.

Page 21 in the textbook lists the best business schools for entrepreneurship in the United States. Pick one of the schools and visit their website (university websites are often hard to navigate through. Do not get frustrated). Find course descriptions for the classes in the entrepreneurial program. Find classes that represent these different trends. What new information can you gather about these trends, based on the course descriptions?

1.______________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ 2.______________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ 3.______________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________

4.______________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ 5.______________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ 6.______________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ 7.______________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ 8.______________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ 2. Can any of these trends in Entrepreneurship Research be grouped into any of the schools of thought discussed on pages 8-12?

Bibliography

Barnard, R., & Zemach, D. (2003). Materials for specific purposes. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Developing Materials for Language Teaching (pp. 306-323). London: Continuum.

The field of ESP is united in its reliance on needs analysis There are various variables involved in a thorough needs analysis: Type of institution, location of institution, type of teaching setting, facilities available, learner qualities, make-up of class, teacher qualities

Belcher, D. (2009). What ESP is and can be: An introduction. In D. Belcher (Ed.), English for Specific Purposes in Theory and Practice (pp. 1-19). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

ESP instruction needs to be tailored to target needs which are more specific than general language learners needs Needs assessment is best when ongoing Authentic materials such as videotaped interactions and written discourse gathered on site can be effective materials Authenticity can be enhanced through real-life communicative activities; thus, problemsolving strategies and metacognitive awareness will be enhanced Subject-area faculty can be helped by ESP specialists to make their classrooms more language learner friendly through scaffolding strategies such as vocabulary glosses, previews of complex lecture content, peer collaboration opportunities, and more frequent and incremental feedback on student writing or even team-teaching

Collaboration between instructors and students as well as willingness to learn from one another (e.g. through student-compiled portfolios and problem-based learning presentations can be helpful

Cives-Enriquez, R.-M. (2003). Materials for adults: "I am no good at languages!" Inspiring and Motivating L2 adult learners of beginner's Spanish. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Developing Materials for Language Teaching (pp. 239-255). London: Continuum.

A humanized course creates more intrinsic motivation

Hanna, S. S. (2010). A corpus-based evaluation of metaphors in a business English textbook. English for Specific Purposes, 29(1), 30-42.

Materials need to take the findings of corpus research, especially the importance of metaphors in a Business English context, into account

Johns, A. M., Paltridge, B., & Belcher, D. (2010). Introduction: New Directions for ESP Research. In D. Belcher, A. M. Johns & B. Paltridge (Eds.), New Directions in English for Specific Purposes Research (pp. 1-4). Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

The most crucial part of any course design is a thorough needs analysis that takes learner identity into consideration Discourse analysis is important to identify the language features that are important for specific genres that are dealt with

Kay, S., & Jones, V. (2000). Inside Out. Oxford: Macmillan/Heinemann.

Materials should help students connect the topics to their own lives

Maley, A. (2003). Creative approaches to writing materials. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Developing Materials for Language Teaching (pp. 183-198). London: Continuum. Materials which offer the teacher choice and flexibility to develop in ways they judge to be appropriate are likely to produce more creative behaviors

Masuhara, H. (2003). Materials for developing reading skills. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Developing Materials for Language Learning (pp. 340-363). London: Continuum. Comprehension happens when new experiences are linked to similar experiences in the mind; it follows that prior knowledge should be activated when introducing new concepts Comprehension means achieving multidimensional representations in the learners mind (Schema Theory) Engaging affect should be a prime concern when designing materials

Nation, P. (2003). Materials for teaching vocabulary. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Developing Materials for Language Teaching (pp. 394-405). London: Continuum. Elaborating is a more effective process than retrieval because it involves retrieval but enriches the memory for the item as well as strengthening it Materials should prompt the students to extend the definition beyond the text and use the vocabulary in different contexts than those in the text Vocabulary learning can be facilitated when focusing on meaning rather than form

Saraceni, C. (2003). Adapting Courses: A Critical View. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Developing Materials for Language Teaching (pp. 72-85). London: Continuum. Make materials universally appealing by leaving the responsibility of adapting materials to the instructor for the specific needs of the students Learners themselves can take control of the adaptation process

Tomlinson, B. (2003). Humanizing the Coursebook. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Developing Materials for Language Teaching (pp. 162-173). London: Continuum.

The most important factor in learning is affect Criteria for humanizing (multidimensional approach): Engaging affect (activating personal experiences), imaging activities (encourage learners to create mental images), inner voice activities (encourage learners to talk to themselves in L2), kinesthetic activities, process activities

Materials writers need to establish personal contact with students to appeal to their affect

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