Global Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Executive Summary
Today’s global business is experiencing significant challenges as pertains to the environment and society. Environmental challenges such as human climatic disruption and the rising income inequalities are promoting businesses to respond innovatively to the challenges. Business organizations are entangled between making good choices for the environment and society and making good choices for the economy. However, the ultimate responses by businesses proactively prioritize positive societal change. When ecological and social concerns are addressed, business opportunities that benefit both the society and the economy emerge and establish a sustainable business environment. Sustainable business practice is all about changing business operations and practices by creating new products and services to strategically counter environmental and social challenges in unique ways. This paper critically reviews the role of entrepreneurship and innovation in achieving sustainable business practices in the global world. This paper also applies various theoretical to global entrepreneurship, innovation and sustainability that assist in addressing business challenges.
Introduction
The success of implementing sustainable business practices depends on the degree of entrepreneurship and innovation in a particular business entity. In distinct sustainable business contexts, entrepreneurship and innovation are necessary for achieving positive social change and economic development. Sustainable development involves innovation in business which advocates for a change in product offering, services or business models to improve the experience of diverse stakeholders. Global entrepreneurship and innovation aim to transform the world into a better place through innovation and technology. Business, engineering and education are key drivers of entrepreneurship and constitute the major subjects of discussion in part 1 of this project to help understand the concept of global entrepreneurship, innovation and sustainability.
Part 1: The Global World: Global Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Sustainability: Theory and Practice
Innovation through Business, Engineering, Education or Art Design
This section particularly majors on innovation through business, engineering and education while fostering a critical understanding of global entrepreneurship, innovation and sustainability issues and challenges in business entities. Innovation and entrepreneurship are described as key drivers in the modern world of engineering and push for sustainable products and services through technology. Many businesses, from global to local levels are continuously searching for ways to establish sustainable solutions to address critical environmental issues. Engineering and innovation are inseparable practices and encompass rational and logical processes. Innovation influences and supports the survival of the modern engineering sector. Higher education institutions are committed to teaching innovation and entrepreneurship to boost engineering practices in today’s world. As such, innovation, engineering and education go hand in hand in improving technology in business.
The key philosophy of sustainable business practice is for businesses to address ecological and social concerns which in turn create business opportunities that eventually benefit both the business and the society. According to Barrera-Verdugo (2020), most social and environmental problems are said to exist because businesses have not prioritized solutions for social and ecological problems. The objective of global entrepreneurship, innovation and sustainability is to resolve issues within the community for businesses to thrive and achieve their agenda. Innovation has a great potential of adding value to every business practice and stands out as a reason for its importance in the engineering role (Gilmartin et al. 2019). Business organizations often undertake sustainability of business enterprise for various reasons such as increasing visibility of their brand name, building reputation and benefiting financially by acting as market leaders.
Discussing Critical Concepts
Successful exploitation of new ideas is crucial for the improvement of business processes, introduce new and advanced commodities, increase the efficiency of operations and eventually improve the profitability of a business. Due to increased competition in the local, regional and global perspective, there is the need to broaden access to new technologies and grab business opportunities available in the region. Innovation and entrepreneurship are highly diverse but inseparable factors that drive technological advancement in a business entity. Companies often develop by changing various factors to meet their customers’ needs and applying the latest forms of technology to create value. According to De Geus’ theory, companies are living things and must be nurtured and nourished to continue living and serving the people (Huggins and Thompson 2015). The ability of business organizations to meet the diverse and changing needs of their customers depends on how they utilize engineering, innovation and technology in attaining market needs. Entrepreneurship is centred on creating sustainability by making use of emerging technologies to address the changing needs of customers.
The notion of engineering, innovation and education cannot be ignored if entrepreneurs want to achieve sustainability in their business projects. Most companies have found it difficult to build and maintain their capacity to innovate because they failed to articulate an innovation strategy. Articulating an innovation strategy implies that entrepreneurs align their innovation efforts with the applicable business strategy (Baden-Fuller and Haefliger 2013). Most companies have heavily invested in innovation but end up being frustrated because of the difficulties involved in sustaining performance. Setting up a working strategy requires entrepreneurs to establish and reinforce policies geared towards achieving a specific goal. Effective innovation strategies align the objectives of a business among diverse groups, clarify and increase focus thereby setting clear their company objectives (Benešová 2015). Achieving success in innovation means coming up with an innovation system where an organization creates an innovation system that defines its capacity for innovation. An innovation system is a combination of interdependent processes and activities that direct a company’s search for critical problems and solutions and process ideas into tangible business concepts and product designs. A company that lacks an innovative strategy cannot implement trade-offs decisions and utilize all innovation system elements.
According to Johnson and Schaltegger (2020), sustainability through innovation, technology and engineering cannot attain its ultimate objective in an organization without education. Education comprises of knowledge and skills that drive inventions that are innovated into useful business practices. Business entities have the obligation to ensure that stakeholders concerned are fed with recent developments and discoveries that grow business environment. Engineering as part of innovation and technology in business pertains to the development and implementation of business solutions by use of business models. The strategy for attaining value for clients is realized by properly engineered activities that focus on reassuring quality through technology (Huggins and Thompson 2015). Sustainability of a business is attained when a business correctly uses innovation and technology to match the needs of its customers and attain their greatest value.
Global entrepreneurship makes the world a better place by meeting social, economic and business needs which are all necessary for the sustainability of a business. Innovation through business, engineering and education are critical facets of mutual engagement between a business and the community and assure long-term sustainability. Global entrepreneurship focuses on diverse aspects of meeting all the needs that the community expects from business activities and set standards of sustainability that indicate a sustainable development in a society.
Part 2: Our Global World: Global Entrepreneurship and Innovation Micro – Enterprise Idea/ Project
Project enterprise Overview
The global business environment has recently been experiencing dramatic changes that prompt entrepreneurs to stage counter actions and meet market needs. Internationalization of business has increased competition across the board and the trend has tended to block small companies from realizing their objectives (Langston 2020). Small business enterprises began extending their wings across borders because of the relaxation of government regulations such as taxation and tariffs. Small and Medium Size (SME) organizations have managed to thrive across the regional and global boundaries because of their innovativeness in business practices realized through emergent technologies. This section of the paper majorly focuses on value and co-creation in an enterprise through a global team whereby an entrepreneur is supposed to design and exploit a global entrepreneurial venture through a micro-enterprise project.
Co-creation is a new strategy for achieving value creation in contemporary business ideology. Co-creation is structured on the notion that a business organization is no longer the sole creator of value as consumers play an active role in creating their value. In modern business practices, companies and consumers collaborate in innovative active processes and the overall production processes (Naudé 2013). To achieve this form of collaboration, businesses have to sustain dialogue with customers through active communications and offer a range of processes that ensure value creation in the activities. Modern-day consumers have become resourceful and are supposed to be considered as assets to their organization. This means that companies have to establish an open communication environment that would enable cooperation for value creation.
Opportunities for Entrepreneurs
Different circumstances in society can open room for entrepreneurial opportunities for commodities. These opportunities can arise as a result of changes in knowledge and understanding, political changes, demographic shifts, changes in technology, demographical changes and shifts in consumer preferences and norms. The changes continuously give rise to new opportunities for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are constantly willing to take the risk and benefit from the opportunities (Nicolopoulou et al., 2016). However, they must first recognize the opportunity and propose an innovative business idea that offers an attractive alternative to customers. Ultimately, entrepreneurs are supposed to evaluate the economic value of a business arising from the opportunity. They have to conduct explicit research to understand and predict how their intended products will create value to consumers. As such, an entrepreneur contributes to the economic growth of the society by offering valuable products to consumers.
Entrepreneurial Resources
Successful entrepreneurs have to mobilize a wide array of resources in the shortest time possible to meet the demands of the customers. For any business go run, it must constitute of resources such capital which comprises of financials, legal, operational, accounting and regulatory. The business must also gather equipment and facilities to operate the daily activities of the business (Schaltegger and Wagner 2011). Business resources are never stagnant but require constant change depending on the business priorities. For instance, external environmental changes may prompt the nature of resources required at a particular time to meet market demands. Adequate financial resources are necessary prior to beginning of any entrepreneurial activity. The most important success factor for entrepreneurs is to identify where the potential for resources lie and seek to maximize the resources based on the needs. The individual entrepreneur stands out to be the supreme resource because they have the ability to identify a market opportunity and establish a creative response towards the opportunity (Pech 2015). Proper management of entrepreneurial resources is critical to determining the success of a business entity because entrepreneurs can accurately match their actions with objectives of the organization.
Google’s Innovative Culture: Case Study
Immediately after his appointment as the CEO of Google, Erick Schmidt did not understand much about the company’s innovative culture. According to Pech (2015), Google applies little hierarchical leadership as priority is given to good ideas irrespective of the rank/status of the employee that generated the idea. Google utilizes collaborative ethos and this culture of relationship denies the CEO automatic rights to make unilateral decisions. Within the company, engineers of various technological domains are free to join other teams and collaborate to establish new progress. This culture of the company is the major reason behind Google’s products such as Gmail, Google Earth and Google Scholar among other dozens of product innovation through its culture of embracing ideas (Pech 2015). The role of the CEO of Google is to create a dialogue with innovative engineers of the company to reach consensus regarding the viability of a particular project.
The uniqueness of the engineering prowess for Google is evident where its employees have the passion to work innovatively. The first factor that ensures engineering prowess for Google is its recruitment and selection of employees that have the passion to engineer the company’s technological products. The success of Google in implementing innovation is directed towards the customer’s needs and value creation. Google continued to realize tremendous growth and at a higher rate when it considered innovation to be of more importance than authority because every idea counted as important in increasing competitiveness. Value creation for Google is a double aged sword that requires the input of users who provide ideas for improving the company’s products. Present trends and disruptive technologies are likely to interfere with entrepreneurial decisions and ideas to meet customer values. As technology continues to improve, the company has continued to introduce products compatible with customer devices such as smartphones which meet the immediate needs of customers (Schaltegger, Lüdeke-Freund and Hansen 2016). Erich Schmidt became fully used to the new culture of embracing ideas at Google and hastened the growth of innovation and technology in the company thereby ranking it amongst the best performing technology companies across the Globe.
Conceptual Framework
The idea behind Google’s innovative culture is “Born Global Concept” where the intention of the founders was to reach out and meet the needs of every individual across the earth. Born Global refer to the type of businesses or companies which, from start, of their activities pursue a vision of becoming global and rapidly globalize. Google Inc. concept of sustainability is structured along with its ideology of aspiring to reach out the entire globe through various business products. Through its already established initiatives, Google ought to play a significant role in ensuring that its customers are receiving the best out of its products by conduction more research and making the processes relative to the objectives of the organizations. The concept behind globalization is believed to emanate from the initial idea of starting up a company. As such, the plan commercialize a business venture into international spectrum should begin right from the time of establishing a business (Valkokari 2015). When this happens, it becomes a part and parcel of the business culture and enthusiasm to diversify operations. The framework for international operations is based on a company’s philosophy of operations to venture into broader markets.
Summary
Competency entrepreneurship ought to value innovative culture as a breakthrough into international spectrums. In the case study of Google, the CEO was quick to learn the Born Global Concept of Google’s innovative culture which served as the driving factor for success when ensuring that the organization is attaining its ultimate objectives of serving global customers. Google’s success is bestowed upon its theories of globalization as the success of its future. Any organization that does not experience growth faces the risk of collapse due to competition. Google’s internationalization practices focus on the belief that without innovation and expansion, competitors will get the opportunity to suppress Google’s presence and activities in the technology industry. Innovation, technology and engineering are important facets of sustainability that business organizations should focus on their undertakings.
Part 3: My Global World: Reflection of Entrepreneurial Theories, Concepts, and Techniques
Entrepreneurial Theories
Entrepreneurship is a global business perspective covers a wide range of aspects that drive businesses and the economy. Global entrepreneurship and innovation is a critical subject of study that entails an understanding of entrepreneurship concepts and theories that sustain business organizations. As evident from other sections, entrepreneurs take advantage of opportunities available in the community and transform them into more beneficial aspect development. Entrepreneurs make use of innovation to create business opportunities and provide goods and services to the community. According to Schumpeter’s theory of innovation, entrepreneurs are said to disturb the statutory flow of the economy by introducing innovativeness and advance the economy to the next level of development (Serdyukov 2017). The economy is said to be operating at equilibrium until when activities of entrepreneurs introduce a situation of disequilibrium because their activities break up the routine circular flow of economic activities.
Entrepreneurship innovation is responsible for rapid economic progress in a country or a particular region. According to Schumpeter, innovation comprises of a combination of several factors of production attached to an innovator (Serdyukov 2017). An innovator is a person who introduces new things in an organization and spearheads things to be conducted differently and in accordance with the economic development of a particular region. Entrepreneurship and innovation concepts are intertwined and focus on achieving organizational objectives that of international expansion. Global entrepreneurship and innovation as concepts are set to ensure that business activities are geared towards achieving the ultimate goal of making profits and also meeting the economic needs of the people in the society. Entrepreneurs have the capacity to generate whatever ideas they feel suitable in the market as long as they also ensure that the ideas sustain their business practices in the long-term. Managers utilizing entrepreneurial ideas are supposed to base their understanding of the critical and major concepts in the entrepreneurial culture.
Concepts and Techniques
Emerging as a successful entrepreneur is not as easy as entrepreneurs are not guaranteed success. Entrepreneurs require exhibiting competence across diverse aspects of business operations. As such, there is the need for entrepreneurs to master the art of business operations and ensure that their ideologies cut across marketing, finance, accounting, managerial and interpersonal skills among other critical factors of production. As an entrepreneur, one faces significant risks and there is a likelihood of facing various failures when deciding business options to undertake. An entrepreneur should be resilient and persistent in pursuit of their business goals because the ups and downs encountered in organizing factors of production are always up and frustrating. This implies that entrepreneurs have to make use of critical concepts in ensuring that their customers are benefiting maximally from their initiatives.
Sustainable entrepreneurship is structured upon its ability to factor in the ecological and social concerns of businesses. This can be achieved through the creation of new enterprises and innovation through other businesses. Constant innovation is a necessity for pursuing entrepreneurship and actors are supposed to concentrate in ensuring that entrepreneurial ideas are factored towards ensuring the best and positive agendas for the people (Staniewski, Nowacki and Awruk 2016). Entrepreneurship is supposed to support sustainable development through active innovation and participation in engineering and developmental activities. Entrepreneurs are supposed to employ various techniques of enabling and ensuring that every factor of productions vividly counts to the realization of the economic and social objectives in an organization. Global entrepreneurship also pertains understanding the market trends before venturing into practices that are intended to generate profits in a business environment. Business organizations are supposed to be governed by policies and principles of standard investment to pave the way for advancing strategic business opportunities. The eventuality of a successful business operation depends on the way factors of production have been vividly organized into useful socially and economically profitable forms.
Conclusion
Innovation, technology and entrepreneurship are inseparable concepts of social and economic development. Businesses have a role to play in bringing together factors of production intertwined in innovation, technology and entrepreneurship approaches. This form of innovativeness stimulates wealth and serves the public good. Innovation in the 21st century must reframe from the shackles of conventional business thinking and extrapolate to contemporary management skills that set to balance business activities to serve the interest of every social good. This project has vividly exhibited a critical understanding of global entrepreneurship, innovation and sustainability issues and challenges in business operations through theoretical approaches to entrepreneurship.
