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Entrepreneurship & innovation hoorcollege aantekeningen
Table of Contents
Hoorcollege 1: 7 september 2021.......................................................................................2
Hoorcollege 2: 14 september 2021.....................................................................................5
Hoorcollege 3: 21 september 2021...................................................................................11
Hoorcollege 4: 28 september 2021...................................................................................16
Hoorcollege 5: 5 oktober 2021..........................................................................................22
Hoorcollege 6: 12 oktober 2021........................................................................................28
Hoorcollege 7:..................................................................................................................34
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Entrepreneurship & innovation hoorcollege aantekeningen
Hoorcollege 1: 7 september 2021
An entrepreneur
- Decision maker, improve people’s lives, risk taker, leader, makes judgements, capitalist,
utility maximizer, manager, alert to opportunities, owner, arbitrageur, pattern recognizer,
creator, born with talents
Why are entrepreneurs important?
- Where do firms come from?
o Firms do not emerge out of the blue, they are started by entrepreneurs
- Who takes decisions on behalf of firms?
o Entrepreneurs plat an essential role in strategic firm decisions
- Entrepreneurship is important at firm start but also through a firm’s lifecycle (they can stay
actively involved)
- Entrepreneurship…
o Adds to economic growth of regions and countries
o Creates employment; SMEs are numerically dominant, and smaller firms contribute
more to job creation that larger firms
o Could create societal and/or environmental change/value
The starting point
- “A human-centered approach to innovation that brings together what people need with
what is feasible and economically viable” design thinking
Ideation
Inspiration Implementation
(How might we solve the
(What's the problem?) (How can we make it better?)
problem?)
Problem solution benefit (a model/approach)
State the problem Show the solution Show the benefit
How do we generate ideas?
- Creativity underpins innovation
o Ability to generate new ideas
o “The seed of innovation”; creativity involves a process or activity leading to
invention as a result
o “Creativity is the starting point whether it is associated with invention or
opportunity spotting. This creativity is turned to practical reality (a product, for
example) through innovation.” (Bolton and Thompson, 2000)
- “Inspiration comes of working every day”, Charles Pierre Baudelaire, French poet, 1821-
1867
- Creativity exercises/techniques
Entrepreneurial alertness
- Ideas come from being alert (just stumbling upon an idea)
- The ability to identify opportunities without searching
- One ‘stumbles upon’ an idea
Sources of new ideas
- Consumers
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Entrepreneurship & innovation hoorcollege aantekeningen
o (In)formally monitor potential ideas and needs among consumers - Let consumers
express their opinions (what do they want/need?)
- Existing products and services
o Formally monitor and evaluate competitive products and services on the market
o Uncovering ways to improve current products
o Entrepreneurship is a response to opportunities created but not exploited by the
incumbent firms
- Files from the Patent Office, in response to government regulations, research and
development, ...
Trends/external enablers
- The main source of opportunity is change
o Question: Are there changes that you relate to a specific product/service?
- PEST analysis
o Political changes
o Economic changes
o Social/societal changes
o Technological changes
- Changes to technology, demography, culture, human needs and wants; institutional
framework conditions, macro-economic conditions, and the natural environment
(Davidsson, 2015)
Filtering ideas
Entrepreneurial opportunities
- Entrepreneurial opportunities: generation of ideas, but not all ideas are entrepreneurial
opportunities
- Importance of entrepreneurial opportunities
o Situations in which new goods, services, raw materials, and organizing methods can
be introduced or sold at greater than their cost of production
o What are the defining elements here?
- Novelty – Value – Unmet needs
Successful opportunity recognition
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Entrepreneurship & innovation hoorcollege aantekeningen
- How we can explain some opportunities are good and strong and others are not there is a
variation across opportunities and across people
Strong opportunities
- Strong opportunities at the intersection
- ‘Don’t just start a business, solve a problem’
- Viability: deals with the money aspect
- Feasibility: is it feasible to start the business
- Desirability: ‘don’t just start a business, solve a problem’
“Hall of shame?”
- Misjudging the strength of (their own) entrepreneurial opportunities
o “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers” (T.J. Watson, Chairman,
IBM, 1943)
o “But what ... is it good for”? (Engineer at IBM, commenting on the microchip, 1968)
o “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” (H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927)
o “The television will never achieve popularity” (Harvard professor C.L. Dawes, 1940)
o “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home” (Ken Olson,
founder Digital Equipment Corp., 1977)
o “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No
chance” (Steve Ballmer, CEO Microsoft, 2007)
