MNGT5202 | Entrepreneurship | The Characteristics Of The Entrepreneur

Analyse a current entrepreneur Katie Page. 

Critical analyses and reflection on relevant entrepreneurship theories required, not just a simple presentation of the entrepreneur’s biography.

Introduction

An individual who takes the risk and identifies a problem scope, thereby converting it into an opportunity is popularly known as an entrepreneur. According to Parker (2018), it can also be stated that an entrepreneur is an individual who identify a current gap which exists in an environment and plans to implement effective practices so that the gap can be converted into an idea. Moreover, they develop this idea into a business plan and take a risk by making it operational (Baum, Frese and Baron 2014). Hence, for any economy, entrepreneurs are considered to be an effective part of the economy and they contribute well towards various opportunities like generating employment, designing a product which is beneficial in the long run and building the nation. The aim of the given report is to examine the life story of an entrepreneur from Australia named Katie Page. Katie Page is the CEO of Harvey Norman and the most successful woman entrepreneurs of all times. The following report will be discussing the background of the entrepreneur, with the traits and idea generation. The theoretical models and theories will be presented with the help of a practical example.

The background of Katie Page 

Katie Page was born in Australia. Belonging to a humble background, Page grew up with three sisters. As Katie`s father was relocated every few years, the Page sisters grew up in different parts of the country like Rochampton, Brisbane and St. George.  Katie completed her high school in the year 2973 and wanted to become a surveyor. As she liked to take up new opportunities, she decided to take up continuous intelligence tests which raised money for the underprivileged of the country. This was then when she met Gerry Harvey who was a judge at one of the intelligence tests. A few years later she joined the company Harvey Norman as an employee and was dealing in the ad buying and marketing of the organization (Cew.org.au 2018). Later she married Gerry and became the CEO of the company around 15 years later. Under her guidance the company expanded to great extents and expanded to countries like Malaysia, Ireland, Singapore and Slovenia. In this case, if the economic theory of entrepreneurship is applied, then it can be stated that the different external factors were in favor of the entrepreneur along with the guidance of certain internal factors. She is highly acquainted with skills like hard work, intelligence and experience.

Entrepreneurial traits

As stated by Kuratko (2016), the skills and traits in an entrepreneur need to be a specialized set of skills which have to more than those which are possessed by the general crowd. Moreover, along with the possession of these skills, the entrepreneur needs to have favorable conditions from the external environment to achieve success in the long run. According to Baum, Frese and Baron (2014), the trait theory is an entrepreneurial theory which assists an organization to understand the different skills of an entrepreneur. Certain traits which belong to the personality of Katie Page have been stated as follows:

Innovative drive: Katie is very innovative in nature. According to Drucker (2014), this can be rightfully understood with the aspect that that she planned to take the business to a new extent and took the business to achieve new heights. It was because of her skills that Harvey became successful and that they were able to ace the online trading aspect.

Hardworking: Katie Page can be described as a hardworking entrepreneur. Moreover, this can be supported by the fact that being an entrepreneur is not easy and that her engagement into the organization from the beginning of her employment tenure can be stated to be commendable.

Analytical skills: Examining the analytical aspect of any organization is also very crucial for the long term success of the organization and for the different companies which are present in the business, analytical skills assist an entrepreneur to analyze and make decisions based on these analytics in order to combat competition and ensure long term success (Brenkert 2017).

Confidence:  For an entrepreneur, having adequate confidence is very crucial in nature and Page has been able to portray confidence and a good personality in order to maintain a good positioning in the firm. Her interviews and technical talks portray her confidence and strength.

Risk appetite: Lastly, according to Brenkert (2017), the risk appetite can be described as a crucial trait theory aspect which states that a successful entrepreneurship opportunity is incomplete without a certain level of risk taking. Katie Page portrayed this skill by expanding her business to different countries. However, her risks were calculative in nature and this bought her success in the long run.

Opportunity recognition and idea development process

Before Katie recognized the opportunity and indulged into the idea development procedure, she went through various phases.  These phases have been discussed as follows:

1. Recognition of Opportunity: Page realized the e-commerce opportunity back in the 1990s when the e-commerce industry was booming considerably and decided that even electronics with a good brand name could be sold online. As believed Gani (2014), she decided to lead the company into this risk taking venture and invest in the domain. Hence, by doing this, Harvey Norman became one of the first electronic companies to explore the online markets.
2. Strengthening of the present idea as well as the resources: However, online expansion is not any easy process and any company who wants to ensure that they have to harness a new idea would be required to check its available resources (Burns 2016). After doing so Page`s husband and Page decided to invest into the venture after making several considerations.
3. Idea Development: The third procedure is the development of the idea by running some market tests (Schaper et al. 2014). In the given tests, the different ideas which had to be implemented were tested and the base for the implementation of the idea was formed.
4. Discussion: When an organization has the presence of certain stakeholders then, it is important to take in their considerations and agreement with the entrepreneurial risk of investing into the online domain and then proceed with the implementation phase (Gani 2014).
5. Implementation: Lastly, the implementation procedure has to take place where the actual expansion to the online base was done. The idea of expanding the electric company on the e-commerce portal was an instant hit as users looked forward to purchase the products online from a trusted company named Harvey Norman and looked forward to the experience (Dees 2017).

Competitive advantages

According to Cew.org.au (2018), Harvey Norman is largely concerned with the business of selling various electronic products. These products can be home products, consumer products and communication products as well as homeware like furniture and beddings. They developed the business back in 1982 and hence, when the business was expanded into the online domain back in the year 1990s, it captured the online era of the business (Drucker 2014). The entrepreneurs decided to take a risk in order to ensure that if success was achieved, it would be a revolution in the e-commerce era. Amazon was doing considerably well at that time and for this reason, Kate decided to take the risk. Therefore, from the examination of the given aspect it can be rightfully stated that the primary competitive advantage of the business is that it was expanded online at a time when electronics were not sold online and thus, when the users got this opportunity, it achieved huge success. The opportunity was instantly recognized by the organization and exploited.

Conclusion

Therefore, from he given analysis it can rightfully be stated that, being an entrepreneur is not an easy task and that in order to be successful in the long run, it is very important for an individual to take a certain level of risks and to harness the right opportunity which is available for the firm. The report examined the different aspects of Katie Page`s journey as an entrepreneur and the procedure of idea development and generation. Moreover, the competitive advantage as well as the different entrepreneurial skills as possessed by the entrepreneur have also been stated.

Recommendations

Therefore, after the analysis of the different instances of the entrepreneurs lie and examining the different life aspects it can be stated that it was both the internal as well as the external factors that contributed towards making the entrepreneur successful. She possesses unlimited capacity for exploiting a large number of opportunities, she undertook an exceptional idea and converted it to an opportunity. Moreover, as a recommendation to her it can be stated that she can the CEO can consider investing in the different emerging markets as present around the globe. These markets can be specifically accessed through the South East Asian region.  However, an analysis of the different factors which are present in the external environment of the business need to be considered effectively in order to understand the different systems in those countries and a systematized procedure needs to be followed for sustainable success(Storey 2016).

References

Baum, J.R., Frese, M. and Baron, R.A. eds., 2014. The psychology of entrepreneurship. Psychology Press.

Baum, J.R., Frese, M. and Baron, R.A., 2014. Born to be an entrepreneur? Revisiting the personality approach to entrepreneurship. (pp. 73-98). Psychology Press.

Brenkert, G.G., 2017. Entrepreneurship, ethics, and the good society. In Entrepreneurship (pp. 85-128). Routledge.

Burns, P., 2016. Entrepreneurship and small business. Palgrave Macmillan Limited.

Cew.org.au,2018. Katie Page - Chief Executive Women. [online] Available at: https://cew.org.au/members/katie-page/ [Accessed 31 Aug. 2018].

Dees, J.G., 2017. 1 The Meaning of Social Entrepreneurship. In Case Studies in Social Entrepreneurship and Sustainability(pp. 34-42). Routledge.

Drucker, P., 2014. Innovation and entrepreneurship. Routledge.

Gani, A., 2014. Understand Entrereneurship. Palgrave Macmillan Limited.

Kuratko, D.F., 2016. Entrepreneurship: Theory, process, and practice. Cengage Learning.

Parker, S.C., 2018. The economics of entrepreneurship. Cambridge University Press.

Schaper, M.T., Volery, T., Weber, P.C. and Gibson, B., 2014. Entrepreneurship and small business.

Storey, D.J. ed., 2016. Entrepreneurship and new firm. Routledge.