Theories of Innovation
Discuss about the Entrepreneurship Case Study of David Muir.
Entrepreneurship can be defined as the capability and willingness of an individual/s to develop, organize and manage a business considering all the risks involved with a goal of making a profit (Drucker, 2014). One of the best examples of entrepreneurship is starting a business which is characterised by innovations and risk-taking. There are various theories of innovation which include:
Here an entrepreneur is likely to benefit from his/her innovations from a specific social culture. He/she depends on the society’s values, religious beliefs, customs and taboos.
Applies in a society where there are many individuals with the desired psychological characteristics. These characteristics include; desire for high achievement, a vision and the ability to withstand/face the opposition (Brenkert, 2017). These characteristics are developed by individuals during their upbringing.
This theory is by Joseph Schumpeter and depicts an entrepreneur as a person who helps grow the economy. He farther claims that entrepreneurs are those individuals who are innovative, creative and a foresight. (Kuratko, 2016). Schumpeter believes something is an innovation when it is a new product, a new production method is introduced, uses a different/new raw material supply, introduces a new market and introduction of a new organization in any type of an industry.
This theory majorly focuses on innovation, risk-taking and establishing the best abilities of an entrepreneur. This theory is not often found in developing countries where the available entrepreneurs’ practice businesses in small scale and most of the time depends on imitating others rather than innovating.
This theory is by McClelland who stated that there are two characteristics of entrepreneurship which include; undertaking activities in new and better ways and making verdicts under doubt(Meyer, Neck and Meek, 2017). He insisted that those people with a high need for success are most likely to become entrepreneurs. He farther stated that such kinds of people are not money oriented but they measure their success and competency by how much profit one gets.
McClelland also suggested that there are three types of needs that individual dreams of at any given time; desire for achievement, power and the need for maintaining friendly relations with others (Storey, 2016). McClelland suggests that the need for achievement is the desire and a target goal for any entrepreneur.
In this paperwork, we are going to analyse about one great entrepreneur called David Muir. He was born in Melbourne, Australia and before his success; he was working at his father’s retail shop. After completing his studies, he worked at Cooper’s and Lybrand for three and a half years before he quit and took over his family business as a financial accountant. In the year 1993, he took over as the CEO where he made a series of changes in the company like renaming the brand from Mighty Muirs to Good Guys, turning it into one of Australia’s largest retailer and making him a successful business leader, entrepreneur and philanthropist. (Frederick, Kuratko and O’Conno, 2015). He stepped down as the company’ CEO in 1996 when it was acquired by JB HI-FI. This was after sixty-four years since his father started the business. He then became a co-founder of Best Friends Pet Care after realising there were a potential business idea and a gap in pet care brands. He initialized his idea, and currently, there are twenty-seven pet care centres across Australia that offer any pet associated issue. The centre is fully modernised with a qualified veterinarian, offer grooming services and equipped with a puppy school. In 2016, he had a new invention, Momatu, which is a free digital timeline tool in which people can interact together. This tool is available on desktops as an app.
Andrew Muir – Entrepreneurial Journey
Using Andrew Muir as our case example, it is evident that we can relate a number of things with the theories of innovation. In his innovation of establishing pet care centres, the theory of sociological theory is fully depicted here. Muir had noted that people had a lifestyle of owning pets and there were no facilities of taking care of the pets. He took advantage of the gap and established his company which is all over Australia. The theory of high achievement can be explained whereby Muir decided to rebrand, formerly his father’s business to a new brand (Al?Aali and Teece, 2014). This itself was risk-taking since he had doubted whether the public will be appeased by his work. He also made a risk of having a major overhaul of the company whereby he placed a new team and changed the way of running the company. His risk-taking activities later paid off as the company become one of the largest and successful consumer household appliances and electronics retailers.
In the theory entrepreneurship innovation theory, we can clearly see that Muir’s innovation helps grow the economy of Australia since his businesses all over the country. The only difference in the theory of Entrepreneurship innovation theory is where Joseph suggests that something becomes an innovation by introducing a new market (Cuthbert and Molla, 2015). Throughout Muir’s innovations, the market still remains the same only that he introduces new services to the people of Australia.
According to the definition of an entrepreneur and the various theories of innovations, we can clearly conclude that Andrew Muir is a successful entrepreneur. This is because he took the risk of rebranding his father’s retail shop, he was a co-founder of best friends’ pet care and innovation of Momatu. Joe Abraham in his book ‘Entrepreneurial DNA’ studies over one thousand entrepreneurs and discovered that they appeared in four distinctive groups (Santos, Mitchell and Landstrˆm, 2017). These groups include a builder who has the drive to build highly scalable businesses very fast, an opportunist who jump to any money making opportunities, a specialist who make their innovations through their area of expertise and lastly an innovator who innovates something they love and then business follows it like for the case of Mark Zuckerberg. We can classify Andrew Muir as an opportunist. This is because, in his invention of best friends pet care, he noticed that there as a gap in the area and he did not hesitate to venture into the business.
Attributes of Successful Entrepreneurship
Throughout the research, I have come to realise some of my major talents in entrepreneurship. This includes loving to take risks in business idea where I have had my ups and downs, loving teamwork and being innovative. It has also dawned on me that imitating done inventions is one of the problems I have as an entrepreneur. Andrew Muir has encouraged me a lot throughout his entrepreneurship businesses. He has taught me to be a risk taker and an ‘opportunist’ in any business opportunity available. I also learned a few attributes from him like the techniques of rebranding and introduction of a new organization in a company. One of the surprising things about Muir is his desire to be successful. He had a humble beginning whereby he started as a financial accountant but that did not discourage him from achieving his dreams of becoming one of the best entrepreneurs in Australia.
There are various challenges and shortcomings that faced Good guys under Andrew Muir. For example, the company had been on sale unofficially for five years but it had not found a suitable buyer. This is because of its business model whereby its stores were jointly owned by individual store managers. The sale of Good Guys is one of the shortcomings of Good Guys Company since they could have stayed on and offered a stiff competition to their rivals like JB HI-FI. Muir as the CEO could have thought of strategies of competing with HI-FI instead of selling the company to them.
Andrew Muir Company Good Guys was of great help to the local community. The company had initiatives like The Good Foundation in which it was a partnership between Jamie Oliver who was a cook and the Queensland state government (CHEN, 2017). This foundation helped the surrounding community by improving their health and social welfare. The foundation aims at eradicating obesity, avoiding poor nutrition and diet through creating public awareness programs. All stores at Good Guys had a program in which they would assist the community. These services of doing well to the community have taught me that it is important to remember the community which is part of your organization.
Teamwork has been a contributing factor towards the success of good guys. Andrew Muir after rebranding his father’s business, he selected a team in which it could help him run the business. This was a success as his technique worked and bore him good fruits. Teamwork helps whereby as a company gets bigger, work will become smaller and more focused (Ibrahim and Kurilovas, 2016). One has the privilege of becoming a manager of managers and thus the company will be easy to manage to result in success.
In conclusion, Andrew Muir as an entrepreneur is a great example of how future entrepreneurs should be. The research about him reveals many techniques in which people should follow in order to be successful in taking risks, being patient, teamwork and giving back to the community. This research is of great help to future entrepreneurs and should be put into considerations by any person aspiring to be an entrepreneur.
References
Al?Aali, A., & Teece, D. J. (2014). International entrepreneurship and the theory of the (long?lived) international firm: a capabilities perspective. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 38(1), 95-116.
Brenkert, G. G. (2017). Entrepreneurship, ethics, and the good society. In Entrepreneurship (pp. 85-128). Routledge.
CHEN, Y. (2017). Estimation of Stock Price: A Case Study of JB Hi-Fi Limited. DEStech Transactions on Social Science, Education and Human Science, (msie).
Cuthbert, D., & Molla, T. (2015). PhD crisis discourse: A critical approach to the framing of the problem and some Australian ‘solutions’. Higher Education, 69(1), 33-53.
Drucker, P. (2014). Innovation and entrepreneurship. Routledge.
Frederick, H. H., Kuratko, D. F., & O’Connor, A. (2015). Entrepreneurship: Theory/Process/Practice with Student Resource Access for 12 Months. Cengage AU.
Ibrahim, A., & Kurilovas, E. (2016). Special Issue Computer Engineering Education. International Journal of Engineering Education, 32(3).
Kuratko, D. F. (2016). Entrepreneurship: Theory, process, and practice. Cengage Learning.
Meyer, G. D., Neck, H. M., & Meeks, M. D. (2017). The entrepreneurship?strategic management interface. Strategic entrepreneurship: Creating a new mindset, 17-44.
Pérez, J. E. P., Enríquez, M. D. C. Z., Cuadras, G. G., Ledezma, Y. R., & Vega, H. B. (2015). Perceived self-efficacy in teamwork and entrepreneurship in university students–a gender study. Science Journal of Education, 3(1), 1-5.
Santos, S., Mitchell, C., Landstrˆm, H., Fayolle, A., & Caetano, A. (2017). 1. Contributions on entrepreneurial behaviour research. The Emergence of Entrepreneurial Behaviour: Intention, Education and Orientation, 1.
Storey, D. J. (Ed.). (2016). Entrepreneurship and new firm. Routledge.
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