= IT Entrepreneurship =: September 2015

Business Model Innovation and Canvas

business model

07:44
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Video1- Introduction,Experience,Expectation

Expectation

10:37
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Entrepreneur Traits

Bill Gates

A successful entrepreneur contains of many entrepreneur traits such as willing risk taker, very innovation, very opportunistic, willing risk taker, very self-reliance, strong perseverance, high motivation, high self-confidence, very discipline and so on. It cannot be denied that Tony Fernandes, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Richard Branson are successful entrepreneur.

1. Willing Risk Taker

Tony Fernandes is a successful entrepreneur, because he is a risk taker. To prove this, he make a decision to buy the then loss-making Air Asia and then transformed it from a small and struggling airline. Then, he become one of the fastest growing and most successful low fare airline in the world. Actually, he meet Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad in October 2001 and Mahathir advised him to buy the airline. After that, Tony Fernandes initially bought over Air Asia from DRB-Hicom in 2001 for a token of RM1, but with that RM1 came with a whopping of RM40 million debt and two ageing Boeing planes. No one willing to take risk, but Tony even went as far as to mortgage his house and use up most of his personal savings to sustain and grow Air Asia. At that time, nobody understand what he thinking by doing all these things and most of the people simply think that he was hysterical. After a year, Air Asia had broken even and cleared all its debts. Tony then continued to expand and grow AirAsia into what it is today.

Follow by Steve Jobs, he also don’t be afraid to take risks. To prove this, Jobs was willing to cannibalize his company’s products in the name of progress. Many CEOs would have been hesitant to develop the iPhone, knowing full well that it would help to make the iPod obsolete, but Jobs did it anyway and took a big bite out of the lucrative mobile market. Effects of taking risk are he making new things that suit to people and get good return.

From this, we can know that the risk taker is an importance entrepreneurial traits for the entrepreneur. Every business involves risks. The ability to take risk is to trying something that could fail. Although risk taking is dangerous, but opportunities often come from risk-taking. As we know, no risk, no return. While some risks certainly don't pay off, it's important to remember that some do. Reframing risk as an opportunity to succeed rather than a path to failure. Besides, for them, taking risk it’s allowing them to learn new things and those lessons may lead them on an important, new path.

2. Very Innovative

Steve Jobs is an innovation man. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple he dramatically reduced the number of products the company made so each product had an A-team. This is because, “Innovation comes from saying no to 1,000 things,” said Jobs. For an example, when Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007 he pointed out that while other smartphone makers were adding features and buttons, the iPhone would remove them, making it simpler, cleaner, and user-friendly. When the company introduces a new product it doesn’t add the product image and content to a cluttered homepage, but it removes clutter, focusing on the product it wants to highlight. Furthermore, Jobs found on that time, all computer were mainframe that are large and it is very expansive as not all individual could afford to buy it. Therefore, Jobs renovate and redesign their computers by making it smaller, and cheaper, with the idea of selling it for the purpose of personal usage. The series of personal Apple computer had been produce by him. Among his innovations are iMac, iPod, iPod nano, iTunes Store, Apple Stores, MacBook, iPhone, iPad, App Store, OS X Lion—not to mention every Pixar film.

Follow by Richard Branson, he is a successful entrepreneur because he very innovative. He expand his business venture that located at Oxford Street, London by adding a new record shop that named Virgin Records. Then, he follow by adding a recording studios in Oxfordshire, England. However, his airline Virgin Atlantic facing the financial problem and he forced to sell the company of Virgin Record. After his early career troubles, he learned that innovation was the key to success, but that some confines were necessary. As such, he uses his past mistakes and intuition to guide him and engages in trial and error when it comes to new ventures. For him, innovation is an endless quest, a very few products are so good that they cannot be continually improved upon.

Therefore, very innovative is an importance entrepreneurial traits for entrepreneur. New and innovation product will increase the standard of living and provide people with opportunities to improve their lives. Besides, it would provide a quality product and increase the competitive in the market because the product is different and attractive. Furthermore, success comes to businesses that seek innovation, and find ways to adapt to change, no matter which direction it comes from. As a result, innovation help business growth up and help entrepreneur success in the future.

3. Strong Perseverance

Bill Gates stay strong perseverance in his business endeavours which is one of the most important characteristics of being an entrepreneur. He don’t give up and calling the maker of the computer, Micro Instrumentation Telemetry Systems (MITS), and told them that he had written a BASIC computer program that could be used on the Altair. After that, they put their effort on it and the programme work perfectly, and the MITS arranged a deal to purchase the rights to Bill’s BASIC. Therefore, both of them is then formed a partnership called Micro-Soft and the name change to Microsoft when 1975 where Bill Gates as the CEO. Due to him stay strong perseverance, now he become the founder of the world’s largest software business, Microsoft.

Moreover, Richard Branson to become a successful entrepreneur because he is stay strong perseverance. He despite being such a success today, things didn’t always look so rosier. At the beginning, he suffers from dyslexia, which made both reading and learning certain things incredibly difficult. Although this still affect him today, he has never let it hold him back. Furthermore, he experienced a myriad of problems at the beginning of his career. Some of these included cash-flow problems, tax issues, law violation and even a night in jail. For an example, although his airline Virgin Atlantic facing the financial problems and he decide to sell his Virgin Record to saved Virgin Atlantic from collapse, but he stay strong perseverance and remained determined to stay in the music business. After that, Branson extended his Group including aviation, telecommunications, entertainment, travel, merchandise, financial so on and so forth. Instead of giving up, he choose to learn from his mistakes and use them to guide him later in life. It also inspired him to educate himself in certain areas of business so he could persevere and succeed.

Hence, entrepreneur should stay strong perseverance to success in the future. Strong perseverance is an importance entrepreneurial traits for entrepreneur because it would make them don’t give up easily and face any problems or failure. Many people failed because they cannot stay persevere and give up at the first sign of difficulty. As long as you will be successful if you stay persevere and take positive steps to achieve your goal.

4. Very Opportunistic

Bill Gates took a disciplined approach toward software as a potential source of business opportunities. Gates and his partner Paul Allen wrote the first version of Microsoft BASIC just to get in on the ground floor with a pioneer maker of home-built computer kits. After that, Gates quit Harvard and moved to New Mexico to work with the company, named MITS, hoping to make Microsoft BASIC an industry standard. A few years later, Gates and Allen made similar moves to get close to Digital Research, then the leading maker of the most popular PC operating system. They even marketed a translator that allowed Digital Research software to work on Apple computers, as a strategic move to ride on Digital Research's coattails. Microsoft's ties to Digital Research led directly to its big opportunity, with IBM. When IBM couldn't get Digital Research to provide an operating system for IBM's new PC project, Gates was there to volunteer for the job. It didn't matter that Microsoft had no expertise in operating systems. From this, Gates get the opportunity to make billions with MS-DOS for IBM.

In sort, being a successful entrepreneur, it is important to be opportunistic because entrepreneur seek out opportunity to earn profit and success. Often entrepreneur look problem as opportunity and do not mind the uncertainly. In addition, opportunity creates the chance for entrepreneur to improve and learn something new.

5. High Self-confidence

High self-confidence also another entrepreneurial trait that assists him to be successful entrepreneur. For example, when confirmation came from Indonesian authorities that the Air Asia plane had crashed, Mr. Fernandes’s message was clear: He isn’t going anywhere, and the carrier will make good on all its commitments to its passengers’ relatives, including compensation payments. Its shows that he is not running away from any of his obligations even he was facing big problem.

For Bill Gate, he also is a high self-confidence person and become a successful man. From the beginning, Windows 1.0 actually wasn’t much of a success, then Microsoft released Windows 2.0 two years later, in 1987, but it didn’t fare much better. It found moderate success thanks to software which are in particular, Excel, Word, and Aldus Page maker. He believe on himself and it wasn’t until 1990, when Microsoft launched Windows 3.0, that they found significant success with a graphical operating system. It was a big money maker for the company and it sold over 10 million units in just two years. Therefore, Microsoft had found the model that would transform them into a computer software giant.

Hence, high self-confidence is an important entrepreneur trait because it make entrepreneur to success. A high self-confidence person enable to face difficult task and take it as a challenge. Even though they face failure, but they stand up quickly and believe themselves. This is because, the high level of confidence able entrepreneur to face the challenge and done the job even under the most stressful conditions.