Creating and Managing the New and Entrepreneurial Organization Assignment Sample

1. Introduction

Creating and managing new ventures are some of the most elemental functions carried out by an entrepreneur. Identifying opportunities and developing a relevant action plan for launching the venture is the hallmark of an able entrepreneur. However, according to the arguments of Hakala et al. (2020), before the identification of any business opportunity, developing a business plan and others, individuals and entrepreneurs need to undergo self-assessment for identifying their strengths and weaknesses, which is the most important step in developing entrepreneurial “capacity”. The essay is aimed at discussing an “Individual Creative Action Plan”. The focus of the essay will be on discussing the results of the self-assessment and the business idea developed by playing on the strengths identified through the self-assessment (Parrilli, Baklavas and Radisic, 2020). The uniqueness of the business idea and its value proposition will be discussed in the essay. The source of the business idea or innovation will be discussed, along with the resources identified an essential for launching the venture. The essay will also include discussions on the targeted market, business model, business networking, limitations and others. Certain suggestions regarding what can be learnt from the “Individual Action Plan”.

2. Self-Assessment

Conducting a self-assessment is one of the most effective ways of developing skills by identifying weaknesses and addressing them. Methods like a “SWOT” assessment of individual strengths and weaknesses can be an effective way of developing skills. However, as per the arguments of Burton (2022) conducting a self-assessment by only using SWOT can be limited. Therefore, using online tools, like the “Myers-Briggs Type Indicator”, for identifying key personality traits, strengths and others can help in understanding one’s entrepreneurial “characteristics”. I conducted an online Myers-Briggs test for understanding my entrepreneurial capacities better. The online questionnaire of the test has been designed for generating a key phrase for knowing the key personality traits of an individual (Firkola, 2021). The results of the Myers-Briggs test I took, generated the phrase “ESTJ”. The phrase stood for “Extraversion, Sensing, Thinking and Judging”.

This helped me in identifying my strengths like being an extrovert, implying that I was good at communication, taking action by interacting to people and others. Similarly, I understood that through “sensing”, and “thinking”, I had the capability of basing my decisions on logic and accuracy. These strengths will help me in taking the right decisions regarding the business processes of the new venture (Lake et al., 2019). However, certain weaknesses have also been identified through the test. For example, the affinity towards jumping to conclusions quickly and taking hasty decisions might not be fruitful in the long-term. Therefore, I will have to develop and action plan and work on such weaknesses.

Figure 1: Briggs-Myers Test

3. Business Idea and Value Proposition

Business Idea

The business idea is to develop an e-commerce platform for operating as an e-commerce market place for organic food products in London. According to the reports of the “Soil Association” in the United Kingdom, the organic food market in the UK had touched a valuation of almost 2.8 billion pounds in the year 2021 (Kowalska et al., 2021). The sector witnessed a growth of almost 13% in the same year, outperforming the “non-organic” sector in terms of sales. The business idea is to develop an online marketplace for customers to purchase fresh organic food products like fruits, vegetables, poultry products and others. The business will be focused on connecting customers with organic food producers in the Greater London Area, like Bio Dima, Here Organic Warehouse Ltd, Zest Organic Foods and others (Murphy et al., 2022). The ecommerce marketplace will act as a third-party platform for customers, where they can buy fresh organic produce, delivered at their doorstep at lower prices than large supermarket chains like Tesco, Aldi and others.

The ecommerce website will be custom coded and will not be developed using open-source platforms like Shopify, Joomla and others. This will be done for securing better rankings on the search engines and using Search Engine Optimisation for increasing website traffic (Wojciechowska-Solis et al., 2022). Moreover, the business will be using “social media” marketing, and principles of “social marketing” for raising awareness regarding healthy eating habits and the risks regarding food contamination due to non-organic and adulterated packaged food products. According to the reports of the “National Health Service” or the “NHS”, there are almost 2.5 million cases regarding “foodborne” illnesses, like Typhoid, Cholera, Jaundice, Mercury Poisoning and others (Manning and Kowalska, 2021). The reports suggest that massive hoarding of food products’ stocks in warehouses of large companies, lack of proper hygiene and others cause the increase of pathogens like “Campylobacter”, increasing the risks of foodborne illnesses. Therefore, the fresh organic food products will help in solving his societal problem in the UK, especially in large cities like London.

Value Proposition

The company will focus on creating more value for the customers and the community by addressing the various “pain points”. According to the “Value Proposition Canvas”, the business will help on solving “pains” faced by customers in the UK regarding high prices of organic food products. For example, according to the reports of the “Soil Association”, an average shopping cart of organic food products at large supermarkets cost almost 70 pounds, whereas the national average spending per week on organic food products in the UK was just 51 pounds in the year 2021 (Nagy, Lakner and Temesi, 2022). The business will focus on connecting organic food producers from the Greater London Area with the customers for providing fresh products within a window of 5 hours after placing the order. This will help in ensuring freshness of the products, and also ensuring low costs by cutting out the commercial “middlemen”. This will act as a “pain reliever” for the customers and address the “jobs-to-be-done” for the customers. For example, by reducing the need for visiting bricks-and-mortar stores for purchasing such products, the customers will be able to use the easy check-out option of the marketplace website and purchase desired products.

4. Source of Innovation

Innovations are what drive the market, and play an important role in the success of any business. According to Kowalska et al. (2021), innovations, whether product or service-based are what help a company on differentiating from the competition and staying relevant in the market. However, identifying the innovation, and assessing its potential in addressing problems faced by customers or end-users is tough. Therefore, it is essential to conduct an in-depth analysis of the product or service in question, and assessing whether they are capable of identifying changing market dynamics and exploiting them. According to the “Drucker’s seven sources of innovation” theory, any innovation, whether product or service has a basis and catalyst. Peter Drucker, the introducer of the theory has identified seven opportunity sources, 3 external ones and 4 internal, which can help a company in identifying the opportunities for the innovation in the market.

The main sources of the innovative business idea came from two external opportunities, changes due to newly gained knowledge and changes in perception, as per the model. For example, changes due to newly gained knowledge regarding the benefits of healthy eating and organic food in the UK, has increased the consumption of organic food products in the country. However, almost 46% of the food requirements in the UK, including organic food products are fulfilled through imports (Murphy et al., 2022). Moreover, since just 2.9% of the overall farmed areas in the UK belong to organic food products, the reliability on imports causes an increase in price. However, despite the high price, the knowledge regarding health eating, holistic living, veganism and others has sustained the demand, which is expected to increase by 50%, by the year 2030. This allowed the business to identify a massive business opportunity for educating the customers further and reducing their reliance on imports, through locally sourced products from the Greater London Area.

Similarly, changes in perception of the customers regarding organic food products, which earlier were considered to be a luxury, whereas now a necessity served as a huge opportunity for the company. For example, by capitalising on increasing concern of the people regarding adulteration of foods, health eating habits and others, and increasing adoption of ecommerce purchasing habits allowed the company to exploit the massive opportunity (Wojciechowska-Solis et al., 2022). For example, reports suggest that the internet has reached to more than 85% of the households in the country, with almost 40% of the customers preferring to shop online for groceries. This can allow the company to target such customers.

5. Identification of Resources

Financial Resources

The new business venture will be requiring a capital of almost 100,000 pounds. The amount will be required for setting up the ecommerce website, including developer fee, server fee, domain hosting fee and others. The sum of 100,000 pounds will be raised through “Angel Investors”, who happen to be individuals having large worth, and provide start-up or “seed capital” for start-ups. The Angel Investors will be given certain equity in the company, and will be taken on-board for their experience and expertise regarding start-ups. The breakup of the financial costs is given in the table below.

People and Suppliers

The “people” required by the company will be workforce of over 10 people, with 4 handling front-office operations, and 6 handling warehousing and logistics. Apart from these full-time employees, two external developers will be contracted for a period of 2 years for developing the website and providing its routine maintenance, for ensuring no glitches take place. Whereas, the suppliers will be the organic food producers from the Greater London Area mentioned earlier. Due to the close proximity of the London city to the Greater London Area, just 2 miles, will ensure that the organic food products can be sourced fresh and by incurring low logistics costs.

6. Targeted Market

The targeted market for the organic food products will be consumers between the age of 18 and 24 years. According to the reports of the Soil Association, organic food products comprise of almost 47% of their groceries’ purchase every week. Moreover, this age group is considered to be the largest users of social media platforms, like Twitter, Instagram and others (Manning and Kowalska, 2021). This will help the company in using “social media marketing” for targeting this demographic group efficiently. Moreover, according to statistics, Millennials happen to be one of the largest demographic groups in London, comprising almost 28% of the total population. This will allow the company to target the group and increase sales.

7. Business Model

The business model of the start-up will be a subscription-based business model. For example, subscribers will have to pay a subscription fee of 10 pounds a month for accessing the website and they will be provided discount coupons for their purchases and two free deliveries. Moreover, the company will be keeping a profit margin of 10% on the sales, by sourcing products from the suppliers and forwarding them to the customers from the warehouse of the company (Sultan, Wong and Azam, 2021). The subscription fees will provide the company a steady flow of revenue and the profits will fuel expansion in other regions.

8. Business Networking

The company will be interacting with other innovators and start-ups on networking platforms like “Bloomflow”, and “Linkedin”, for developing capabilities and accessing innovative ideas for improving the business model. For example, networking on such platforms will allow the company to access the expertise of other tech start-ups, which will help in enhancing the website and the shopping experience of the customers (Nagy, Lakner and Temesi, 2022). Moreover, the team comprises of several front-end developers and business graduates who bring experience regarding business management and technology to the table. Combined with the networking, the team will be able to scale the business and target other segments and markets.

9. Limitations and Barriers

The limited financial resources and stiff competition from large brands like Tesco can be barriers to the start-up. For example, Tesco holds a market share of almost 28% in the UK, and sells organic food products under various brands (NGUYEN and TRUONG, 2021). Competing with such behemoths can be challenging. Moreover, due to the limited financial resources, the risk appetite of the company will be low, preventing investment in research and development or immediate expansion.

10. Conclusion and Implications

For addressing challenges discussed earlier, the company can raise funds on crowdfunding platforms like “GoFundMe”, where small investments from a large group of people can cumulatively become huge. Moreover, these “investors” can be turned into customers by providing them free subscription against their investments, along with discount coupons. The company can target micro-segments like Millennials instead of households for addressing the competition from larger brands.

11. References

Burton, M., 2022. Evaluating Validity and Deviant Personality: What the Myers Briggs Type Indicator Overlooks.

Firkola, P., 2021. A Review of Career Assessment Tools. Archives of Business Research, 9(11).

Hakala, H., O’Shea, G., Farny, S. and Luoto, S., 2020. Re‐storying the business, innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem concepts: The model‐narrative review method. International Journal of Management Reviews, 22(1), pp.10-32.

Kowalska, A., Ratajczyk, M., Manning, L., Bieniek, M. and Mącik, R., 2021. “Young and Green” a Study of Consumers’ Perceptions and Reported Purchasing Behaviour towards Organic Food in Poland and the United Kingdom. Sustainability, 13(23), p.13022.

Lake, C.J., Carlson, J., Rose, A. and Chlevin-Thiele, C., 2019. Trust in name brand assessments: The case of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. The Psychologist-Manager Journal, 22(2), p.91.

Manning, L. and Kowalska, A., 2021. Considering fraud vulnerability associated with credence-based products such as organic food. Foods, 10(8), p.1879.

Murphy, B., Martini, M., Fedi, A., Loera, B.L., Elliott, C.T. and Dean, M., 2022. Consumer trust in organic food and organic certifications in four European countries. Food Control, 133, p.108484.

Nagy, L.B., Lakner, Z. and Temesi, Á., 2022. Is it really organic? Credibility factors of organic food–A systematic review and bibliometric analysis. PloS one, 17(4), p.e0266855.

NGUYEN, D.T. and TRUONG, D.C., 2021. The impact of psychological and environmental factors on consumers’ purchase intention toward organic food: Evidence from Vietnam. The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business, 8(1), pp.915-925.

Parrilli, M.D., Balavac, M. and Radicic, D., 2020. Business innovation modes and their impact on innovation outputs: Regional variations and the nature of innovation across EU regions. Research Policy, 49(8), p.104047.

Sultan, P., Wong, H.Y. and Azam, M.S., 2021. How perceived communication source and food value stimulate purchase intention of organic food: An examination of the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) model. Journal of Cleaner Production, 312, p.127807.

Wojciechowska-Solis, J., Kowalska, A., Bieniek, M., Ratajczyk, M. and Manning, L., 2022. Comparison of the Purchasing Behaviour of Polish and United Kingdom Consumers in the Organic Food Market during the COVID-19 Pandemic. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(3), p.1137.