Today and in the Nearest Future

Research questions:

1. Identify and provide systematic overview of common traits, features and characteristics that form successful entrepreneurs.
2. Attempt to forecast and describe what entrepreneurs will be like in the nearest future.

Research objectives:

1. Based on the following parameters form a sort of ‘equation’ which would show how much entrepreneurial success depends on each of the factors below, e.g.: Education is of 1% importance, country of residence is 80% important, etc.
2. Geography (origin, residence)
3. Industry of choice
4. Personal contacts (friends, relatives, colleagues)
5. Education
6. Interests
7. Life style, habits, etc.
8. At least 10 cases of successful and 10 cases of failed entrepreneurs have to be studied, analyzed and compared.
9. Profiles and common development patterns for successful entrepreneurs should be included (Bezos, Trump, Buffet, etc.).
10. Forecast has to be made as for what future entrepreneurs will be like (with regard to the 6 factors above). This part comprises about 25% of the thesis.

This is a qualitative exploratory research. Methods: literature, online and media publications, interviews with famous entrepreneurs on YouTube.

Research questions:

1. Identify and provide systematic overview of common traits, features and characteristics that form successful entrepreneurs.
2. Attempt to forecast and describe what entrepreneurs will be like in the nearest future.

Research objectives:

1. Based on the following parameters form a sort of ‘equation’ which would show how much entrepreneurial success depends on each of the factors below, e.g.: Education is of 1% importance, country of residence is 80% important, etc.
2. Geography (origin, residence)
3. Industry of choice
4. Personal contacts (friends, relatives, colleagues)
5. Education
6. Interests
7. Life style, habits, etc.
8. At least 10 cases of successful and 10 cases of failed entrepreneurs have to be studied, analyzed and compared.
9. Profiles and common development patterns for successful entrepreneurs should be included (Bezos, Trump, Buffet, etc.).
10. Forecast has to be made as for what future entrepreneurs will be like (with regard to the 6 factors above). This part comprises about 25% of the thesis.

This is a qualitative exploratory research. Methods: literature, online and media publications, interviews with famous entrepreneurs on YouTube.

Answers:

It’s an interesting time to be an entrepreneur. As of 2015, Pew Research reported, 3 in 10 U.S. jobs were held by self-employed entrepreneurs and the workers they hired, making entrepreneurship a major driver of the economy (Miller et al. 2018). Startup culture supplies high-profile role models who’ve taken their ideas and turned them into massively successful companies—which strive to retain and scale their entrepreneurial ethos as they grow. And as digital marketing becomes more and more accessible, entrepreneurs can potentially reach a vast audience on a small-and-scrappy budget.

There’s also evidence that today’s entrepreneurs are especially serious about their businesses: per Pew, “The share of workers who are self-employed and have incorporated businesses rose from 2.9% in 1990 to 3.7% in 2014, and the share of workers who are unincorporated fell.” For many entrepreneurs, running their own business isn’t an experiment or a transitional phase; they’re laying the groundwork for something permanent (Fitz et al. 2018). On the other hand, those who aren’t incorporating and growing are often struggling. The Small Business Administration has reported that a third of new businesses fail within their first two years, and half don’t make it past Year 5. And other would-be entrepreneurs may be sitting things out because they can’t get started in the first place: 2016 U.S. Census data finds new business creation heading toward a 40-year low.

It’s Drip’s goal to make marketing automation accessible to every business, so we’re deeply invested in the success of entrepreneurs at all stages of growth. And while we get thousands of interesting data points from talking to our customers, we also wondered what might be revealed by a broader view of the state of entrepreneurship heading into 2017. What follows is a snapshot of U.S. entrepreneurs’ success and struggles right now, as suggested by a panel of nearly 2,000 company founders (Gast et al. 2017).

This report is aimed to portray the successful entrepreneurship at present and in near future. As it can be seen that there has been large amount of study regarding the same, yet, there is considerable amount of lack in finding a concrete outcome regarding the future path of the entrepreneur. This report will judge the various factors that affect the growth of entrepreneur and moreover, it will portray how a budding entrepreneur can become successful with the help of the literary evidences as well as the interview of the successful entrepreneurs. This research proposal will portray the literary evidences as well as methodology and time frame to do the research work and depict the future scope of the research while mentioning the ethical consideration maintained while performing the data collection.

Market during the present date has become highly overlapped with each other making it a complex place for the budding entrepreneurs to achieve success. As per the latest researches, 28.8% didn’t see business costs, lack of time, customer acquisition or retention, or marketing as a major barrier. As for the rest, business costs topped the list, followed closely by time and getting enough new customers. As per the research done by Forbes, interestingly enough, today’s entrepreneurs do not necessarily think of customer acquisition as a marketing problem: only 10.1% chose “figuring out how to market successfully” as their primary challenge, compared to 17.6% who chose “getting enough new customers.” (Alvedalen and Boschma 2017)Shifting the way they approach the problem and devoting serious attention to their marketing is one way this larger group of entrepreneurs might break down the customer-acquisition barrier. Those who are also strapped for cash and time will be especially well served by affordable marketing automation tools. Similarly, there may be unrealized growth potential in improving customer retention, selected by only 6.9% of respondents as a top concern. If entrepreneurs can find automated ways to encourage repeat purchases, contract renewals, and upsells, they can reap more value from the time and money they’re spending on customer acquisition (Kerr et al. 2018).

This showcase the problematic situation of the present entrepreneurs who fails to consider the essential factor of success. Under this situation, it is highly important to perform research regarding the success factors of the entrepreneurs and forecast how future trend of the entrepreneurship will be.

• Identify and provide systematic overview of common traits, features and characteristics that form successful entrepreneurs
• Attempt to forecast and describe what entrepreneurs will be like in the nearest future.

• Identify and provide systematic overview of common traits, features and characteristics that form successful entrepreneurs.
• Attempt to forecast and describe what entrepreneurs will be like in the nearest future.

• To determine how much entrepreneurial success depends upon the factors like Geography, Industry of choice, personal contacts, education, interests, Life style and habits.
• To portray how characteristics, common traits and features provide to a successful entrepreneurs.
• To forecast and depict the future interests of the entrepreneurs
• Develop meaningful and practically applicable recommendations for existing businesses as well as for those that are still to be founded, based on both primary (interviews, questionnaires) and secondary (media, online news feeds, blogs, etc.) data.

Importance of critical literature overview is based on two simple reasons, as argued by Sharp et al. (2002). First, it helps researchers to better formulate their beliefs and opinions regarding the research subject, and second, it helps to avoid topics already covered sufficiently and not really requiring much additional research. As the famous saying in Russian goes, there is no need to invent the bicycle. While reviewing available sources, researchers can come up with new ideas, reformulate their research questions or choose to adopt different methodological framework.

Theoretical background.

Business researches show tendencies to involve many disciplines of social science, which distinguishes them from research in some other academic fields, as stated by Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill (2012). They often require extensive reading in psychology, sociology, cultural and ethnic diversity, etc. While there can be found sufficient material on similar topics, they do not seem to provide sufficient answers because they basically describe clearly obvious things, and at the same time, service quality remains below VIP customers’ expectations.

As described by Porter (1985, 1998) there are four generic strategies to gain competitive advantage against rival businesses. They are focus, differentiation and cost leadership. Focus strategy in its turn is divided into two sub-strategies, differentiation focus and cost focus. For the sake of this research, it should be noted that ultimate aim of this study is to provide some practically useful suggestions with specific regard to Porter’s differentiation focus strategy. That means that very specific customer demands should be met in the very specific segment of economy. Keeping that in mind, and also considering time limitations, it would probably be more appropriate to dedicate more time to studying facts and events that appear in periodicals, social networks and provide insights on feelings and motivation of the target group representatives.

Entrepreneurs play an important role in the life of society. They carry out economic tasks that increase employment, create new organizations, uncover new production processes and perform other business activities which improve material well-being. Entrepreneurship is a creative and dynamic activity that brings together labor, capital, and business know-how. During the 1980s and 1990s many authors studied entrepreneurship as a primary force for economic development. Researchers continue to explore the central role entrepreneurs play in market processes, however, most of the research has failed to trace the magnitude of the factors that alter the performance of an entreprenuer. While entrepreneurship is acknowledged as one of the most important factors in global economic development, not surprisingly, there is wide disagreement among economists and business scholars about its precise relationship to such development. Entrepreneurship advancement remains a major topic in the literature (Galvao et al. 2018). These studies often link discussions of entrepreneurship with moral deliberations about economic justice and the urgent need for development in many regions of the world. William J. Baumol proposes that it is necessary to distinguish between two primary types of entrepreneurship in order to more fully understand how entrepreneurship can flourish over the years. He suggests that “the initiating entrepreneur” was primarily responsible for unprecedented economic growth during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries while “imitative entrepreneurship” holds the key for economic advancement in developing countries today. Baumol describes “imitative entrepreneurship” as the diffusion of innovations after they are first introduced by “initiating” entrepreneurs. In this view, initiating entrepreneurship involves the creation of new products, new productive techniques, or procedures not previously known or available (Planko et al. 2017).

True “initiating” entrepreneurship is relatively rare. Imitative entrepreneurship – a more widespread economic phenomenon – occurs after “initiating “entrepreneurs have successfully demonstrated the utility of their innovative product or process. Imitative entrepreneurship is more likely to improve economic life in developing countries. Scott S. Powell similarly distinguishes between what he terms “high order” and “low order” entrepreneurship (Dean et al. 2017). Like Baumol, Powell suggests that entrepreneurship of the “imitative” or “low order” form is needed to meet basic human needs of persons in the developing world in order to achieve better performance growth and success in the future. Powell proposes that in developing countries there is “an abundance of opportunity for low-order entrepreneuring because so many basic needs are unsatisfied.” (Gerpott et al. 2017). A number of other studies have explored the overall relationship between entrepreneurship and employment growth and has found that it is highly important to provide better growth prospect for the entrepreneur (Kaartemo 2017). Additionally various literary evidences has also portrayed that there is large amount of interconnection between the region of operation, performance, and other factors that influence the performance and the growth prospect of the entrepreneurs.

Methodology is a whole framework of cross-relating categories that include research philosophy (positivism, realism, interpretevism, and pragmatism), approach (deductive, inductive), strategy (case study, survey, experiment, archival research, action research, and ethnography), methods, time horizons, techniques and procedures. This also includes questions of ontology, epistemology and axiology and refers to the choice of research paradigm, as explained by Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill (2012). It is important to comprehend that as a whole because we should seek to understand the underlying in-depth reasons that make things happen or work in a particular way. Though true and flawless our assumptions may be, it is useful to inquire into the core nature of how and why things are related to each other, as well as how they work altogether. It is not about philosophical background of the research itself, but rather about our reflections on our philosophical choices and adequate understanding of alternatives (Johnson and Clark, 2006). Ontology is a branch of philosophy (or metaphysics) that deals with general questions regarding the core nature of existence. With regard to research, it can be defined as a set of categories in a specified domain that reveals qualities thereof and relations between them.

Epistemology is another branch dealing with validity and critical evaluation of knowledge, therefore concerned with providing grounds for beliefs, delimitation between grounded and ungrounded opinion, and fundamentally regards the question ‘How do we know that we know?’. The last but not least, axiology is the branch about values, their kinds, norms and measurement, unlike the former two it involves notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, so as applied to research, it means how personal values of the researcher influence choices as of ways in which the research should be conducted, as well as the final conclusions drawn from it. As argued by Heron (1996) researchers with different values may draw different conclusions from one particular research.

In order to explore research philosophies even further, it is useful to employ conceptual framework of paradigms, as explained by Burrell and Morgan (1982). They argue that paradigm is a manner of inquiring into the subject from which certain understanding of the subject can be developed and explanations offered. The four paradigms are: interpretive, radical humanist, functionalist, radical structuralist. They offer conceptualization from cardinally opposite perspectives, that is subjectivist as opposed to objectivist, and regulation as opposed to radical change, where the former two are derived from ontology, and the latter two represent different views on the affairs of business and management, the way organizations are structured and arranged. Understanding of paradigms is useful for researchers so that they could better formulate their opinion on various subjects, better understand other researchers and their ways, and more efficiently steer their own course through their research, to see and adequately assess all possible opportunities, according to Burrell and Morgan (1982).

Finally, there are two major research approaches: deductive, as an attempt to prove an existing theory, and inductive, that is aimed at collecting information in order to formulate a new theory. Though it may seem that the two are absolutely different, it is possible to combine them. Some authors, for example Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill (2012), and Creswell (2002), claim that it might often prove beneficial for the sake of research to combine deductive and inductive approaches. They also point out some consequences the choice of approach incurs, such as: inductive researches typically tend to require more time and are also riskier, that means, forms may be not properly filled, not returned at all, or may not yield relevant information, therefore have little or no practical use.

Speaking of practical applicability, Hakim (2000) suggests that not necessarily every choice should be practical. He offers a figural comparison between research and architecture, and argues that in both cases there is a touch of researcher’s personality so some certain features do not need to bear print of immediate practical applicability but rather can represent personal ideas, opinions and style of the authors.

There is no unified idea as for the starting point when designing a research project. Some authors, for instance Johnson and Clark (2006), Guba and Lincoln (1994), state that questions of research strategy and methods are secondary to the choice of philosophical stance and paradigm adopted by the authors. On the other hand, pragmatism says that axiological, epistemological and ontological choices wholly depend on the research question, which is the hearthstone of the entire structure. Tashakkori and Teddlie (1998) in support of pragmatist’s position extend the argument and point out that researchers should focus on their own system of values and conduct research as they see fit to match that system and yield benefits with regard to that system, by using whatever ways they think appropriate. Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill (2012) note that though induction should be mostly related to interpretevism, and deduction to positivism, such generalization may potentially be harmful and is actually of little practical use, in their opinion. They view all issues related to research as ‘onion’, where the outer layers of philosophies and approaches should be peeled off first, and followed by strategies and methods, before we can get to the inner layers representing techniques and procedures.

For the sake of this research project, the research ‘onion’ template will be adopted, as it appears well-structured and properly grounded.

Interpretevism appears to suit best the idea and purpose of this research due to the following reasons. As suggested management and business studies, in fields such as social behavior, human resource management and marketing by Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill (2012), it is highly appropriate for various kinds of. People should be regarded in a different way than machines, equipment or goods, as they are subjects, not objects. Every case is special and cannot be addressed from positions of generalization, so applying fundamental theories like in physics or math may be not the best idea. Basically speaking, many people are aware of the same concepts and facts but interpret those in their own unique manner.

With regard to ontology, philosophy of interpretevism acknowledges possible necessity to change the course of research as it progresses, for instance due to discovery of new facts or due to some other reasons. Research methodology can be adjusted to suit the circumstances with regard to research question in the best way. Interpretivist’s research is constructed in a social manner and is definitely subjective.  Speaking of epistemology, it is focused on details, feelings, motivation and attempts to reveal meaning behind words and actions. Being all subjective, it seeks to identify links between motives and actions. Axiological background of such research is that the researcher is an active participant of the study, so his or her personal values would affect it a lot. This confirms the subjectivity of this kind of research, once again. Methods and techniques in this case often include scrutinizing small samples, profound analysis and careful consideration. Such research is mostly qualitative, however quantitative methods can also be used if necessary and applicable.

The approach to be adopted in this case is clearly inductive. From a broad perspective, inductive research is supposed to collect and analyze information in order to formulate a theory, as opposed to deductive approach which works in the opposite way, that is aims to prove an existing theory based on experiments. However, it may be useful for the researcher to avail themselves to some liberty in combining both approaches, if applicable, as argued by Creswell (2002). In our particular case, there may be not so much information regarding the research question, but still there has to be something, so at the very least research can be reinforced by collecting secondary data, but some theory can also be tested during the course of the study, if feasible and appropriate.

There are three major purposes to conduct research defined as exploratory, explanatory and descriptive studies. One particular research case can demonstrate features attributable to more than one of the purposes named above. Moreover, the purpose may change over time, as argued by Robson (2002). This research shows attributes of both exploratory and explanatory studies due to its nature and specifics.

Strategy is a narrower category within purpose, and the one that fits best the general idea of this research is case study. Other possible choices of strategy are: action research, archival research, ethnography, survey, experiment, grounded theory (Yin, 2003). Case study is highly appropriate when the researcher intends to inquire into a certain phenomenon which is closely related to contemporary reality and involves the question ‘why?’ in addition to questions ‘what?’ and ‘how?’ (Morris and Wood, 1991). Though the name seems to suggest that there has to be one case of study, multiple cases are acceptable and even preferred because should only one case be used, it will require solid considerable grounds to justify the choice, argues Yin (2003) and calls this an embedded case study.

Data can be either quantitative which refers us to all kinds of numerical characteristics, or qualitative, meaning non-numerical. With reference to Tashakkori and Teddlie (2003), this research is dubbed multi-method qualitative study. This means that multiple methods can be used but they are all qualitative. However, as argued and referenced above, this research allows certain level of freedom, so may be adjusted to mixed-method research which involves using both qualitative and quantitative methods sequentially or parallel to each other. In such case caution is advised, as Bryman (2006) states that his analysis of over 200 research articles in the field of social studies revealed that when mixed-methods approach was used there was often some collision between the results qualitative and quantitative methods provided.

Options discussed here are cross-sectional studies as opposed to longitudinal studies. The choice is between studying something at one point in time or over an extended period of time. Bearing in mind the research question, it would be reasonable to assume that this research should be considered cross-sectional. On the other hand, as it is intended to use available secondary data (media publications, online news feeds, etc.) some observations can be based on events and opinions dating a few years back. The assumption made here is that this kind of information cannot be outdated or become obsolete since the research aims to provide at least some common patterns of human behavior which does not change much. Of course, this regards patterns attributed to a certain target group, not to one single person, because entrepreneur preferences do change over time, sometimes dramatically.

As it apparently follows from the term ‘ethics’ this section is about conducting the research in a socially acceptable, considerate way. With specific regard to the target group, some respondents may not feel comfortable about disclosing their entrepreneur preference. However, it is assumed that they certainly belong to the target group based on the fact that they occupy highest level positions in their companies – presidents, partners and directors, or pay considerable amounts of money for certain services or goods. This information is open and public as it appears on their business cards and on financial documents, receipts for instance. The highest level of caution is advised so that respondents should not feel any inconvenience about questions or implications of their answers.

Activity

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Analyzing data

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Finalizing the thesis draft

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Submission to supervisor

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References:

Alvedalen, J. and Boschma, R., 2017. A critical review of entrepreneurial ecosystems research: towards a future research agenda. European Planning Studies, 25(6), pp.887-903.

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Barter, M. (2002)  ‘Follow the Team Leader’, Nursing Management, 33 (10), 54-57.  Springhouse, PA: Springhouse Corp.

Bryman, A. (2006) ‘Integrating quantitative and qualitative research: how is it done?’, Qualitative Research, Vol. 6, pp. 97–113.

Bryman, A. and Bell, E. (2011) ‘Business Research Methods, 3rd ed., Oxford University Press.

Burrell, G. and Morgan, G. (1982) ‘Sociological Paradigms and Organisational Analysis’. London: Heinemann.

Creswell, J. (2002) ‘Research Design: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches’ 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Dean, H., Larsen, G., Ford, J. and Akram, M., 2017. Female Entrepreneurship and the Metanarrative of Economic Growth: A Critical Review of Underlying Assumptions. International Journal of Management Reviews.

Fitz-Koch, S., Nordqvist, M., Carter, S. and Hunter, E., 2018. Entrepreneurship in the agricultural sector: A literature review and future research opportunities. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 42(1), pp.129-166.

Galvão, A., Ferreira, J.J. and Marques, C., 2018. Entrepreneurship education and training as facilitators of regional development: A systematic literature review. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 25(1), pp.17-40.

Gast, J., Gundolf, K. and Cesinger, B., 2017. Doing business in a green way: A systematic review of the ecological sustainability entrepreneurship literature and future research directions. Journal of Cleaner Production, 147, pp.44-56.

Gerpott, Fabiola H., and Alfred Kieser. “It’s not charisma that makes extraordinarily successful entrepreneurs, but extraordinary success that makes entrepreneurs charismaticCharisma macht nicht Unternehmer außergewöhnlich erfolgreich, sondern außergewöhnlicher Erfolg macht Unternehmer charismatisch.” Managementforschung 27, no. 1 (2017): 147-166.

Guba, E. and Lincoln, Y. (1994) ‘Competing paradigms in qualitative research’, in N.K. Denzin and Y.S. Lincoln (eds) Handbook of Qualitative Research. London: Sage.

Hair, J. F, Money, A.H., Samouel, P. and Page, M. (2007) ‘Research Methods for Business’. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons.

Hakim, C. (2000) ‘Research Design: Successful Designs for Social and Economic Research’ 2nd ed. London: Routledge.

Heron, J. (1996) ‘Co-operative Inquiry: Research into the Human Condition’, London: Sage.

Johnson, P. and Clark, M. (2006) ‘Mapping the terrain: an overview of business and management research methodologies’, Business and Management Research Methodologies. London: Sage.

Kaartemo, V., 2017. The elements of a successful crowdfunding campaign: a systematic literature review of crowdfunding perform

Kerr, S.P., Kerr, W.R. and Xu, T., 2018. Personality traits of entrepreneurs: a review of recent literature. Foundations and Trends® in Entrepreneurship, 14(3), pp.279-356.

Miller, K., Alexander, A., Cunningham, J.A. and Albats, E., 2018. Entrepreneurial academics and academic entrepreneurs: A systematic literature review. International Journal of Technology Management, 77(1-3), pp.9-37.

Morris, T. and Wood, S. (1991) ‘Testing the survey method: continuity and change in British industrial relations’, Work Employment and Society, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 259–82.

Planko, J., Cramer, J., Hekkert, M.P. and Chappin, M.M., 2017. Combining the technological innovation systems framework with the entrepreneurs’ perspective on innovation. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 29(6), pp.614-625.

Porter, M. E. (1985) ‘Competitive Advantage’, The Free Press, New York.

Porter, M. E. (1998) ‘Competitive Strategy: techniques for Analysing Industries and Competitors’ The Free Press, New York.

Robson, C. (2002) ‘Real World Research’ 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.

Saunders, M., Lewis, P. and Thornhill, A. (2012) ‘Research Methods for Business Students’ 6th ed., London, FT Prentice Hall.

Sharp, J.A., Peters, J. and Howard, K. (2002) ‘The Management of a Student Research Project’ 3rd ed. Aldershot: Gower.

Tashakkori, A. and Teddlie, C. (eds) (2003) ‘Handbook of Mixed Methods in Social and Behavioural Research’. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Tate, R. (2011) ‘Steve Jobs on Why He Wore Turtlenecks’, gawker.com. Available at http://gawker.com/5848754/steve-jobs-on-why-he-wore-turtlenecks. Acessed on April 2, 2018.

Thebeijinger.com (nd) Classifieds, employment available. Available at http://www.thebeijinger.com/classifieds/employment-available. Accessed on April 12, 2018.

Yin, R.K. (2003) ‘Case Study Research: Design and Method’ 3rd ed. London: Sage.

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