Reflection

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Learning about entrepreneurship has been a very great experience for  me as a student. It has helped to broaden my views on not only how businesses are created, but also how to see business opportunities in a lot of situations. It has also helped me learn how things work in my society and I have to say it has been a fun filled experience.
I also found it interesting sharing  information on the internet and interacting with others far and wide on their different views. I would like to say a BIG THANK YOU to my entrepreneurship instructor, Ms Jelena Zivkovic for always being there to teach me, to my classmates for helping me out when I had problems and to you my viewers for reading my blog. I hope you all found it interesting.

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Franchise

Chapter 6 show from dexstatistics

Franchise

Definition of Terms

• A Franchise involves any arrangement in which the owner of a trade name, trademark or copyright which has licensed others to use it in selling goods and services.
• The franchisee is legally independent but economically dependent on the integrated business system of the franchisor. He is the purchaser of the franchise.
• The franchisor is the seller of the franchise.

The franchise can be viewed as a large umbrella corporation with other branches working under it. 

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ADVANTAGES OF FRANCHISE

• Training and Guidance: The franchisee always has the opportunity of receiving assistance and guidance from the franchise.
• Brand-Name Appeal: Buying a well known franchise also gives the franchisee's business quick recognition and therefore better chance of success.
• A Proven Track Record: Buying a franchise which has also been successful over the years gives the franchisee the assurance of success.
• Financial Assistance: The franchise could also be a source of financial assistance to the franchisee when he/she has  less capital to effectively run the business.

DISADVANTAGES OF FRANCHISE

• Franchise Fees: Franchisees usually pay certain amounts to the franchisor from their sales (usually is 5%-20%).  
• Franchisor Control: Since franchisees depend economically on the franchisor's  business system, the franchisor usually exerts a fair level of control over their businesses.
• Unfulfilled Promises: The problem of unfulfilled promises is evident in some franchisor-franchisee relationships where the franchisee doesn't receive either the financial assistance, the training and guidance promised, or even goods and equipment.

Creativity and Innovation.

Creativity and Innovation both do have some things in common, but they are not the synonyms they seem to be. Being creative could involve making up all those beautiful ideas of a new shoe which could be used both as a cover shoe and a normal slipper, but not the process of putting this idea into production and selling it to generate profit.This process now involves Innovation.

• Creativity is the generation of ideas that results in the improved efficiency or effectiveness of a system.
• Innovation is the process by which entrepreneurs convert opportunities into marketable ideas. 

SOURCES OF INNOVATION

There are various sources of an entrepreneur's innovation, and since they are always alert and looking for opportunities, they usually recognize opportunities not noticeable by others. There are mostly 8 sources of innovation, these are:

1. Trends: A trend means a style or something common to a social group. This may include hairstyle, type of clothing, etc. A common example of a trend among Nigerian youth is the Blackberry platform. An entrepreneur could notice this desire of Nigerian youths and develop a business initiative where he satisfies the 'blackberry phone hunger' of the youths and makes his profit. Trends could include societal trends, technology trends,economic trends and government trends.
2. Unexpected occurrences: Even in times of disaster, innovation is possible, and entrepreneurs never fail to undertake these opportunities that rise from these disasters. For example following security threats to a country, an entrepreneur could open a security providing initiative or a business that offers security devices.
3. Incongruities: This occurs when there is a big difference between people involved in business transactions. For example the FedEx initiative by Fred Smith which provides overnight mail delivery.
4. Process  Needs: Innovation often occurs when there is a need for a solution to a certain problem. These innovative initiatives then serve as solutions to these problems. 
5. Industry and Market Changes: As time moves on, things continue to change, and so do demand for certain goods and services. Even the way services are rendered are changing everyday to suite the consumers needs and so there is always an innovative opportunity lurking around.
6. Demographic Changes: New opportunities always arise due to changes in the population, age,  occupation, education, health, etc of the people in a country and thereby fostering innovation.
7. Perceptual Changes: People's knowledge about themselves, their welfare and their environment always provides an opportunity for innovative activity.For example, the knowledge that people have that keeping physically fit leads to good health would only mean they need programs and facilities that promote their keeping fit and an entrepreneur could then find a way of providing this services.
8. Knowledge Based Concepts: This involves invention which would require a lot of knowledge on the needs of the people and making products to satisfy these needs. This process often requires a long process of fabrication, modification, testing, finalizing, etc. before it becomes marketable. 

TYPES OF INNOVATION

1. Invention: This involves creating a totally new product, service or process.
2. Extension: This involves developing a new use or different application of an already existing product, service or process.
3. Duplication: This involves the creative replication of an existing concept. 
4. Synthesis: This involves the combination of existing concepts and factors into a new formulation or use. 

William Foote: Social Entrepreneur.

William Foote

Root Capital

At a Glance

• Age: 43
• Headquarters: Cambridge, Mass.
• 2010 budget: $6.2 million
• www.rootcapital.org

http://www.forbes.com/impact-30/william-foote.html

William Foote, 43, from the United States and the founder of Roots Capital initiative is an example of a social entrepreneur. His idea of providing short term loans to farmers who are willing but not able to work due to lack of funds all started when he and his wife, Virginia, were on a journey and then they noticed some small scale farmers who couldn't make much success in their agricultural production due to lack of funds, and today, he is a very successful social entrepreneur. William Foote then went of to Harvard business school with the notion of creating an organisation that would provide credit to small scale and mostly poor farmers, and today, we have Root Capital which has so far provided up to $260,000,000 in trade credit to certain small scale agricultural businesses.

Social Entrepreneurship.

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Hello,
 I had earlier talked about the normal business entrepreneurs and the corporate entrepreneurs who work under an organisation, so now lets move on and take a look at the entrepreneurs who are more interested in making money from the lower class of our society, the SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS.
Take your time and examine these three pictures, 

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PICTURE 1:

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PICTURE 2:

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PICTURE 3:
If you had a couple of items to sell, for example some exquisite watches from Dubai, would you rather sell them to the rich man from the first picture, an engineer or banker from the second picture, or the poor old woman selling plantain? The normal entrepreneur or the corporate entrepreneur would rather get involved in business transactions with someone from either picture 1 or picture 2, but not from the poor woman from picture 3, probably because the poor old woman won't have the money to purchase this expensive item and even if she had as much, she would rather prefer maximizing utility by attending to her most pressing needs.  The pictures above represent the high class, the middle class and the lower class respectively which primarily are the different classes of people in our community. But it's interesting to know that a Social Entrepreneur would surprisingly go for the lower class and try making his profit from them  and at the same time assuring the success of his/her business. I hope this now helps in your understanding of who the social entrepreneur is and his interests. Lets now look at the definitions.

• Social entrepreneurship applies to social problem solving traditional, private sector and entrepreneurship's focus on innovation, risk taking and large scale transformation.
•  A process that begins with a social opportunity that is translated into an enterprise.
• A Social entrepreneur is a person or a group of people who founds an organisation or initiative engaged in social entrepreneurship.

Social entrepreneurs are also called civic entrepreneurs. They are different from corporate entrepreneurs because corporate entrepreneurs aren't concerned about the lower class while for the social entrepreneurs, their business ideas come from solving problems of the lower class. The Social entrepreneur recognizes a perceived social opportunity, translates the social opportunity into an enterprise concept, then identifies and acquires the resources required to execute the enterprises goals.This is known as the SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR PROCESS.

Entrepreneurial Stress

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Entrepreneurial stress is the extent to which entrepreneurs work demands and expectations exceed their abilities to perform as venture initiators, they are likely to experience stress. When an entrepreneurs 'to do' work surpasses his 'can do' work,  he is likely to experience stress. There are different causes of stress, some are:

• Loneliness: The entrepreneur, although surrounded by co-workers, also faces lonliness as sometimes he lacks the service of people he can confide in and his job also isolates him more to his place of work and away from his family.
• Immersion in business: The entrepreneur is always occupied pursuing one business opportunity or another and so this gives him less opportunity to rest and have a good time with people and family.
• People problems: Entrepreneurs are subject to working with other workers in order tto assure success, but when these others fail to positively deliver hardwork and commitment, the entrepreneur who depends on these peoplle could have too much on him leading to stress.
• Need to achieve: The entrepreneur always wants to be ahead and keep achieving, but that isn't an easy task and sometimes entrepreneurs find themselves in more stressful situations than they can handle.