Entrepreneurship

 In today’s business world, living in fastest developing and expanding field in modern economic setting has changed the way people think – Mindset. Opportunities are everywhere, yet not everyone is able to see them. The question is how an individual influenced the ability to seize a new opportunity? Opportunity Recognition (OR) represents one of the salient components in the entrepreneurial process as ways an entrepreneur acknowledge the existence of new opportunity. According to the researches, the six important theories and concepts of OR are prior experience, corridor principle, entrepreneurial alertness, social network, causation and serendipity, which are seems to be correlation between Mr Anthony and the theories, as well as contradictions and inconsistencies of theories towards the entrepreneur. However, the theories that are applicable to Mr Anthony from the first point of his business venture are corridor principle, social networks and prior experience. This can be explain during the interview sections where he agreed the theories above are the most salient factors that leads to business success. In contrast, Mr Anthony believed where business opportunities are come from hard work, dedication and determination rather that depending on lucks or delay action until the right time and the right place happen.

Entrepreneur’s Mindset

Entrepreneur is a person who organize and operates of business or businesses ventures, whereby they’re generally possessed a common characteristics which are innovator of new ideas, risk-taker, business leader and a starter who often exploit new opportunity (Hyytinen and Ilmakunnas, 2007; Macko and Tyszka, 2009; Kauanui et al., 2010). According to the literature, there are two types of motivation for an individual to become an entrepreneur; Opportunity-Driven Entrepreneurs (ODE) and Necessity-Driven Entrepreneurs (NDE) (Albulescu & Tamasila, 2016). In the case of Mr Anthony, the reason why he became an entrepreneurs is because of his strong desire to be independent, the need of freedom and boredom of repeating routine of work and traditional business hours which described as opportunity-driven entrepreneurs (Albulescu & Tamasila, 2016; Tyszka et al., 2011; Williams, 2009). In details, the common characteristic attributed to Mr Anthony are generally visionary, opportunity orientation, drive to achieve, team building and high tolerance for failure as well as a risk taker. To emphasize, the entrepreneurial trait that have shown a high level of validity are the need of achievement and the locus of control.

The Needs of Achievements

Every successful entrepreneur has their own business goals and objectives to run the business smoothly. The concept of need of achievement in entrepreneurship is refer to an individual’s desire for significant factor in entrepreneurial success and fancy for clear performance feedback as well as a set of moderate challenge goals or risk and challenging tasks by the entrepreneur itself (Macko and Tyszka, 2009; Kauanui et al., 2010). To point out, Mr Anthony agreed on the theory as following statements: 

“Big business starts with small step.”

“When it comes to strategic and planning, I get myself involved in marketing, from there I can lead the team and guide them to achieve the target.”

Entrepreneurs’ Locus of Control

On the other hand is locus of control, which can be either an internal or external locus of control, referring to a belief about the outcomes of an individual’s action are determined by the environment or external forces or it is control by the individual itself through performance (Kaufmann, Welsh and Bushmarin, 1995). Entrepreneurs like Mr. Anthony are best described as internal locus of control due to his leadership in a company, self-motivated, active in seeking information through his social circles and books and better control of his behavior. For instance, every morning Mr Anthony will read a book for his self-motivation and motivate his staff in doing business. In facts, he is the person that are aggressive in searching information for new opportunities specifically his books and social networks, which sometime required him to interact and making new friends with the top players in the market and other successful entrepreneurs with the same vision. 

His statement is contradicted from external locus of control and serendipity, who does not believe in luck or other external factors or being at the right place at the right time to get a new opportunity, whereas Mr. Anthony believed that opportunity only comes with hard work, struggle and searching effort. Mr Anthony following statement supports this view:

“There is no luck in life. I can success, you can success, and everyone can success. For me, the right time is just from us, if you think it is the right time and the right place, you should be there. You can choose your right time and you can choose your right place you had to be. I believe when it comes to business, opportunities are like buses. They always come and they always go. There is no simple thing with simple time but there is great time to get great things.”

The Creation and Discovery Theories

In the context of entrepreneurship, there are two types of theories of entrepreneurial action which are the Discovery Theory and the Creation Theory. According to Barney & Alvarez (2007), the discovery theory was assumed that the entrepreneur discovered and exploit new opportunity where it exists independently which relies heavily on prior experiences and entrepreneur’s alertness. To enumerate, the business opportunity are like losing a suitcase in an airport; the opportunities exist, but they are just waiting to be claimed by entrepreneur who are more alert and know of the existence. In contrast, the creation theory of entrepreneurial opportunities suggests that new business opportunity are “created” by the action of the entrepreneurs and the perceptions together with actively and iteratively to generate economic value (Barringer, 2010). Barney & Alvarez (2007) believed that created opportunity are exist after the action they took that leads to the formation of opportunities, where initially the opportunity are not have been known without act and by doing so, the entrepreneur will create a new market opportunity which links well with Mr Anthony’s belief as on the following statement:

“To make things happen is just take action. All of those things can happen if you take an action.”

To summarize, every entrepreneurs have the ability to seize opportunities, yet different entrepreneurs will sees different opportunities at different time and place. Mr Anthony create his own destiny through action, where he failed in his businesses has allow him to take action to keep moving on such as reading books to generate new business ideas, socialize with his friends who are entrepreneurs and actively searching information through social platform. All of these actions have leaded him to created new opportunity in the new market which eventually became a successful entrepreneur as of today.   

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