Introduction
Within the last decade, entrepreneurship has been considered an increasingly important and promising activity. This is especially true in an era where market takes up more responsibilities in solving social problems and creating social value. Earlier entrepreneurship studies focused on the revolutionary economic change of this process (Schumpeter, 1961). However, studies in this field has largely been phenomenon driven (Austin et al., 2006) that a theoretical framework has not yet been developed. Also, there is limited number of existing researches on social entrepreneurship process, which is an essential element to understand entrepreneurship activities. This article, as a result, is trying to provide some perspective into this process from incorporating the life of Steve Jobs with the discovery theory. It tries to answer the important question whether discovery theory is sufficient to explain the process. Steve Jobs is not randomly chosen. Since his return to Apple Inc. in 1997, the company has relived its old honor and stunned the world with iPhone, iPad and its iMac products. Job’s idea and his apple products even changed the industry outlook. People are buying these things not only because of their functions, but more as buying a lifestyle. With such huge success, Jobs proves to be a fairly good example to understand how the whole entrepreneurship process works. The first part of this article is a review the mainstream theories. A detailed description is given about how objective opportunities are identified by distinctive entrepreneurs. The practical review part then provides a detailed and focused description of Steve Jobs from different sources of information. At the same time, the methodology and process of collecting these data will be discussed as well as their limitations. Explanations will be given as to how these limitations are overcome. Following this, the life of Steve Jobs and the discovery theory will be incorporated to gain a new insight into the entrepreneur process. Finally, a positive conclusion is reached from the analysis that the discovery view of opportunities indeed more accurately described the entrepreneur process.
A Review on Entrepreneurship Process Theories
The core part of entrepreneur process theory is the notion of entrepreneur opportunity. Two distinctive streams exist in this field as to how these opportunities are perceived and handled. The discovery view considers these opportunities as objective existence that are found by entrepreneurs (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000) while the creative view believes that they are actually created by entrepreneurs (Schumpeter, 1934).
The discovery theory is also called individual/opportunity nexus theory because it focuses on the existence, discovery and exploitation of opportunities identified by distinctive entrepreneurs. The discovery view of opportunities (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000) believes that the existence of opportunities is objective in that these opportunities exist whether or not recognized by people. They are products of market imperfection which leads market participants to make suboptimal choices. These opportunities include situations where new markets can be created through new means-ends relationships (Eckhardt and Shane, 2003). Understanding these opportunities is the essential part of entrepreneur process because it directly determines how much value could be created from them. But the only existence of opportunities is not enough, a distinct person who can accurately identify and exploit these opportunities, who is the entrepreneur, is also essential for these opportunities to make sense. The discovery theory holds the view that this is a subjective process, which requires a special alertness in entrepreneurs so that they can be responsive to external circumstances and solve external deficiencies (Casson, 1982). This alertness is an attitude. Entrepreneurs are not deliberately looking for opportunities out of inspiration. On the contrary, they are constantly and spontaneously scanning the market environment to see if such market imperfections exist. They are keen enough to identify these opportunities and are quickly enough to assess the profitability of them. If they get a satisfied result, they will respond to these opportunities immediately by acquiring and organizing resources. For these entrepreneurs, the information contained in the opportunity is a direct guidance to how the subsequent project can be fulfilled optimally. One important thing that needs to be realized is that entrepreneur’s action is always risk bearing (Shane, 2003). Entrepreneurs are superior in the sense that they find ignored market imperfections. But this superiority does not guarantee their success. They still need to face the constantly changing market environment and various risk exposures.
A Review on Steve Jobs
The most important data resource is the authorized biography of Steve Jobs written by Walter Isaacson available at the library. This book provides a unique insight into the professional life of the Apple CEO and co-founder. Following the timeline, the book describes the birth of those main products of Apple, including Macintosh computer, iPod, iPhone and iPad. The design process of those products are very good illustration of the character of Jobs. The book also describes the way Jobs interacts with his employees and how he operates the company as a manager, rather than just a designer of product (Isaacson, 2011). This is a fairly new perspective to understand Jobs. Although the limitedness of biography exists for this book that its main information source comes from the self-narration of Jobs, there are two reasons why this limitedness is reduced. First is that Jobs asked for no control on what was written, and second is that the author collects a lot of information from other sources.
There are also tons of other books available about Jobs and his Apple products. They are helpful in that they provide different aspects and views about this subject. Leander (2004) in his book describes the business idea of Jobs is to create the cult of Mac that consumers are not only buying the product itself but buying its value system. The book by Simon, William, Young and Jeffrey (2005) considers Jobs’ way of work as the greatest second act in the history of business, which is really very high compliment.
Still, more Internet and media sources are used to reduce possible bias. These materials come in two main categories. One category is news about Jobs himself, including videos and interviews of Jobs on journals and newspapers. In one interview by Business Week (2004), Jobs described how technical knowhow could be combined with a new concept of how to sell music online. Another category includes research of the products of Apple. These products are inherently reflections of the business innovations of Jobs. As a result, it provides a good channel to understand the entrepreneur process of the Apple CEO. For example, Edwards in his article (2010) argues that iPhone and its new model are sweet to consumers and at the same time vicious to its rivals. With its new features, iPhone is gaining more market power than ever. McCray, Gonzalez and Darling (2011) further contrast Apple with Nokia in facing crisis of smart phones. They emphasize on how Apple's innovative combination of its iTunes, iPhone, and applications help the company to beat Nokia in a new era.
Steve Jobs and his discovery of opportunities
At the time when Jobs were back to Apple Inc. in 1997, the company suffered huge losses in past few years. Their products were expensive but not really attractive. Personal computer market shares were mainly occupied by IBM, Dell and HP manufactures. For operating systems, Mac OS was not so popular as Windows or even Linux. The market seemed to be tight and no more room was there.
However, the opportunities did exist but just not so easy to see in the computer market. People have been used to see computers as an instrument with square shapes, large accessories. What Jobs do was to think different. He believed that the improvement of computers was not simply acceleration of CPU. It had more meaning as to what creative people can do with innovative computers. In this sense, the computer market pie is added a new piece where creativity takes up the responsibility. Just as Jobs’ famous idea: only those who are crazy enough to think they can change the world can really achieve this. Jobs discovered the new market by thinking out of the box.
This is not the only opportunity Jobs finds out for Apple. The innovation of iTunes combined with iPod attracted the whole public’s attention the minute it came out. By downloading at a very low expense, usually 99 cents, consumers can permanently own the music they like. By saving it in the iPod, one can go anywhere with their favorite songs. This market has been ignored so long for those who love music but can only rent their favorite songs from music companies. The genius idea of cooperating with audio companies helped Apple to gain the confidence and trust of these music lovers. Actually, iPod earned great interest and even changed the whole outlook of industry. Moreover, Jobs commanded the design of a new fancier but more user-friendly music player, iTunes, which later becomes the core element of incorporating various apple products.
Another stunning opportunity found by Jobs is the introduction of iPhone. In 2005, the whole number of mobile phones globally has exceeded 825 million. In spite of the fact that people as younger as a primary school student and as older as a 70 year old lady are all using cell phones, these mobile devices are ugly and simple. Like the case in the computer market, Jobs was determined to build fancy and high-quality smart phones that serve more functions than simple texting or dialing a number. The appearance of iPhone is more than enough to satisfy this kind of demand of consumers. The multi-touch technology and the enlarged screen completely change the user experience of using smart phones. Moreover, the huge amounts of useful applications and interesting games available from on-line app stores greatly increased the attractiveness of this mobile phone. It is such a different device that it far exceeds the expectations normal people has for a cellphone. People are crazily buying iPhone to show a lifestyle.
In all these above cases, it is easy to see that market imperfections do exist. Old-fashioned view of splitting up the market share hinders ordinary people to see the undiscovered demands there. It is the instinctive nature of Jobs that helps him to find these imperfections and seize the opportunity to make the market for Apple.
How Jobs does his job
The subjective recognition of opportunities not only refers to the discovery part, it also includes how the essential elements of opportunity are perceived. A comprehensive and profound understanding of the opportunity is the key factor that helps the entrepreneur to formulate an appropriate strategy. This part of the individual/opportunity nexus procedure is equally important as the discovery part in the whole entrepreneur process. It must be realized that different entrepreneurs reacts to opportunities differently, arising from their own characteristics. What Jobs does in the Apple case is one good illustration of how an extraordinary mind perceives from an opportunity.
In the case of iMac and iPhone, what Jobs reacts to the opportunity is essentially the same. Jobs tried to obtain beauty and elegance through designing products. He disposed without hesitation those unnecessary products of the company. By limiting the number of products, he concentrated his team on the really important and distinctive ones. Jobs believed that people will only demand their products only if they think they are really different and beautiful. It is this idea that holds the whole operating procedure together.
In the designing process, Jobs and his team were trying to make the product more of an art than simply combinations machinery parts. Instead of designing the individual parts first, they designed the outlook of the product first and then made usable components for the design. The whole engineering and designing process were combined together to achieve the best result. Jobs and Ive, who is his most important partner, together tried to attain an extreme simplicity. It required removing all unnecessary parts and combining as much parts as possible. This simplicity is thought to be the center of the sense of control. It could only be obtained by understanding the rule of complexity (Isaacson, 2011). The results turned out to be more than satisfying. People like apple products, not as a substitute for other functional devices, but as a necessary part of s lifestyle.
Except for the extreme effort made into creating distinct features of products, there is hardly any other person on the planet who cares more about the presentation of products than Steve Jobs. This presentation process ranges from how a product is wrapped to the decoration of an app store. The wrapping procedure of apple products is designed with meticulous attention to detail. The designers want consumers to feel a sense of ceremony when opening them. The product release is also delicately designed. What Jobs loved most is the moment the new product revealed its true face. He would continuously adjusted stage design, including the arrangement of lights or even the colors of a character in power points. When it comes to the design of app stores, Jobs worked with his colleague to take care of every single detail of the store decoration. It is generally believed that the creation of app store improves the relationship between retailer and brand to a new level. It ensures that consumers will not perceive apple products as any other ordinary products as HP or Compaq.
Jobs is successful in all means to make use of the opportunity he finds and transform it into huge demands. This subjective process is implemented perfectly by Jobs with his distinctive personal feature. It is again a great demonstration of the practical implementation of the entrepreneur process from a discovery view.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this article discusses the practical evidence for a discovery entrepreneur process. The individual/opportunity nexus theory emphasizes the objective existence of business opportunities as well as the subjective recognition by entrepreneurs. Steve Jobs’ case is a very good empirical illustration of this entrepreneur process. Jobs was able to see the potential market for a high-quality, creative personal computers as well as for cell phones. He derived the basic idea to make apple products different and implemented the idea through the whole designing and marketing process. He was able to see the unsatisfied demand of music lovers, which encouraged him to create iPod, iTunes and on-line app store as a whole system to support their needs. The objective existence of these opportunities is made full use of by Jobs to be transformed into economic possibility. However, it must be realized that this article is limited only to the demonstration of discovery view of entrepreneur process. It does not solve questions as to what feature of an individual is the most important to make him able to do the subjective recognition. Further research is possible to examine more carefully of specific details of the whole process.
References
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