This document outlines the entrepreneurial process and factors for starting a successful business. It discusses the critical personal, sociological, and environmental factors for starting a new enterprise. It then describes the four main stages of the entrepreneurial process: innovation, triggering event, implementation, and growth. Key skills are required at each stage, including technical skills, communication, problem solving, and motivation. Finally, it outlines nine important ingredients for business success, including having focused founders that innovate, keep costs low, and prioritize customers.

1. THE ENTREPRENEURIAL PROCESS

2. CONTENT
• CRITICAL FACTORS FOR STARTING A NEW
ENTERPRISE
• THE ENTREPRENEURIAL PROCESS
• INGREDIENTS FOR A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS

3. CRITICAL FACTORS FOR STARTING A NEW
ENTERPRISE
• These include; the personal, sociological and
environmental factors.
• Personnel; Need for achievement, risk taking,
education and training, need for independence,
experience, job dissatisfaction, job loss, age and
commitment.

4. CRITICAL FACTORS CONT…
• Sociological; Networks, Teams, Parents, Family and
Role model.
• Organizational; Team work, Strategy, Structure,
Culture and Products.
• Environmental; opportunities, role models and
creativity.

5. THE ENTREPRENEURIAL PROCESS
• The entrepreneurial process involves all the functions,
activities and actions associated with perceiving
opportunities and creating organizations to pursue
them.
• The entrepreneurial process includes; Innovation,
Triggering event, Implementation and growth.

6. INNOVATION STAGE
Getting the idea
• An idea is simply the conception of a possibility and a
reflective method of evading, circumventing or
surmounting obstacles and challenges.
Opportunity identification
• It is the entrepreneur’s ability to see, to discover and
exploit opportunities that others miss (Kirzner, 1973).

7. CONT…
Opportunity development
• It is involves systematic research to refine the idea to
the most promising high potential opportunity that
can be transformed into marketable items.
• It also involves combining resources to pursue a
market opportunity identified.

8. CONT…
Evaluating the opportunity
• Evaluation can tell whether the specific product or service has the
returns needed to justify the investment and the risk to be taken.
 Product or service
 Market Opportunity
 Costing and pricing
 Profitability
 Capital requirements
 Issues and risks

9. CONT…
Evaluating the team
• Regardless of how right the opportunity may seem to
be, it will not make a successful business unless it is
developed by a team with strong skills.
 Focus
 Selling
 Management
 Ownership

10. SKILLS REQUIRED - STAGE 1
• Technical skills
• Communication
• Problem solving
• Motivation
• Adaptability change
• Time management skills
• Financial management
• Human resource
• ETC

11. TRIGGERING EVENT STAGE
Motivation to become an entrepreneur
• The actual decision to become an entrepreneur is motivated by
different factors that can be categorized into either the push
(necessity) or pull (opportunity) factors.
Developing A Business Plan
• A good business plan is essential to exploiting the defined
opportunity and determining the resources required, obtaining
those resources and successfully managing the resulting venture.

12. CONT…
Gathering resources
• Acquiring of resources is as important as opportunities
discovered, because in the absence of the key resources the
entrepreneurial process is likely to result in failure.
• Resources should be sufficiently strategic, valuable or rare.
Resources needed
• Technical know-how, which assists in the production of a
quality product or offering of a service.
• Finance including equity, cash and borrowing power.

13. CONT…
• Physical assets including buildings, equipment, machinery and
vehicles.
• Human resources including motivated employees with skills,
training, experience, emotional and intellectual abilities.
• Intangible resources including information, networks,
protected patents, unique technology and brand reputation.

14. SKILLS REQUIRED - STAGE 2
• Technical skills
• Problem solving
• Numeracy and literacy
• Communication skills
• Motivation (need for achievement)
• etc

15. IMPLEMENTATION STAGE
• After the resources are acquired the entrepreneur
must use them to implement the business plan.
• Implementing literally means executing the vision
and putting it into action.

16. SKILLS REQUIRED - STAGE 3
• Technical skills
• Problem solving
• Decision making
• Time management
• Motivation (need for achievement)
• Communication skills
• Negotiating skills
• Etc.

17. GROWTH STAGE
• This stage relates to what facilitates the continued
survival of the firm, which may lead to its expansion
to some optimum size determined by the market
demand.
• Growth is critical to entrepreneurial success and
distinguishes the entrepreneurial venture from the
small business.

18. FIVE INDICATORS FOR GROWTH
• Financial growth relating to increases in turnover, costs and investment
needed to achieve the turnover, profits, business assets and all related
value added.
• Strategic growth relating to changes taking place through mergers and
acquisitions, exploiting of new markets, new products and new
opportunities.
• Structural growth relating to the changes taking place in the way the
business organizes its internal systems with regard to managerial roles,
increasing employees use of internal systems to control resources.

19. CONT…
• Organizational growth relating to changes taking place in terms of
processes used, the organization’s culture, management attitudes
towards staff, as well as changes regarding the entrepreneur’s role
as the business moves from small to large.
• Image growth which relates to the changes taking place in the small
business such as becoming more formal (e.g. having formal
business premises), moving to newly built premises, redecorating
the premises and moving to a new environment.

20. GROWTH STRATEGIES
• Market expansion
• Technological change
• Acquisition
• Merger
• Sales promotion
• Location expansion
• Organizational development
• Market penetration
• Market skimming
• Etc.

21. SKILLS REQUIRED FOR SUCCESS IN STAGE 4
• Networking
• Technical Skills
• Problem solving
• Learning abilities
• Motivation (need for achievement)
• Numeracy and literacy
• Time management
• Communication skills
• etc

22. INGREDIENTS FOR A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS
THE NINE FS
• Founders; every startup company must have a first class
entrepreneur
• Focused; entrepreneurial companies focus on niche markets. They
specialize
• Fast; they make decisions quickly and implement the swiftly.
• Flexible; they keep an open mind. They respond to change.
• Forever innovating; they are tireless innovators

23. CONT…
• Flat; entrepreneurial organizations have as few layers of
management as possible.
• Frugal; by keeping overhead low and productivity high,
entrepreneurial organizations keep costs down.
• Friendly; entrepreneurial companies are friendly to their
customers, suppliers and workers.
• Fun; its fun to be associated with an entrepreneurial
company.