Enterprise Flashcards
What is an enterprise?
Enterprise is a skill. Put simply, enterprise is the willingness of an individual or organisation to:
Take risks. Setting up a new business is risky. Even if the entrepreneur has carefully researched the market, there’s always a chance that customers may reject the product and that a loss will be made.
Show initiative and ‘make things happen’. Successful entrepreneurs have the drive, determination and energy to overcome hurdles and launch new businesses.
Undertake new ventures. An entrepreneur has to have the imagination to spot business opportunities that will fill gaps in the market.
Who carries out enterprise?
An entrepreneur
Whats creative thinking?
Creative thinking is the process by which individuals come up with new ideas or new approaches to business. New ideas could result in a new product - for example, a games console. They could also result in a new process that cuts costs or improves quality - for example, a bagless vacuum cleaner.
Whats an advantage of new ideas?
Fresh ideas give businesses a competitive advantage and help make their goods or services stand out in the market place.
What are ways of improving creativity?
Entrepreneurs can make use of several different thinking techniques to improve their creativity:
Lateral thinking or thinking outside the box. An example of this would be breaking down the steps taken to serve coffee in a café and asking ‘why’ at each step to see if a better process can be created.
Deliberate creativity uses thinking techniques to spark off new ideas. For example, putting on different thinking hats to tackle problems from different angles. ‘White-hat’ thinking looks at facts and ‘black-hat’ thinking looks at drawbacks.
Blue-sky thinking involves a group of people looking at an opportunity with fresh eyes. As many ideas as possible are generated in an ideas generation session, where no ideas are rejected as silly.
Whats invention?
Invention is about making new items, or finding new ways of making items.
Whats innovation?
Innovation involves bringing this new idea to the market, that is, turning an invention into a product.
How can a business use the law to protect its business idea?
Register ownership of an invention or new process and be given a patent. This can stop rivals from copying the idea for a set number of years.
Sue for damages if others copy their work - copyright automatically arises for authors creating books, films, music or games.
Register a trademark. A trademark is a symbol or phrase that a company can register with the government to make their company distinctive.
A patent, copyright or trademark grants legal ownership and is only given for original work.
What does it take to be a successful business person?
Typically entrepreneurs are:
imaginative and quick to see business opportunities and gaps in the market
planners who take time to research customer requirements, competitors and trends to better understand their market and minimise the risk of failure
determined to succeed no matter how many hours of unpaid preparation are involved
