As usual from OUR EDITORIAL STAFF, we have gone out in search of information on the relationship between start-ups and all types of entrepreneurship with Business Schools. We got some positive surprises, as you can see below.
How are start-ups related to entrepreneurship?
While entrepreneurship refers to all start-ups, including self-employment and companies that never intend to register, start-ups generally refer to all those companies that have come about primarily through initiative (an idea turned into a project and embodied in practice) in which there is always a creator or a reduced nucleus of creators/founders.
What is the relationship between entrepreneurship and postgraduate training?
In the first place, training to prepare professionals so that they are able to function successfully in the business environment has always been the fundamental objective of Business Schools. But it is also true that precisely because of the type of training provided to postgraduate students, it is designed to provide learning not only of management, but of all those people who have that entrepreneurial spirit (the initiative) of entrepreneurship, and they are waiting for the time when they can start and manage their own business. Therefore, we have seen programs from OUR EDITORIAL STAFF, very focused on entrepreneurship in Business Schools around the world, emphasizing those skills related to entrepreneurship, but especially the practical side. Undoubtedly, the students who take an MBA have a great advantage over other professionals who have not chosen this path, because the current MBA programs prepare precisely so that from theory and knowledge to the implementation and good use of all and each of the management tools.
What is the relationship between an entrepreneur and a business plan?
The business planning process in entrepreneurship generally helps an entrepreneur identify exactly what needs to be accomplished to build the business and what human and financial resources are required to implement the plan. It is a planning tool that helps any organization, but especially start-ups that have to clearly indicate the path to where they are going, taking into account that it is quite common that once a start-up has been started, several corrections to the original course are made to adapt that creative idea (the project of one or a few) and fit it into the reality of the market at that time.
What is the difference between start-ups and business in general?
Start-ups want to grow in order to break into the market. SMEs, on the other hand, are created for the purpose of entrepreneurship and serving a local market and are therefore not concerned with large-scale growth.
Is entrepreneurship a start-up?
However, it is possible to be an entrepreneur without being the founder of a start-up. While both the founder of a start-up and the entrepreneur start a new business, the main difference is in the company itself. A start-up is innovative and scalable. Hopefully, this combination means that it is disruptive.
Is business training the same as entrepreneurship?
The entrepreneurial spirit is having the predisposition so that a person does not want to depend on a job for someone else, turning it into his own thanks to his self-sufficiency and confidence in his project and business vision. As for what business training implies, it is acquired in two ways: that which is acquired through various Business School programs; the one that is acquired by one’s own experience in any job. The weight of the training given in schools is what leads to the acquisition of the skills, attitudes and knowledge necessary for both paid employment (as an employee) and self-sufficiency (entrepreneurship). In the first, when working in a company, this training allows the candidate to climb positions and make a career. In the second, being able to start a conventional business or start a start-up together with another small group of entrepreneurs.
How does school affect business development?
Despite the cases reported occasionally in the media around the world, about successful entrepreneurs who left their studies at an early stage, what is known from all the research done to date, that a higher level of education can help to entrepreneurs, by improving their abilities to detect and evaluate business opportunities, increasing their knowledge and their ability to better understand the environment.
Business schools as a Hub of the entrepreneurial ecosystem
An entrepreneurship hub is a space where entrepreneurs work together, collaborate and form a community. Their influence is sometimes so great that they turn the cities where they settle into leading centers of entrepreneurship.
The mission of the “hubs” is to unite people, get them to generate synergies and promote their progress through talks, workshops, innovation laboratories, etc. They are not a set of offices to use. Rather, they comprise a space designed for entrepreneurs to work in an attractive place and interact with other users.
Undoubtedly, a “hub” is a very interesting option to start a business and reduce expenses. It is cheaper than renting facilities and, furthermore, it has the attraction of allowing you to participate in activities and networking, which favor synergies to enrich the project. However, it is still a great help for those companies that want to grow and need support.
The contribution of stakeholders
What is increasingly recognized is that establishing a high-impact sustainable entrepreneurship ecosystem requires all stakeholders to collaborate and contribute.
Any Business School can achieve the status of center of the entrepreneurial ecosystem (or be part of it) to the extent that it has agreements with other universities and research centers, as well as with companies, business chambers, etc., in order to be incubators of ideas and projects so that the business school-company-postgraduate student relationship has a real impact on society.
In other words, one of the objectives is for the school to act as the center of the business ecosystem in order to stimulate economic development, generate employment and create innovative companies based on technology or service companies. This is where start-ups appear, because there will always be MBA students or students from other programs with very ambitious projects that will have a future to the extent that they can be implemented, for which the support of the region’s business community in what this hub occurs is critical.
Strong collaboration between key stakeholders is imperative for success in building an effective business ecosystem. To be sure, in recent years, there has been empirical progress by business schools towards what can be called “achieving an entrepreneurial ideal”, which is described as adopting a model in which university/school (either of the two)-industry-government (national and/or regional) pursue the necessary regional development through support for new business initiatives, fundamentally those of a technological nature.
The relatively new notion of an entrepreneurial ecosystem can be seen as the union of localized cultural networks, investment capital, universities and Business Schools, as well as active economic policies that create environments that support innovation-based businesses.
Although research in this field is recent, it has been established that the components of business education, business incubation and the formation of partnership agreements between stakeholders in which the Business School plays a vital role, whether or not it is linked to a university, this harmonious and perfectly calibrated relationship in terms of the participation of each party, is vital for the construction of successful ecosystems.
What are the most common types of start-ups?
It is frequently treated as a buzzword among companies. But despite popular belief, the term start-up isn’t just reserved for rudimentary Silicon Valley tech companies.
So what constitutes a startup? In summary, they are usually companies that have the following characteristics:
– They are generally composed of less than 30 employees.
– They have financing through external investors and also loans.
– They are not yet considered companies as it is understood in its general sense, that is, with the trajectory and business maturity, since in general, they are not ready to be bought, although they are already anticipating what the market movements may be in the near future in that sector of activity.
Different approaches to climbing
There are five common types of startups in a variety of industries, all of which have different approaches to scaling.
– Small start-ups.
– Buyable startups.
– Scalable startups.
– Spin-off startups.
– Social startups
What is the difference between them?
1º) Small start-ups.
They are independent companies with their own initiative and small teams
Using the criteria above, the average startup has more in common with your average mom-and-pop store than Google or Apple.
And yes, the distinction between a start-up and a small business is a bit confusing. Perhaps that is why so many people use the terms interchangeably.
Most new businesses have some kind of larger purpose than being bought out or getting a cash injection.
Small Start-ups are different, ranging from sole proprietorships and partnerships to small teams, these startups are happy to remain startups while selling their products and services.
And although they are interested in growing, they grow at their own pace. These startups are often self-funded, which means there is less pressure to scale as soon as possible or be beholden to investors’ immediate needs.
2º) Affordable startups
They always correspond to businesses created to be bought, so the concept is limited to small teams that build a business from scratch and sell it to a bigger player in their industry.
These types of start-ups are usually associated with software and technology. Chances are you’ve seen headlines about giants like Amazon or Uber buying smaller startups. Mergers and acquisitions like this happen all the time.
Being bought seems like a pretty good deal, right? However, building something worth buying for millions (or billions) is easier said than done.
In the first place, we must consider that today the competition is absolutely fierce in any software industry, and there are thousands of new start-ups with which to compete only in B2B.
Also, keep in mind that newly created start-ups do not necessarily have to be profitable to be bought (and many are not). This poses considerable risk to investors, but even greater risk to business owners trying to sell a company that is losing money.
There are many freelance app builders and small teams that spend a few years in a business being sold to a larger company
3º) Scalable Startups
They correspond to a category of companies that seek capital (or scale themselves), with the common factor among all types of start-ups being the need to scale.
This rings true, whether it’s a company with dozens of employees or a group of four working out of their parents’ garage, no matter how big the startup is, it’s their ability to scale that prevails development by the innovative technological concept for which it was created.
But some start-ups are easier to scale than others. Most commercial and consumer applications are examples of scalable startups: once they’ve built excitement and a user base, it becomes easier to acquire new customers. It’s kind of a snowball effect.
Scalable startups do this by raising capital from outside investors (think: angel investors, venture capitalists, business partners, friends, family). With the newly discovered cash, they can support growth initiatives to gain more customers and eventually catch the attention of people willing to buy from them.
However, there are startups that can continually scale without a traditional exit strategy. Also, companies that scale and seek capital don’t necessarily have to turn to millionaires or billionaires to make it happen. In fact, there are plenty of startups like that that actually managed to grow through crowdfunding from eager leads.
4º) Spin-off startups
They correspond to companies that branch out from larger corporations. And this is so from the moment that not all types of start-ups are built from scratch.
A spin-off start-up is self-explanatory. Simply put, they are startups that branch off from larger parent companies to become their own entities.
For example, a spin-off business may be established in an effort for a larger company to enter a new market or to disrupt a smaller competitor. Because these startups act independently of their parent companies, they are free to do business and experiment without attracting as much attention from analysts as critics.
5º) Social startups: non-profit and charitable organizations
Startups are sometimes stereotyped as growth-obsessed and money-hungry.
That said, some startups are specifically designed to do good. New social enterprises, which include charities and nonprofits, scale for the sake of philanthropy. They operate in a similar way to any other start-up, but they do so with the help of grants and donors.
What are the most common types of start-ups in the industry?
To wrap up, here’s a quick breakdown of the most common types of start-ups by industry. Although most of them are related to technology, there are definitely startup opportunities in more “non-traditional” fields as well.
– Software (SaaS) and technology
– Marketing and publicity
– Health care
– Employee Stock Options
– Insurance
– Education
– Real estate
– Environment and energy
– Retail and e-commerce
– Blockchain and cryptocurrencies
This information has been prepared by OUR EDITORIAL STAFF