Mind of the Entrepreneur: Zuckerberg

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Executive Summary

Zuckerberg is one of the young millionaires as a result of this innovation and entrepreneurship that enabled him to create Facebook. Being the youngest billionaire Zuckerberg, has managed to supply the old businessmen who have toiled for many years but have not reached his levels. Zuckerberg has used innovations to have differences in the business world. he has shown that every bit of life regardless of the age, innovations is very important. An innovator can use any form of economic activity to come up with an idea that will change the world. Zuckerberg is a courageous man who took risk by coming up with a new idea accepted with customer and many people of the world. This has caused total change in the world of information technology. At times innovations usually cause a lot of damage to the existing systems as well as bring a lot of benefits. Facebook has done the same, it has bought benefits and has made industry players, the same industry think of new ideas that will enable them change the world.

The future of Facebook lies in the continual innovations as implemented by Zuckerberg and friends, since innovations is an ongoing process. If they do not continue innovations then the company will make losses. Mere innovations will only add to the existing product features of Facebook which may end up upgrading existing products, various changes need to be brought into existence. in order to make growth attainable..

Background of the Entrepreneur

Zuckerberg a young student in Harvard University initialized an idea of the Facebook from his dormitory. The idea stated being used by him and friends then other students joined them as a forum for making social contacts. They started by allowing other students from school to use the Facebook before other people joined in using the book. Zuckerberg was born and raised by Jewish parents in 1984 in New York City.

He is a son of dentist Edward and his mother is a doctor. Zuckerberg liked sports he went to Harvard University to study computer programming where he started the Facebook. Harvard University headed for California where he leased an office which will be used for business. Although he had not completed university, the gentleman has not bothered to go complete his studies at university. The young man has released many products and services in the name of Facebook. Some of them that allow friends and colleagues monitor what you are doing online so long as you give them an okay. Zuckerberg who launched his website as an undergraduate from Harvard University in 2004 main aim was to ensure social networking of individuals. The website allows people to create accounts with the company.

Influences of the Entrepreneur

Zuckerberg was influenced by various personalities to start the business of Facebook. Before teaming up with his friends he had read stories of the famous bill gates, and he admired the way his parents acted. His parents encouraged him to continue with his innovations which were a great encouragement and influence. This is clear by the fact that when his parents discovered that their son had spent a few weeks in the university to design a website to assist him chat with friends, they did not take drastic measures to stop him because they saw talent in their son. When he was 23 years old the young man sold 1.6 % of the share capital of Facebook to Microsoft and his parents realized how grateful their son was. In entrepreneurship business, there are many factors that influence individuals to start businesses and influences that influence individuals to start businesses actually it begin from home (Yukl, G., 2002).

Key relationship that may have assisted or hindered Mark Zuckerberg

Zuckerberg success was due to the influence of various people among them Donald Graham the CEO of the Washington post. His parents and many other people. According to Zuckerberg words Donald Graham was a great mentor who made him have a view of studying the he business. Donald Graham was focused on technology and this motivated Zuckerberg to engage himself in the business. Zuckerberg, parents also played an important role in helping him to start business, they provided education sending him to Harvard University where he met his friends Dustin Moskowitz who together started a company. These relationships that the young developed assisted him develop a product that is respected worldwide. The company launched Facebook amid of doubts from parents who worried that their son had abandoned education to develop a websites that will assist him to chat with friends. The parents wondered where they went wrong at the beginning. Their worries were later turned into joy when they realized that their son had turned the website he had developed into a multi billion business and the company is being accessed worldwide (Johnson G, Scholes K and Whittington R., 2006).

Commercialization of the idea

Zuckerberg tested market by allowing fellow students to use the product and this is a first step of commercialization of Facebook. The product was for the first time subjected to normal conditions to a relatively small number of well-chosen marketing situations. In test marketing Zuckerberg did not consider whether to test marketing or not because it was accepted in market (Sadler P., 2005).

The commercialization process is undertaken by the marketing and promotional committee (M&PC) in conjunction with all the other committees and the faculty. Basically after the validation event, course code is assigned and then the promotional activities begin. The course is made available to the public through prospectus and other mediums like billboard and posters. Marketing objectives are made clear and the objectives of test marketing made in line. Test marketing is normally done to gain more and better knowledge of expected sales; to test alternative marketing strategies, to locate possible product defects which slipped through during physical development; and to get a better idea of the reaction of the different market segments (Schaik J.L., 2002).

In launching new products, it is also necessary to take notice of the process through which potential customers become aware of new products, buy and try them for the first time and eventually accept or reject them. This adoption process of new products is basic to the entire course of the product life-cycle and marketing management this be very well acquainted with it if they want to manage the life-cycle effectively (Johnson G, Scholes K and Whittington R. 2006)

Decisions made by the entrepreneur

Strategic decisions are ones that are of fundamental importance to the business, but will not prove to have been right or wrong for some considerable time. For example, Zuckerberg made a strategic decision of abandoning education to start a business by opening an office. Strategic decisions are normally such that they are irreversible or at least can only be reversed at considerable cost. Among the most important decisions are ones to do with the allocation of resources, particularly the allocation of capital. An obvious example is the choice between funding organic growth by acquisition (Sadler P., 2005).

Zuckerberg in the year 2004 he had no car no house or money. But he decided to open an office using the website they had developed with friends and this decision did not sound good but the decision has born fruit by enabling him to be among the richest people. Zuckerberg made a decision of creating a website that is for long term purpose that made him a rich man. At the age of 23 Zuckerberg made a decision to team up with Dustin Moskovitz and Adam DAngelo whom they had met with earlier in the pre-school. They had faith that they will succeed and they made decisions that were good for the cooperation (Johnson G, Scholes K and Whittington R., 2006).

Capabilities or competences:-these are the distinctive competences that are difficult for competitors to copy and which are linked to the achievement of a competitive advantage in a particular market. This must be test through(Sadler P., 2005);

it must make a disproportionate contribution to customer value
it must be a competitively unique
It must be applicable to a range of products

There four basic kinds of distinctive capability (Ennis S., 2001):

Architecture: -a network of relationships within or around the company. Internal relationships are with or among employee. External ones are with suppliers, customers or joint venture partners. Architecture depends on the ability to the company to build and sustain long-term relationships and in thus way to create a favorable operating environment that cannot easily be replicated by competitors.
Reputation which is particularly important in markets where product and/or service quality is important but can only be demonstrated over relatively long periods of time.
Innovation and the ability to exploit it so as to gain a sustainable competitive advantage.
Strategic assets: these are the three main types natural monopolies, cases where the costs of infrastructure have already been incurred so that new entrants benefit from an advantageous cost structure and cases where companies benefit from regulations or licensing requirements that restrict entry to the market (Sadler P., 2005).

Factors assisted the entrepreneur to grow

These are the things that a business must be able to do exceptionally well if it to attain a leading position in a particular market. The success of Zuckerberg in designing Facebook was many. The factors that contributed to the success of Zuckerberg were:

The need to create a website to chat with friends:  Zuckerberg created the website that will enable him chat with friends. This website attracted students who started using the website for chatting with other friends. The students majority of whom who are below 30 had the energy to socialize and the website became an important tool to help them socialize. The students who used the website contributed to the success of face-book especially the technical students because they contributed on the improvement that Zuckerberg was going to make in order to have a good website that will enable them continue socializing. The students further liked the websites because the owner has shown hands off strategy (Miller, K., 2006).

Availability of ready market: by the time Zuckerberg started designing the website there was a need among the youthful population in colleges and universities to socialize and create social network. The older population who felt lonely also were looking for a site that will assist him have friends and chat with them Facebook provided this opportunity for them to be able to communicate and chat with friends. The existing websites, friendstar and MySpace were not adequately meeting the people needs to network. With already a group of students using the website it found success in other demographics of the population in United States of America. To make this successive as compared to competitors who existed in the market by then he hired a youthful engineer under production managers whom they had met earlier in pre-school and Harvard University (Ennis S., 2001).

Socio-economics: Harvard University has produced many people who are who and who in the society and the fact that this website was designed in Harvard University became a factor that many students around the world begun to use it. The students who started using Facebook came from a certain class of the society which led to the spread of the news about facebook. These classes of students who attend Harvard university come from a privileged member of the society with extra disposable income and who are in the third, fourth, fifth and sixth levels in the hierarchy of Maslow. Therefore Facebook represented an opportunity to this privileged members of the society a platform for socializing, both in school and socially. Competitors such as MySpace and friendster where members are put into a specific group found it difficult to match with facebook who allowed students to choose the cluster to join.

Confidential: facebook presented an opportunity for users to have privacy in their chatting. This is unlike the competitors. Zuckerberg designed the site in a manner that it had opaque networks which became a critical factor that attracted more customers to the site. What It meant that Zuckerberg designed a website that allowed students to come up with profiles that allowed students to share them with only students that they trusted. If a student didnt want to share the details with other students then the information will not be available to other students. Students got encouraged by this fact and they started creating profiles for other students they liked and other students found out that it was necessary to join Facebook. This provided ground for privacy and confidentiality of the use of the site.

Innovation: Zuckerberg deigned facebook for socializing by students initially. Where he used technology that allowed a student will only by use of a pointer access his profile. (Miller, K., 2006).

The use of technology enables Zuckerberg to design a website which allowed students to state their classes thus making them browse able to members of that class which was one of the greatest success factors. (Miller, K., 2006).
Facebook allowed people to cluster themselves into groups for purposes of identity. In the groups a person tells the group members what is ailing him or her.
Facebook also created a form of directory that is used to direct students towards the addresses of one another as well try to understand the conduct of each student.
Facebook is very simple to use unlike the competitors that is MySpace and Friendstar It is easily navigated using features created by Zuckerberg(Johnson G, Scholes K and Whittington R., 2006)
Facebook is a success story because Zuckerberg created a website that allowed faster access unlike the competitors. Speed has become a success factor for the company.

Creation approach

Creativity has been the important factor that helped in innovation and helped Zukerberg to manage facebook. Zukerberg has shown the six new competencies that is required by the managers to lead their organizations into the success and this includes the ability to be innovative and initiate change(Miller, K., 2006).

For Facebook to have been innovative Zukerberg creative solutions were required and a statement in total harmony with the research on learning organizations confirms this. They better anticipate and manage problems, and they deal with conflict as a valuable process asset within the organization, encouraging effectiveness, growth and development. the most reflexive organization are those within which there is a maelstrom of activity debate, argument , innovation and a real sense of involvement of all employees. Creativity is the application of imaginative thought which results in innovative solutions to many problems. Imaginative thought may lead to new ways of seeing things which may be novel for the person or completely novel in time. Creativity draws crucially on our ordinary abilities, noticing, remembering, seeing, speaking, hearing, understanding language and recognizing analogies; all these talents of everyman are important. Actively creative people have a talent for getting to the heart of a problem. (Miller, K. 2006).

Zuckerberg went beyond rational/logical thinking and used his senses of feeling, creativity and intuition to create facebook for the future. The creative model of management Zukerberg used includes:

built n the philosophical assumption that the real world which surrounds the organization is dynamic construct enacted by the members of the organization over time(Ennis S., 2001).
Such a view suggests that personality is going to be the requirements by managers.
it also requires managers to be proactive in their search for root causes to problems and be imaginative in solving them (Sadler P., 2005)

Disruptive Developments of Facebook

The development by Zuckerberg was disruptive because the new product or services offered by the company came to the market when the other competitor had not fully provided the services that were needed by the customers. Initially my space had failed therefore it did not offer the product that used enough technology which was brought in by Zuckerberg Facebook. In order for a product to be disruptive, there should be a number of competitors in the market but they did not offer enough competition or services to the people or target market. The graph below shows the performance of social network sites (Johnson G, Scholes K and Whittington R., 2006).

Embracing disruptive change

The graph above shows how technology developed in social networking websites for the last six years. It can be noted that it was stiff when Zuckerberg and company arrived to the market (Embracing disruptive change).

Initial and subsequent funding support of facebook

Zuckerberg initially approached Peter Thiel cofounder of paypal for financing of his project. At the time he had no money therefore he was sourcing for funding McGirt E. 2007;

Since then Zuckerberg has funded his project through advisement in the site and other activities that relate to the usage of the websites. But the initial funding was necessary came from Palo Alto. The 200 million users world wide today has provided a target market worldwide to market their products (Stevens T. ,2009)

This has created a lot of revenue for the 24 year old young man from New York. When the website was growing they started by advertising students activities and events for a few dollars. However since opening an office in California the company has actually grown to the level that is currently generating a lot of revenue. Zuckerberg got funding from other investors such as Peter Thiele co founder of PayPal and they committed the project to succeed (McGirt E. 2007);

Times when the entrepreneur had to pitch their idea or proof-of-concept

At the beginning Zuckerberg thought that they will not succeed and he thought to quit in 2004 but after the students began to advertise for a few dollars the idea of remaining in business came back to him. After great financiers pledged and other contributed to the project such as financing from Thiele and Bill Gates encouragement they went ahead with the project. They encountered with Bill Gates after presentation and talked about on going with his education and the business idea. Then Bill Gates advised them that Harvard allowed students to leave to make something else. Before actually designing the business he had also been discouraged by the parents and he felt it was necessary for him to go and do something else had it not been for Bill gates and other investors (Cooper, R. G., 2001).

Changes in strategy, product/service development or staff/resources

The success of Zuckerberg in designing and rolling out Facebook was not easy. Especially the continued success of the websites was made possible by various changes in strategy such as the hiring of engineers who included Steve Chen and other people who enables the company to go ahead. The decisions of bringing in new engineers who were not part of the Co-founders were a strategy that brought change that was badly needed by Facebook. After Steve left the company he went and co-found You-tube one of the websites that is respected for online videos and movies. After a law suit that was engineered by connectU which alleged that Facebook was not original concept of Zuckerberg but a concept of other student of Harvard University Zuckerberg made key changed in the products and services so as to popularize the website Stevens T. ,2009)

Summary of the entrepreneur in a tagline

Zuckerberg is a young innovative person who has faced the world of many people with big profiles with revolt. Zuckerberg has touched many people by his ideas thus he has helped the world to become a global village (Cooper, R. G. ,2001).

Did the entrepreneur stay around and develop a really large company or did they leave to go on to start up new companies.

After designing the website Zuckerberg and company did not move out of the business to go an start other operations because Zuckerberg is currently the CEO of facebook this means that he did not move out to go and started a company but he remained in the company to go and built a large multinational this is seen by his actions of going out to France, Germany and Britain to launch Facebook in those countries (Miller, K., 2006)..

The emulation of entrepreneurs ideas by others

Zuckerbergs ideas have been emulated by many people. However nobody has managed to have a product with the same passion as Zuckerberg. Although he himself emulated people like Bill Gates people Richie Li Ka- Shing has tried to emulate Zuckerberg but he created a mess for himself therefore it can be said many people have tried to emulate the entrepreneur but so far nobody has succeeded in putting out the fire in Zuckerberg (Johnson G, Scholes K and Whittington R., 2006).

The entrepreneur messages in seminar

If Zuckerberg was a guest speaker I think he will advise people students to be themselves and do what is right for them to succeed. He will give such an advice because it took him allot of courage to dropout of college to start a company.

Strength and weaknesses

Zuckerberg identified the opportunity in the market place and took it. he did not look back to the opportunities he was loosing while leaving the university. This is courageous character who ready to dropout of university and withstand the parents pressure. He moved to Palo Alto with no capital and started a business, this is a sign of a risk taker, who is ready to do anything to ensure he succeeds. He has one weakness; he can give up easily had not for bill gates he could have given up on the facebook (McGirt E.2007)

References

Cooper, R. G. (2001); Winning at New Products Accelerating the Process from Idea to Launch, Third Edition, Product Development Institute, 2001.

Embracing disruptive change .

Ennis S. (2001), Entrepreneurial marketing Financial Times/Prentice Hall

Johnson G, Scholes K and Whittington R. (2006); Exploring Corporate Strategy, 2006, Prentiance, Hall, 7 th Enhanced Media Edition,

McGirt E.(2007); Hacker. Dropout.

Miller, K. (2006). Organizational communication: Approaches and processes (4th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.

Sadler P., (2005); strategic management; Kogan page India private ltd

Schaik J.L., (2002); The Task of Marketing Management; J.L. van Schaik (Pity) ltd

Stevens T. (2009); Facebook: 200 Million.

Yukl, G. (2002);Leadership in organizations (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

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