Reflection from guest lecture-middle manager

Comparing with CEO, the role of middle manager seems trivial, a drop in the ocean, but I agree with the Lecturer’s opinion that in knowledge intensive industries middle managers are definitely needed. Personally, I had working experience, I couldn’t talk to the top mangers directly but I have many chances to share my opinions with middle managers. And I think middle manager always exist no matter the structure of organization it is, always some people in between work as negotiator, interpreter.

Middle managers act as intermediary within the organization between the top management and low layer employees (Balogun. J, 2003). According to Balogun, middle managers are acting as a strategic asset. And it is mentioned in the lecture that middle managers are big contributors to strategy development and execution. But the thing is that it requires senor manager’s acknowledgement. Middle managers are given information about the new structure and job role during the appointment process, which are granted by senior managers. Middle managers should understand first, and enhance their understanding of strategies or business concepts through their activities with their peers, with employees, and themselves.

Several tools were mentioned in the class, for example, vision, goal/target, business plan, interface description, feedback, etc. Each tool is effective to influence the business, and its effectiveness is based on the friendly environment of inclusion and motivation. High quality of communication system might be a method to make middle manager get included. But middle managers may either be excluded or included in such “strategic conversations”. It is addressed by the researcher Westley (1990) if organizations want a middle management group that is responsive, they need greater sensitivity to how meaning is made in organizations and how to include middle management as actors in that process. Correspondingly, middle managers’ emotions are stricken if they are not recognized for attention. And the role of middle mangers in radical change directly affects the operational continuity. To maintain operational continuity during radical change, middle managers’ emotions have to be carefully managed (Huy, 2002).

To sum up, the value of middle manager can not be denied. And they are assets in the organization. Keep them, motivate them, value them, and you will get great return. Especially for the senior managers, they should realize their value and harness the potentials from middle managers.

Reference:
Balogun, J. (2003) From Blaming the middle to harnessing its potential: Creating change intermediaries, British Journal of Management, Vol. 14, 69-83

Westley Frances R. (1990) Middle managers and strategy: Microdynamics of inclusion, Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 11, 337-351

Huy, N. Q. (2002) Emotional Balancing of Organizational Continuity and Radical Change, Administrative Science Quarterly, 47(1), 31-69

Ownership&Governance seminar reflection

As we know that ownership and governance actually influence the process and content of business creation and growth. And, ownership and government are interrelated. How do managers handle business depends on the governance structure under which they operate and the stance taken on corporate responsibility. Before proceeding with the organizational strategic purpose, an important managerial task is to express its strategic purpose through statement of clarified corporate values, mission and statements because these factors will influence the overall purpose of an organization. We analyze the case from several aspects of its organization strategic purpose.

Firstly, we start with checking the corporate values, mission and statements. In the case from the interview with the present chief executive Mark Rodol, he says over years, they have pursued a number of opportunities that they shouldn’t have done. They spent too much time in examining what the core of Ministry of Sound actually is. It shows the business doesn’t have a clear picture of its corporate values, mission and statement before the strategic purpose. Therefore, their corresponding strategic purpose equally departures the right tracks. From the chapter 4 we know that strategic purpose is the purpose of an organization and its strategy for the benefit of stakeholders. And the purpose of organization will be influenced by the expectations of its stakeholders, governance structure, and social responsibility and ethics. Without an explicit corporate value, mission and statements, it will directly influence the strategic purpose and further harms its stakeholders.

Secondly, discuss the governance structure in Ministry of Sound. Palumbo is the business founder and he works as the chief executive in the board, and also member of top management. He keeps the controlling position in the company. Therefore, the firm is largely conditioned by the coupling the ownership and control in the hands of Palumbo. Palumbo has largely unchallenged discretion to share with trusted associates. It is suggested that wide discretion from expertise and professional employees promotes the organization agility to exploit versatile resources and unmet market needs (Gedajlovic, Lubatkin and Schulze).

Thirdly, social responsibility and ethics are the purposes an organization should fulfill. And strategic purpose of the organization whether should be determined in the expectation of stakeholders is the paper discussed. With the growth of dance club, its social responsibility consistently changed, especially the mode that ranging from defensive situation to reactive to outside pressure. Meanwhile, as the club aims to form long-term relationship brands Philip and Bacardio, the stakeholder relationship gradually become to the partner style.

Fourthly, strategic purpose is influenced by stakeholders’ expectations. Manager has to point out the key players and people with low interest but high power. The business developed in many directions before Palumbo’s quit. Such as magazine, radio, touring, super-club opened in Bangkok and Taipei, etc. Its stakeholders are spread over the world. Palumbo has too much parties to think about and it make company lose core products. Especially for such young companies, in the end the companies have to develop some core values which become the basis of their existence for external stakeholders.

Literature summary for Ownership&Governance Seninar

The case study, a company of Ministry of Sound (MOS), tells us a story about its operation from start-up to maturity in 12 years. And the Business founder James Palumbo makes it from the scratch to flourish in the beginning 10 years. Two years later, Palumbo has quit as chief executive and the ministry of sound is looking for a new strategic direction. With regard to the analysis of case study, three literatures are used and deliver several hints to us of its ownership and governance.

Literature of “Stages of corporate citizenship” explains the corporate citizenship at different stage for an organization. And there are five stages, from the bottom up, elementary stage, engaged stage, innovation stage, integrated stage, and transforming stage. Accordingly, the firm gains value from the relevant stages of corporate citizenship, more value comes from the upper stage, vice versa.

Literature of “A governance perspective” gives a suggestion to threshold firms to transit from founder management to professional management to obtain the resources needed to surmount the threshold. It reveals the capabilities and disabilities of FMF (Founder Managed Firms), and FMFs are less well suited to exploit opportunities in complex environments, organizational and ecological evolutionary forces can propel the successful FMF, and changes to an organization’s resources, processes, values and culture cause the challenges faced by threshold firms.

The chapter of strategic purpose identifies the three components of the governance chain of an organization (corporate governance, stakeholder expectation and social responsibility and ethics), two different governance structures across the world and their advantages and disadvantages, shareholder model of governance and stakeholder model. In shareholder model, it is believed that the management should focus on maximizing benefits on maximizing shareholders and it in turn will benefit the other stakeholder as well. The stakeholder model not only focuses on the wealth maximization to shareholders and stakeholders but also look at the long term development. The chapter also expresses the strategic purpose of an organization in terms of statement of values, vision, mission or objectives.

Franchise or not in Michael Bregman Business

Let's contine the discussion with franchise. 5 preconditions are mentioned in the previous post. The case of Michael Bregman who is trying to find strategy to expand his business. He is considering to choose either internal growth or franchise.

The first precondition cannot be satisfied that consumers can easily find substitutes in the market even thought those bakeries are not as fresh as Michael sold. But it demonstrates that the business’s product or service is not unique.

Secondly, the longer business has been running for 7 months, the other business 3 months so far, the business is so young that it is hard to predict it will have consistent profitability as it has at present. And, on the basis of financial analysis on June 30 we can see that profitbility ratio of the units are not good. ROCE and ROI are negative while, gross profit margin is really poor. However, the infant business is not stable in the early stage of development. One week later, the net profit on July 5, 1980 is $ 21455. The growth has further increased by July 5. The business has a substantial changes in the first few months. But the problem is that his liquidity is not good and he has no cash balance left. Franchise is a cheap way of expansion, but still need investment of time and capital.

Thirdly, Micheal's business lasts less than a year. And starts to gain profit from July 5. It is not a convincing business to franchisees.

Fourthly, despite there is an operation manual with everything, Michael is responsible for all controls and procedure monitoring without enough time.

Fifth, Michael has not sufficient arrangement for the tasks of training, supporting, supervising, and nurturing franchisees. It is difficult for Michael to have a franchise system with one or more franchisees if there are no particular operation manual and relative preparations. Again both of his business don’t have any patent or brand image and are very common in the market. Based on such situation, it is hard to get franchisee do investment.

Therefore, he should not be hectic in growth of his business by franchising. Rather he should focus on the stabilizing his existing units and select slow growth strategy so that the existing units get sufficient times to gain financial resistance.

Preconditions of Franchising

In the lecture we know that franchise is a external method for business expansion through using another person's business philosophy. And franchise can benefit both franchisor and franchisee.

Benefit s to franchisor, it helps the organization grow quickly with providing the majority of the capital. And saves cost, because franchisees share many of franchsor's cost. Compare with manager in the firm, franchisees are high controled and bounded by contractual agreement.

Franchisees are more committed and motivated to the success of their individual units than the managers. Market expansion is low because franchisees provide most of the cost. Franchisees increase buying powers by enlarging the size of their business system, allowing then to purchase products.

However, the advantages for both parties do not always exist. Several preconditions should be fulfilled for franchisor, otherwise it will not work out positive feedback. Before deciding to franchise, a firm should consider the following analysis before doing franchising (Barrubger & Ireland, 2004).

1. The business’s product or service should be unique along some dimension that customers value.

2. The business should be consistently profitable, and the future profitability of the business should be fairly easy to predict.

3. The business should be profitable year-round, not only during the specific seasons.

4. The system and procedures for operating the business should be polished and the procedure documented in written form. The system and procedure should also be fairly easy to teach to qualified candidates.

5. The business proposition should be crystal clear so that the prospective franchisee fully understands the business proposition to which he or she is committing. The relationship between the franchisor and the franchisees should be completely open, and communication between them should be candid.

Reference:

Barrubger, B. R. & Ireland, R.D., (2004). Entrepreneurship successfully launching new ventures, New Jersey: Pearson Education Ltd.

The necessity of transition for small entrepreneurial management firms

The ambition of any entrepreneur is to expand his or her business as bigger as possible. In the early stage of the business, the size normally small with few capital, and entrepreneur does his or her best to make the business become bigger and move to prosper. It is necessary for small sized firms do management transition from entrepreneurial to managerial.

In the process of development, the entrepreneurs development are normally neglected, because the decision making process is centralized by the entrepreneur individually. But it is impossible to centralize all decision making in any firm. If the entrepreneur involves in all the level of decision making, he or she has no time to create general strategy. Entrepreneur can decentralize his duties to capable employees and let them have right to make decisions in the business. And it is not necessary for entrepreneur to be involved in low level of decision and personal problems of subordinates. Thus, entrepreneur needs an over-dependence on one or two key individuals for its survival and growth. With regarding to the entrepreneurs’ managerial skill and training, it varies entirely depending on their competence. But entrepreneur is not a versatile person that he or she is insufficient in certain fields and needs help from the others. What’s more, the final key characteristic of entrepreneurial firms is their highly paternalistic climate. Because they are small and have a relatively stable group of “core” employees, these firms develop a high sense of family among their members.

When the firm grows rapidly fast, a small problem can terminate its progress. Those characteristic mentioned above should be noted and they are essential to the success of the small, entrepreneurial managed firms at least up to a point. Beyond that point, however, they can become barriers to the firm in its efforts to capitalize on further market opportunities. As an entrepeneur, when these characteristics start turing into barriersk, he/she must realize that the mode of managing his/her business require a change from entrepreneurial to professional management.

Reference:

Hofer, C.W.,&Charan, R. (1984). The transition to professional mangement: Mission impossible. American Journal of Small Business, 9(1).

Relationship between company size and growing pain

The research made by Flamholtz, E.G. (1990) says that growing pains tend to increase until companies reach a significantly large size. There is no direct relationship between growing pain and company size. Growing pains still exist in large size organizations. It is not objective to say large organizations have less or no growing pain than small sized ones. The growing pain rate is varied from industry to industry, can not be judged by size.

When firms grow in size, sales volume become more important than profit. In small firms the managers can conceptualize the whole business and he can keep the profit in his mind in every transaction or decisions. But when the firms become huge in size the managers have certain goals. The goals are achieving the sales target instead of the profit. This happens because of the economic theory of diseconomies of scale. Growing pains exist both in small sized firm and big sized firms, and the pains might vary.

We have to bear in mind that growth is not the ultimate thing. Rather unnecessary faster growth might cause the unavoidable pain for the business and for the management. Therefore, the management should to find the optimum rate of growth for the business and they have to implement control mechanisms to control the rate of growth to optimum.

Reference:

Flamholtz, E.G.(1990). Growing pains: How to make the transition from an entrepreneurship to a professional managed firm(pp. 53-72). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc.

Use accounting ratios to assess business performance

From the class “Using accounting information” we know that ratio analysis is a good way to evaluate the financial results of your business in order to gauge its performance. Accounting ratios can offer an invaluable insight into a business' performance. Ratios give us a quick picture of the business performance but some cannot be measured.

Ratios are merely indicators. First, the analyst can compare a present ratio with past (or expected) ratios for the organization to determine if there has been an improvement or deterioration or no change over time. Second, the ratios of one organization may be compared with similar organizations or with industry averages at the same point in time. But ensure that the information used for comparison is accurate - otherwise the results will be misleading. The insights gained through the analyses of ratios will assist entrepreneur in gaining vital understanding of your company. For instance, from the figure of liquidity ratios you can find whether you have sufficient assents to cover your liability. Gearing is a sign of solvency. The higher the gearing, the more vulnerable the company is to increasing interest rate. Most lenders will refuse further finance where gearing exceeds 50 per cent. And profitability ratios tell how good you return on the capital used in your business is.

Ratios look back of the company performance, but entrepreneurs and analysts should not rest on the past records but have some forward steps with the help of ratios information.

reflection from rules and regulations

Once I read a sentence from the book “Robert’s Rules of Order”, it says that where there is no law, but every man does what is right, there is the least of real liberty. In reality, we need rules and laws to regulate our life. As we all know the importance of the traffic law, but not every one of us are capable to follow it.

In the business world, entrepreneurs should expand his eyesight beyond the rules and regulations that they should dare to venture and innovate themselves to the legal competition. Personally, it is possible for everyone to be an entrepreneur, but only few people can succeed. Innovation is a part of reasons. There is a test to hundreds of mangers, but few of them can solve it. Use only one rope to connect 9 points inside the square.

Indeed, there is no rule to restrict the rope inside the square. Those open minded managers can jump the circle and make a longer rope outside the square. As an good entrepreneur should not be bound by rules and regulations. Be innovative!

milestone discussion

Milestone is a subjective hypothesis in the process of operation made by the entrepreneur. Whether the milestone is a effective tool that is highly depends on the decision-maker. It is doubtable that the person who proposes the milestone is also questionable because the understanding of issues varies. However, the appropriate milestone can effectively measure progress.

It is mentioned by the authors (Smith,J.K. & Smith, R.L.) that each milestone functions as a working hypothesis about the venture. The example was given that an entrepreneur believes or ‘hypothesizes’ that a prototype of the idea can be completed in six months. If, prototype completion task takes nine months, the delay is an indication that some aspects of the venture need to be re-examined. Alternatively, the entrepreneur may have mismanaged the project. In the poor condition of management, it is not possible to use milestone as a measurement. It is possible to stage in terms of intervals that the entrepreneur can do comparison of the numbers from income statement and balance sheet to find out reasons of failure.

Fundraising after proven business model

We know that business owners need capital as important as we need blood to survive. The business running without sufficient capital will exhaust its resources and finally go bankruptcy. However, it is not always the principle that firm needs much capital. For a new venture, (s)he should raise funding after proven the business model.

On the one hand, it is easier to convince potential investors with initial development. In practice, venture capitalists would like to see a business move beyond the idea stage before they will consider financing. On the other hand, outside investors hinder entrepreneurs from their perspective in the uncertain environments that the business owners lose their right of making decisions and have less flexibility. There can also be problems with raising too much money. The money gets burned up quickly and it doesn’t produce either profits or sales. And, it is noticeable that in the early stage of start-ups new industries seldom get it right the first time. A wise entrepreneurs should have ability to generate sufficient capital in well-timed occasions after proven their business model.

The importance of time and place in start-ups

It is easy to see why most entrepreneurs bootstrap when they start because they simply don't have much start-up capital. And bootstrappers can become overly cheap, but the definition of bootstrapping is not spending as little as possible. Rather it is achieving the desired outcomes of a business within the limited resources available.

Even in a bootstrap startup, it is important to spend some money – two issues should be paid attention to, that is, in the right places and at the right times. Bootstrapping is not about being a cheapskate about everything, squeezing every last penny out of your vendors and partners and otherwise being the nightmare customer for every company you deal with. At some level, you will begin to realize that markets are somewhat “efficient” and unless you have some special connections or characteristics that cause you to convince people to give up their goods and services at a price well below market rates, you’re essentially going to get what you pay for. And, of course, there are places that entrepreneurs should find the least expensive option, because it doesn’t matter all that much. Further, I’d like to emphasize something that too many founders forget that time has Value. In fact, one of the scarcest resources (next to cash) in a startup is founder time. The opportunity is unable to bear waiting and the entrepreneurs might lose their opportunity due to the delay.

Motivate creativity and effectiveness in organizations

The importance of creativity and effectiveness in organizations is well known by us, but it is easier said than done. We can see that thousands of organizations go bankruptcy every year. On the side of administrators or entrepreneurs, if they are able to motivate creativity and effectiveness in their organizations that their business will go further than those organizations have less or no creativity and effectiveness.

All the companies are facing competition pressure, but this pressure on the companies can be solved partly by the optimal use of human performance. It has been demonstrated that a motivated and healthy work force contributes significantly to innovation and business productivity (Eijnatten, 2002). We take a look at Toyota, which has the highest profits in auto industry. And the secret to be successful due to the motivated work force. It is suggested that the work will be more decentralized. In my company, I will make use of my employees sufficiently in order to get higher creativity and effectiveness. Allocating to my employees the tasks best suited to the employee. Each of them has a larger space to exhibit their personal ability.Employees have more access to information and more power to innovate and adapt their work. Traditional management practices—such as asking for suggestions, only one personspeaking at a time, and evaluating options beforeexhausting them—hurt rather than facilitate creative work. Creatively realistic requires that companies support employees that do seemingly purposeless and senseless things, such as striving for quantity rather than quality (at least initially), suggesting deliberately impossible to realize ideas, and creating havens for individualthinking (Thompson, 2003).

As a leader in the organization, more attention should be paid to an optimal loading of the work force. Employees work at the optimum between overload and under load. Under loading is not beneficial for the company and the worker, not any creativity and effectiveness but high risks.

Also, regarding the organization, changes will occur, like operating in variable dynamically changing network instead of hierarchical structures. Higher flexibility is created in variable dynamically network that helps employees to be more creative and effective. As I know that most of organizations in China are used to adopt hierarchical structure, but they realize the shortcomings with old structure and turn to new flexible structure. The obvious change is that changing network benefits the organization and motivates its creativity and effectiveness. For my own company, I prefer to adopt a flat structure that enables my employees have more flexibility to work with each other. The more flexibility my employees have, the more creativity and effectiveness that will be created to my firm.

reference:
Eijnatten FM van, Ed, 2002, Intelligent manufacturing though participation: a Participative Simulation environment for Integral Manufacturing enterprise renewal.

Thompson Leigh, 2003, Improving the creativity oforganizational work groups, Academy ol Management Execulive, Vol. 17, No. I

Module 3 reflection

Traditionally, entrepreneurs have a product-based view (external-perspective) towards the competition to be competitive, but resource-based view (internal-perspective) is in some sense supersedes it nowadays. For the firm, resources and products are two sides of the same coin (Wernerfelt, B. 1984). No matter product or resource must evaluated of their short-term balance effect and also in terms of their long-term capacity to function as stepping stones to further expansion, to get sustained competitive advantage.

It is possible to agree with that the resource-based view is efficient and practical because it focuses on the strengths, assets, and capabilities of entrepreneurs and their ventures. Without resources to exploit a situation, even the best situation cannot create an entrepreneur (Dollinger, M.J. 1999). And the sustained competitive advantage (SCA) is created when firms posses and employ resources and capabilities that are valuable, rare, hard to copy, and nonsubstitutable with other resources. If the firm has these four qualities, and has capability to maintain, it will have competitive advantage over the long term. Sustained competitive advantage is an addition from competitive advantage, doesn’t mean that it can last forever. It is a time gap for its competitors to catch up and duplicate the benefits of the strategy.

However, in the third article, the discussion between resource homogeneity and mobility and First-Mover Advantages, it neglects the uncertainty and risks that First-Movers are facing. I think it is not absolutely possible for those firms with resource homogeneity and mobility to gain competitive advantage. What’s more, Barney (1991) also consider if one firm purchased a physical tool or equipment in order to implement their strategy, and the other firms also purchased the same physical tools and equipments, then the tools and equipments are not considered as the resources of sustained competitive advantage. It is possible to figure out that, resources may not fit for other firms once it is tailor-made for a specific firm. Same tools and equipments can be purchased by different firms, however, the tools and equipments cannot generate the same value to different firms since different firms have different strategy on doing business. So, the same tools and equipments in different firms can be considered as the sources of sustained competitive advantage under different strategies.

It makes us think that how the entrepreneur of a new venture is able to determine whether his or her resources meet the criteria of being value, rare, hard to copy and non-substitutable. The four attributes are the understand sources of sustained competitive advantage.

Do you change your business planning?

In the lecture of Business planning, roughly I get an idea of how important the business planning it is and the reason why firms do it. However, there is a famous Chinese saying that changes often leave plans behind. And many entrepreneurs and administrators are embracers and go along with this opinion. However, it is correct to have a business planning, which is an instruction for employees acquaint themselves to the working environment.

And I absolutely agree with Amar Bhidé’s opinion that business planning at early stages have questionable value, but a bit of afterthought might not hurt. Any business planning is goal-oriented, and the goal is defined by the administrator or entrepreneur, which is the guideline and standard for the business planning and its following actions. If there is a misunderstanding or imperfect planning of the goal, the business plan will result in problems. Personally, I think the business planning is changeable that should adapt to the situation how does the firm perform in the process. The persistent business planning will make the company run worse or even bankruptcy.

There are three key words in the business planning,that is, customer focus, growing market and generate income. As we can see that customers are easy to lose than keeping. It is important for the company to do research of demography regularly because there is fluidity among customers, customers you are having might not the most profitable group. And, market is changing fast, thousands of organizations are created and die every year. Those failed firms have problem with the market definitely. Fixed or sustained business plan is not seasoned with the market. What’s more, in order to generate income, any firm faces risks and rewards. Be prepared to change course and make it pass through.

Okay, go back to the topic, it is important to check and change the contents of business planning. As a matured administrator or entrepreneur, their business planning is totally different compared with 2 years ago. Change business planning is a good habit and one of the surviving methods to continue business.

Does Brainstorming always bring value to the firm?

Before the lecture of Entrepreneurial creativity, I thought that Brainstorming only brings positive value to the organization since it gathers a great deal of ideas, but it not always as good as we expect. Even though it is popular used in many companies, as an entrepreneur or manager in the company should fully understands the function of the brainstorming, and maximize it positive value and at the same time try to avoid or minimize side effects.

First of all, social loafing might happen. Some staffs are not motivated to work in a group than when they work alone. Group sometimes performs less effective than the combined performance of their member working as individuals.

Secondly, conformity is the result of process by which people’s beliefs or behaviors are influenced by others in the group. It regular happens in the firm whose employees having the same culture and similar background that the pattern of thinking is homologous, thus, it is hard to generate diverse opinions. Positive conformity brings active impacts to the firm, while negative conformity leads to an impasse.

Thirdly, production blocking is a common problem in Brainstorming groups. It is a tendency for one individual to block other people during a group discussion. For instance, if 10 people are in a group and one person is talking about his idea, then other 9 people are “blocked” and less able to provide his or her creative input because their way of thinking is followed by the person who gives his or her input earlier.

Last but not least, another passive phenomenon we call it downward norm setting. As we know that each member comes from different departments or places and each of them specializes in different field. It is common that some members are not familiar with the topic they are discussing that it will demotivate the general level if there are few weak members in the group.

Whatever, we should realize the Brainstorming might hurt the business development if we don’t have the full picture of it. Find out problems beforehands and try to elicit the utmost values from the creative staffs.

The first lesson in JIBS

It was few years ago, I touched a word 'entrepreneur' in the class of Entrepreneurship. The classroom was full of students from different countries, many of those students were having a dream to be a entrepreneur in the future. It is always good and easier to get inspired to have a lesson with international students, especially those people having novel perspectives.

Today, the scene occurs again. 99 students are seating in the classroom and sharing our experience together. So far as I know, enterpreneurship is not only about the marketing, but also includes the innovation and opportunity. Moreover, opportunity takes priority over innovation. Entrepreneurship includes two parts, innovation and business creation. Business idea is the base for any entrepreneur before he/she starts his/her business. And the firm is hard to gain profits without a valuable and unique business idea. However, Not all the uniqueness and newness brings valuable opportunity. Over-newness is able to ruin the firm without doubt. The extent of newness will bring different results to the company, it can be positive, and negative as well. Therefore, opportunity control for the entrepreneur is a key for the company to get success.

The same product without uniqueness and highlight is hard to seize hold of the market. For instance, people are more willing to spend money on ice hotel than those ordinary hotels. Despite it is cold, darkness and full of ice and snow. But it gives people surprise and memories. As a entrepreneur, it is important to control the balance beteween customer demands and its offer.

It is too late for any company to correct their business idea if on the track. If the firm gets started, the purchasing , producing, pricing and financing departments are all involved in the process. And each department works integrated together. As an entrepreneur, once makes an incorrect decision on business idea, it will bring a mass disaster to the company.

The success entrepreneur should satisfy or even exceed customers' demands, the difficulty thing is how to satisfy customers consistently. The poor companys know little about customer demands. I think to be a good entrepreneur should have knowledge of discovery and exploitation, that is, the ability to find out problems, and the ability to solve those problems efficiently.