TASK A
1. Networked
What is the most crucial elemen that entrepreneur have to take note of when they are creating a new business? Personality, innovation or creativity? Yes. Those are part of it, but all those natural talents are not strong enough to lead us to success path. Entrepreneur will never get success alone. Strong interpersonal skill is a key factor for entrepreneurial achievements. Although value-based relationship won’t guarantee each person to achieve goals and success, but it will help. In entrepreneurship, networked is known as interaction with other people to develop contact and exchange information in order to fulfill each other’s needs. It will help to open up business opportunity and increase the effectiveness of business activities by sharing and exchanging idea and theories among each other. Networking is more than just meet up with people, entrepreneurs should know how to network effectively. Networking can be done formally and informally. For example, attending networking event, meet up with customers, and establish web of relationship with family and friends. Entrepreneurs have to maintain long-term relationships that are mutually beneficial by networking with people that have the potential to help them go even further.
The successful entrepreneur that applied the traits of networked is Vera Wang. Vera Wang (Vera Ellen Wang) is a fashion designer, owner and CEO of her own brand, Vera Wang. She is arguably the most prominent designer of bridal wear in America. In an interview with Vera Wang in New York Times, she shared her story and secret to be success. In 1917, Wang was hired to be a senior fashion editor at Vogue magazine and held that title for 15 years. After she left Vogue, she join Ralph Lauren as a design director. She left Ralph Lauren soon and plan to open her own bridal boutique. Because of her past occupation and working experience, Wang managed to get network with famed designer like Guy Laroche, Arnold Scaasi, Caroline Herrera, and Christian Dior. She is able to open her own bridal boutique and launched her own signature collection. Wang has many followers, particularly in Hollywood. Her fashions are frequently worn by many high-profile actresses, public figures and celebrities such as Goldie Hawn, Alicia Keys and even Michelle Obama. Wang also managed to design costumes for figure skaters and Philadelphia Eagles Cheerleaders. Vera Wang had the opportunity to get to know and network with well-known designer and celebrities when she worked for Vogue and Ralph Rauren before. All these factors help Vera Wang’s brands and products gain popularity worldwide and her business growth rapidly. Soon, Vera Wang became high profile designer in fashion world and honored with a number of awards for her achievement.
Vera Wang
2. Open risk taker
Conventional thinkers categorize “risk behavior” as negative. But this trait is essential to entrepreneurs. Yes, there will always be the chance the business will fail, but the desire for gain and the unwillingness to accept defeat is what should drive them forward. Risk taking should be smart and calculated. Study all impacts to business from all angles, then find the courage to take the risk and leaping into the unknown that can allow a person to overcome cultural and physical impediments and help them get to next level. As entrepreneurs make decisions, they must be willing to take intelligent risks and, although fully prepared to be held accountable, not fear persecution if they fail. (Steven D. Strauss, 2014)
For an instance, Walt Disney can be considered as an open risk taker. Walt Disney was an American motion-picture and television producer and showman, famous as a pioneer of cartoon films and as the creator of Disneyland and Walt Disney World. He and his brother Roy co-founded Walt Disney Productions in 1923, which became one of the best-known motion-picture production companies in the world. His most famous creation, Mickey Mouse, is a universally recognized cultural icon. Walt Disney renowned quotes “We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths” showed that he loved to observe new things and never afraid of anything. For Disney, the road of success is tough, he faced many obstacles and took a lot of risks to solve the problems. In 1955, Disneyland was the biggest gamble in the history of American business. Disney came out with the idea that there should be an amusement park built for families to enjoy together. Thus, he started thinking about the possibilities and made a plan to create an amusement park based on his characters. Disney faced financial issue for the project, his family and business partner Roy Disney, begged him to give up. Yet, he never thought of giving up and made a serious decision that could caused bankruptcy of the company. To fund for Disneyland project, he mortgaged his life insurance, stock holdings, house and furniture to purchase an orange grove near Anaheim, California, and finance the construction of a 185-acre amusement park. In July 1955, Disneyland theme park that costs US$17 million finally opened. In a very short time, the park increased its investment tenfold and hosts more than 14 million visitors a year, who spend close to $3 billion. Disneyland branched out globally with parks in Paris, Tokyo, Hongkong and Shanghai. Today, Disneyland become entertaining tourists from around the world and world class theme park. The success road of Walt Disney is tough but his determination and risk behavior help him overcome all the obstacles. (Michael Barrier, 2007)
Walt Disney
Mickey Mouse created by Walt Disney
3. Observant
To be highly competitive in business arena, an entrepreneur needs to be highly observant in nature. These traits differentiate entrepreneurs with others people. Observant means be alert, quick at noticing things. Observant entrepreneurs will pay strict attention and perceptive to environment and the surrounding. They will be highly sensitive to the details and changes of the surrounding. Observant entrepreneurs have high insightful towards customer’s needs. When they determine the trends and demands of the market, they can easily find the opportunities in the markets.
Jeff Bezos is a great example as an observant entrepreneur. Jeff Bezos is the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Amazon, which became the world’s largest online shopping retailer. As of October 2016, Bezos is the second richest person in United States and ranked at third place in the world on The Forbes list of the world's wealthiest people with net worth estimated to be US$71 billion. The Internet was firstly created by the Defense Department and adopted by government and academic researchers only. At that time, internet commerce was not existing yet. Jeff Bezos observed that Internet usage was kept increasing by year. He saw an opportunity for Internet commerce, and began considering the possibilities. In 1994, he quit a lucrative New York hedge fund job and founded Amazon, an online bookseller website. Amazon.com is a huge success by achieving US$20,000 sales in a week. The company grows rapidly and became e-commerce leader in two years. Amazon’s vision is “To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online.” Thus, Bezos put his focus on customer’s needs. He and his team observe the trends and customer’s needs by reading customer reviews. Bezos continued to diversify Amazon’s offerings with the sale of CDs and videos in 1998, and later clothes, electronics, toys and more through major retail partnerships. In 2006, Amazon ended up with annual sales over US$10.7 billion, with nearly three times the sales compare to it’s nearest competitor. (John Rossman, 2014) John Bezos can lead Amazon to the path of success due to his observant trait. He is alert and good in observing trends and customer needs. He know what his customer wants and expand the product line in order to fulfill customer’s needs.
Jeff Bezos
4. Visionary
A person is not necessarily have to be an expert in specific field in order to be success, but one has to be visionary. Based on Oxford Dictionaries (2016), visionary defined as thinking about or planning the future with imagination or wisdom. Entrepreneurs often see something and believe something that others do not see and cannot believe. They have a vision for a business, product, service, or innovation; they can see how it can make a difference; and they go about enlisting others’ help in bringing that vision to fruition.
Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft Corp is a great example of visionary entrepreneur. Starting in 1987, Gates was included in the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest people and was the wealthiest from 1995 to 2007, again in 2009, and has been since 2014. Bill Gates quotes “The only big companies that succeed will be those that obsolete their own products before somebody else does” show that he is a true visionary. Microsoft’s vision was elegantly precise: ‘A computer on every desk and in every home’. (Des Dearlove, 2010) Bill Gates is not an inventor, he takes existing technology and adapting it to a specific market. Gates and his partner Paul Allen weren't the first people to recognize the potential of microprocessors to bring hardcore computing power to the world. In 1974, Allen showed Gates a magazine article about the world's first microcomputer, the Altair 8800. This was the first microprocessor powerful enough to run a full computer programming language like BASIC. Gates saw the opportunity and he knows it is the time to strike. He contacted the manufacturer, MITS, that they had written a version of BASIC ready to go for the Altair, the first 8080-powered computer. Gates dropped out of Harvard and officially established Microsoft in 1975. Eventhough BASIC and Altair were not Gates’s ideas, but he saw something that others do not see and implement it. His visionary and innovation made Microsoft success. (Janet Lowe, 1998)
Bill Gates
5. Failure is an option
Failure is the non-fulfillment of functional requirement. (Rausand, M, 2005) To become a successful entrepreneur surely they need to face the failure for many time. This is because, not all the step or strategy that we planned are run smoothly. A successful entrepreneurs are the entrepreneurs who courageous to risk the failure from their mistakes. The failure can helps an entrepreneur recovered from past mistakes to continue succeed in the business. Entrepreneurs who have failed also can improve the weaknesses and shortcomings.
Among the entrepreneurs who have an attitude of never giving up because he have faced failure is Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba. Jack Ma makes it faced as the power to be succeed in business. In his life, he has faced with various problems. Every school rejected Jack Ma, where he wants to learn. Even since primary school, he already received the rejection because of his test in mathematically is not so good but Jack Ma hold out. Since the age of 12 to 20 years, he pedaled his bike for 40 minutes to the hotel in order to learn English. He was eliminated from Harvard. He failed in the exam to enter the college and he only passed after the third attempt to become a teacher.
His attitude never give up can be seen when he failed a job interview more than 30 times after graduation. The saddest is when he failed to get a job at the recently opened KFC in China at that time made an interview in walk in. Among the 24 people who have took the interview, 23 people graduate work in KFC except Jack Ma. He still did not give up when starting a business on a small scale. However, his business failed. Without the experience or academic education in the field of computers and software, he opened AliBaba company in 1998. Unfortunately, the company loss for 3 years without gain any profits.
The failure he faced did not become an obstacle to continue his business. With an attitude of confidence, after that he created a program to process payment called AliPay and his many friends and customers who criticized saying that the most pathetic idea in his all ideas. However, now AliPay has 800 million users. His attitude which focus on a goal and the failure as an option for successfully to make him to become the richest man in China with a value of USD 20 billion.
6. Open culture
In the entrepreneur, open culture involved many productive in the business and trade has a positive impact on the entrepreneurs themselves. Open culture is a concept someone who is able to think independently and see, seize and analyze any opportunities, entrepreneurs with these characteristics will always be an open-minded and not be influenced by the unhealthy effects. This is because entrepreneurs is at the forefront of the business. More successful entrepreneurs like Robert Kuok Hock Nien, he do not focus on just one area only but he work in various business areas such as industry, management, hospitality and more.
In 1948, Robert Kuok's father died. Robert Kuok’s mother pursue ideas that have invested all the capital in the sugar refining industry. In the view of Robert Kuok, other than rice and wheat, sugar plays an important role in the food industry. Furthermore, the IT era has not started yet at the time, the business of selling sugar is the smartest way to get rich. Despite opposition, but it would open up a sugar refinery still starts with Malayan Sugar Manufacturing Co. Ltd.
In May and June 1963, Robert Kuok take 100,000 tons to 200,000 tons of sugar to sell to the next month. This decision is intuition Robert Kuok's sugar market that will grow and be able to reap more profits. Unfortunately, in July and August 1963, the market for sugar fell drastically. This condition may make Robert Kuok bankrupt if it does not have sufficient working capital. Maybe this sustenance Robert Kuok, in late August 1963, a hurricane hit Brazil and ruin all of the sugar plantations of Brazil. The price of sugar in the international market increase sharply because Brazilian sugar production reached 5.5 million tons per year.
In 1971, Robert Kuok build Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore. His career in the Hong Kong real estate began in 1977, when he acquired a piece of land in the newly reclaimed on the east coast of Tsim Sha Tsui. In here, he built his second hotel, Kowloon Shangri-La. He believes that China will become a tourist destination world citizen one day. In 1983, he founded the Shangri-La Hotel in Hangzhou, China. Now, Robert Kuok undertake 72 Shangri-La Hotel around the worldwide.
In conclusion, Robert Kuok has a vision for the country's expected the requirements and policies that will be established by the government. Foresight same encouraged Robert Kuok, through various companies in Hong Kong to move into the Chinese market. Through tourism and hotel, Robert Kuok has established itself at the forefront of the emerging Chinese market. He admiration for its generous reward loyalty and friendship.
Robert Kuok
7. Outcome oriented
Oriented outcome can be defined as an entrepreneur running a business well to get the profit encouraging. Often, entrepreneurs who depand on the results will follow all the customer requirement to achieve the desired goals. In addition, an entrepreneurs also runs are results-oriented business will implement strategies to achieve their goal. Organization culture is to solve the problem and power of customization to integrate external business environment and internal processes to ensure that can be continues to satisfy the needs and expectations of customers. (Professor Edgar Schein, 1980). This means that the concept of culture is the concept of success in the business results orientation and organization. (Asmah Abdullah, 2006).
Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong (February 28, 1918 – October 23, 2007) was a famous wealthy Malaysian Chinese business man. He was renowned for his vision and courage in changed Genting Highlands from an unexplored hilltop to be one of the world most successful casino resorts. He was once the third richest man in Malaysia with a net worth estimated to be 4.2 billion USD, making him the 204th richest person in the billionaire list arrange by Forbes. The idea to developing Genting Highlands was the first conceived when Lim Goh Tong was having a dinner in Cameron Highlands. An idea struck him when he was enjoying the soothing cool breeze of Cameron Highlands that the standard living increased in Malaysia, more people will visit mountain resorts for relaxation and recreation, but Cameron Highlands was too far away from the city Kuala Lumpur, therefore building a mountain resort nearby the Kuala Lumpur would have great business potential.
Upon conceiving this idea, many people were distrust him to turn a forest into a tourist resort. Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong ignored all the negative things and proceed with his plan although most thought it was really risky and guess him who was financially comfortable to be foolish to invest many money and time to develop Genting. Tunku Abdul Rahman visited Genting Highlands commended Lim’s effort to develop a resort contributing to Malaysia's tourism industry without government help, Genting was granted the only casino license.
In the next 30 years, Lim continued to develop and expand Genting Highlands of a hotel with basic tourist facilities. Among the projects were the construction of more hotels, indoor and outdoor theme parks, and a convention center. In 1993, a township was developed on an 81-hectare piece of land around the site of the Genting Skyway cable car station at the suggestion of Tun Mahathir, the prime minister of Malaysia. It was named Gohtong Jaya after Lim as a token of memorial for his efforts in the development of Genting Highlands. Until now, Genting Highlands is one of the most successful Casino resorts in the world and is one of the primary tourist attractions in Malaysia.
His finally success was attributed to his entrepreneurial spirit. "The Genting project fitted my idea of an ideal business," he wrote. "No one was interested in it, which meant no competition." Lim Goh Tong had won many awards together with his company Genting Group for his entrepreneurship and his contribution, among them were Malaysian Entrepreneurs Award 1985, Manager of the Year Award 1986, Business Achiever of the Year Award1994, Number 1 ranking of 10 Malaysian Leading Companies 1999 and The Best Employer Award 1996.
Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong
8. Team oriented
Team orientation is one of the characteristics that lead the entrepreneurs to success in business. Deepen the spirit of team-oriented, entrepreneurs need to be smart in dealing with any problems that occur in their environment with others that the team-oriented spirit can be built and maintained in a entrepreneur to manage an organization.
Feature teamwork can be linked to Tan Sri Tony Fernandes, the Malaysian entrepreneur who is a figure of Indian descent. He was sent overseas to study when he was 12 years old and he had to self-reliant from the time he arrived at Heathrow, and says “The great thing about being thrown into the deep end is you either sink or swim”. When he wanted to go back home during the semester break, flying was too expensive to be affordable, so he set out to make it possible for ‘everyone can fly’. Air Asia was born from that and next Tony is determined to enable people in the Indian sub-continent to afford to fly cheaply instead of spending days travelling from one city to another city. “You have only one life; live out your dream” he says.
From starting his airline company only have two planes several years ago, Tony has proven time and time again that the determination to create a world class airline brand and ultimately making his mark in the aviation industry is possible when one is determined to work hard, explore international collaborations and to even do business with one’s once ‘Business rival’. He states that Malaysians depend on the Government too much and people don’t want to do it for themselves. Air Asia did not depend on the Governments and Tony says that he hopes its successes will inspire others to do the same. “There are no short cuts in life. Remove the crutches” he said.
AirAsia airlines was established with the dream of making flying possible for everyone. Since 2001, AirAsia has quickly broken travel norms around the globe and has risen to become the world’s best. With a route network that spans through to over 20 countries, AirAsia continues to open the way for low-cost aviation through our innovative solutions, efficient processes and a passionate approach to business. AirAsia mission is “Now Everyone Can Fly” animates the Allstars. They know that AirAsia’s low ticket price make it possible to bring families together, improve businesses and enable people to explore and have new adventures.
Again, in our perspective, Tony’s achievements abroad had always impressed the Malaysian minds, especially the young and thriving entrepreneurs, where he had brought the AirAsia brand global, and through unusual feats like wanting to fly long hour on low cost, to trying to get AirAsia’s brand on the FIFA World Cup jersey, to sponsoring Manchester United and having them flew on our Malaysian carrier and many more daring entrepreneurial examples.
Tan Sri Tony Fernandes
9. Proactive
Successful entrepreneurs should have a feature proactive and effective. This characteristic is a smart entrepreneur business opportunities. Every entrepreneur should have a proactive attitude to forge ahead in the business. According to the Sunday Times newspaper dated November 9, 2014, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said, "With our proactive use common sense to develop competitiveness, we do not quickly give up and must be the generation that dared to face the challenge,''. This generation must make everything aspired to become a reality with bold experiment and use common sense to develop the competitiveness of yourself.
The entrepreneur who is being proactive is Dato’ Jimmy Choo. Dato’ Jimmy Choo is a Malaysian fashion designer based in the United Kingdom. He is the one recognized of world famous shoemaker and shoe designer. Since childhood, he has been exposed to the technique of making shoes as his father’s a full time shoemaker. While studying Dato’ Jimmy Choo worked part-time at restaurants and as a cleaner at a shoe factory to help fund his college education. After graduation Dato’ Jimmy Choo stared working in a shop in Hackney which he opened in 1986 by renting and old hospital building. His craftsmanship and designs were soon noticed and his creations become featured in eight pages in 1988 issue of Vogue. Patronage from Diana, Princess of Wales from 1990 further boosted his image. Proactive attitude shown by Jimmy Choo is that he is responsible for making decisions about the direction of his company Jimmy Choo Ltd. He will think what the best for his company and knew how to attract the attention to his customers by maintaining the quality of shoes that he designed. He personally becomes personal shoemaker for Princess Diana during her lifetime.
He also acts as distributor to allocate the resources either for marketing or management section and other parts in the company. Jimmy Choo also acted as an informer for his company. He became a diffuser for the new designs in his boutique, make promotions, offer special discounts, special servicing and so on to attract customers. He is also a spokesman for the release of his shoes in the media society. His role as a leader and founder of his company is really important and he has proved it to society when he is the first Malaysian to be awarded OBE awards “Order of the British Empire” from Queen of England, Queen Elizabeth II.
A proactive entrepreneur usually has a mature personality to adopt an intentional action in the face of potential influence in the situation as well as in the environment of business. Jimmy Choo is the one who is already set in their mind to take control of the environment around them. He is very proactive because he always get all the things done without waiting for instruction.
Dato’ Jimmy Choo
TASK B
Mark Zuckerberg is the co-founder of social media Facebook
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is the chairman, chief executive officer and co-founder of social networking website Facebook. His net worth estimated to be 44.6 billion as of November 2016. He is the top six of the world billionaires ranking in 2016. He was born in May 14, 1984. He won prizes in science and classical studies in his junior year of high school. He like to developing computer programs specialize in communication tools and games. He created a software named ZuckNet that allow the computer between house and the dental office could get to communicate with each other easier. In his college years, he also created a program called CourseMatch. This program allowed user to choose classes that also help to form study groups. In January 2004, Zuckerberg have the idea start to write program code for a new social networking website. He launched Facebook on February 4, 2004 from his Havard dormitory room. He dropped out of Havard in his sophomore year and move to Palo Alto, California so that he can have more free time to focus on the development of Facebook. At the ealier time when Facebook have just startup, many company have tried to buy Facebook. But Zuckerberg and his group declined all the offer. To Zuckerberg and his group, Facebook is not just an amount of money. They have the goal of create an open information flow for people that allow people can gather together. He continued the effort to expand Facebook. There is an obstacle when the Winklevoss twins, the former classmates and business partners of Zuckerberg have state that Zuckerberg stole the idea of social networking site from them. In the end, two sides settled the lawsuit by exchange shares and cash. After this lawsuit, Zuckerberg and his team still continued to succeed in the development of Facebook.
As a successful entrepreneur, Mark Zuckerberg applies one of the entrepreneurial trait which is outcome oriented in his business. Mark Zuckerberg is an outcome oriented entrepreneur as he creates things that he wants to create. For Zuckerberg, it is just not about getting the job done but also about being innovative and building and improving new products. When he was young, he created a computer game that his friends had drawn. Mark also created Facemash in Harvard University that used to choose the hottest person by comparing two pictures of the students but it was shut down by Harvard executive. After that, he continued with his invention by create a social study tool with his friends as a project which they came up with “The facebook” on 4th February 2004 with the aim to have one billion users from the day one. The purpose at the beginning was only connecting the Harvard university students but then Mark intended to extend it to the other universities. This shows that from the young age, he adapted him with the technology skills and techniques that enable him to compete with other social websites such as Friendster and MySpace. Facebook at the beginning had limited function but as time passes, the team always come up with new ideas to keep people connected all around the world and never get bored with the Facebook such as inserting the News Feed, timeline design, ability to tag friends, games, birthdays, pictures, videos and so on. Mark started with the aim of 1 billion users in 2004 and today the number of active users is 1.49 billion. (NY Magazines, 2012) In short, Mark Zuckerberg started by a simple idea with a goal that he took action to carry out the idea and finally successfully achieved his goal by making Facebook as the main social networking between the peoples to separate the information with easy and quick around the worlds. Mark Zuckerberg as an outcome orientated entrepreneur, we can clearly see that outcome orientation for Zuckerberg is about setting goals and winning to achieve them.
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Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg is an entrepreneur who is open culture. Mark Zuckerberg create a more open culture and leads a better understanding of lives between each other in his company as Zuckerberg says: “We have a very open culture at the company, where we foster a lot of interaction between not just me and people but between everyone else. It's an open floor plan. People have these desks where no one really has an office. I mean, I have a room where I meet with people. But it has all glass, so everyone can see into it and see what's going on.” This shows that Mark Zuckerberg is an open culture entrepreneur. Mark Zuckerberg does not have a special room as his personnel office in the Headquarter of Facebook. His working environment is as usual as the employee in the office. A normal table which link with another 3 tables to form a rectangle, is the working environment of the founder of Facebook. He said, he like to work together with his employee like this, so that it allows him to direct interact with his employee to get the latest information from the world. Every workers can just straight talk to him by just pass by his table, this make him to have more understanding not only the needs of the employees, but also the needs from all the user of Facebook. He is always tend to change to suit all these needs to make sure the company can run as long as it can.(Business Alligators, 2010) In general, strong culture in company is very important factor to encourage entrepreneur succeed because it can influence the motivation of the employees in the company.
Mark been chosen as Person of the Year by TIME Magazine.
Mark zuckerberg is a proactive entrepreneur. He is proactively pursuing his vision in the creation and the launch of network and he takes action immediately in order to achieve his vision. No matter how challenging the situation is, he still be able to move forward in transforming his creative vision into a successful reality. Zuckerberg has always passionate about using technology to connect people and put in the hard work to achieve it. However, Zuckerberg has gone through hardships during his beginning stage of Facebook. For examples, he faced lot of criticism for getting the blame of having stolen the idea of Harvard connections and building a competing product. Besides,The Winklevoss twins, the former classmates and business partners of Zuckerberg also claimed that Zuckerberg sabotaged their project and betrayed them.(Fortune, 2010) Whereas Zuckerberg and Facebook still continued to succeed, in spite of the criticism. This shows that Zuckerberg is a proactive entrepreneur as he is very adaptable and flexible towards problems faced and tend to take immediate action to solve the problem in order to achieve success. Futhermore, Zuckerberg tries to do on a daily basic is to use his time proactively rather than reactively. He think that there are enough things that happen during the day that you could spend all your time on whatever comes up during the day. He think that the most important thing is to make sure that put time into the things you want to see happen rather than other folks pushing what you want to do. He want to be responsive to the whole community and he proactively spend a lot of time on that goal. He explained, one has to be responsive and communicate but it's important as an entrepreneur to be proactive and know what you want to accomplish each day. ( Eli Langer, 2014 ) Instead on dwelling on a past mistake, he choose to spending time to focus on being a proactive leader instead the reactive one. "There are enough things that happen throughout the day that that I can spend all my time reacting, but I choose instead to proactively work on the things I want to see happen," he said. ( Oscar Raymundo, 2014 ).
Earlier photo of Mark Zuckerberg when he in high school
Mark Zuckerberg had shown that he is a team oriented entrepreneur. The definition of team oriented means that a group of people organized to work together and the leader will concern members and willing to receive all suggestion by all members. Team oriented is important to a company because it is a key function in a company where it can organize work nicely and can maximize employee performance. Zuckerberg is known to have a goal-oriented mindset and is fully focused on leading his team to produce the best social media platform in the world. To him, the definition for a good team is a group of people that makes better decisions as a whole than would individually make as a sum of the parts. ( E.C. & Associates, 2014 ) Zuckerberg realized that he needed an excellent team to help him together to achieve the goals of expanding and maintain Facebook. He will spend time with employee to influence and inspire them. Great leaders know how to recognize the weakness and strength of their employee and apply it on the company task. He hires people based on their initiative to do their own task. Zuckerberg hire engineers for their professional skills and their vision of the company’s future. Zuckerberg believe that he can lead company to a better future by develop a smart hiring strategies with bring the right people to the company. Zuckerberg encourage it’s worker work in a form of teams that they have passionate about. This is because Zuckerberg know that worker will come out an excellent result if they are received task that they passionate about. The right people are not those who have the right competency; they are those who have the right attitude. ( McGraw-Hill Professional 2013 ) Some of the most successful businesses have a non traditional, strengths-based approach to hiring, hire the best talent first, then worry about finding the right role for him. As a big company, Zuckerberg need employees help to maintain the company’s daily operations. This is because Zuckerberg don’t have the ability to do the daily operation task with only him alone. Mark Zuckerberg needs a team to help and learn from him. He recruited and hired Sandberg in 2008. ( Elijah Clark, 2014 ) Sandberg joined the company and Facebook has successfully reach a period of hypergrowth. Sandberg has focused on building the business, expanding internationally and cultivating relationships with large advertisers that bring the growth of Facebook.
Mark Zuckerberg said " Our mission is to make the world more open and connected. "
The open risk taker traits is a must for entrepreneur. Risk taking is almost the same meaning with entrepreneurship. Risk for entrepreneur means that you have to put your career, personal finances and mental health at sake. Zuckerberg is not afraid to take risks show that he is an open risk taker. Mark Zuckerberg took a few significant risks. He took risk when he decided to dropped out of college to provide himself with more free time to focus on expanding Facebook and help the project grow. As Facebook's popularity exploded, Zuckerberg packed up his bags and relocated the fledgling company to Palo Alto, California, forever leaving behind Harvard's hallowed halls. ( Joseph Lin, 2014 ) Besides that, he took risk when he decided to declined the offer of Yahoo to buy Facebook. In the summer of 2006, Yahoo decided to offer Facebook for 1 Billion. ( David Kirkpatrick, 2010 ) But Zuckerberg declined the offer because he figured that the company would be worth more than 1 billion. Yahoo continue the effort to buy Facebook in the fall of 2006. Yahoo offer it would pay 1 billion or more to buy the company. But Zuckerberg and his team once again declined the offer from Yahoo. Besides than that, Tim Armstrong, a Google’s top ad salesman try to convinced Google to let him pursue Facebook a deal that Google would serve Facebook international ads in fall 2007. Based on Kirkpatrick, “ the board even approved talks about buying Facebook, if it made sense. ” In the end, Google never really got the deal, but it’s offer 15 billion to invest in Facebook. In 2007, for the reason to keep Facebook away from Google, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer offered 15 billion to buy the company. But the deal never happened. While most people would have been too scared of missing out on an opportunity, Zuckerberg and the rest of the Facebook team take risk and believed in their product enough to wait it out. Besides that, Zuckerberg had take a risk when he decided to require registration using a university email address. When we are trying to introduce a product to the audience, we want as many people as possible to use that product. As we want that product to grow quickly, we will try to design the registration part as easy as possible. Many people would reject to sign up to Facebook as they feel it’s complicated that have to use an email address to sign up. Zuckerberg said about risk, “The biggest risk that you can take is to not take any risks.” ( Ekaterina Walter, 2013 )
