2. INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE
WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT?
1. Module closing tests
2. Case studies
3. Additional reading
LEARNING OUTCOMES
1. Do you have what it takes
to be an entrepreneur?
2. Enhance the idea
3. Market Evaluation
4. Legal Requirements
5. Financing and
management
6. “The Dream Team”
7. Business Plan
8. Marketing and Sales
9. Growth and Improvement
2
3. HELLO!
You are invited to
take the “Do you
have what it takes to
be an entrepreneur?”
test, designed by
BBC
3
Please follow this link
4. To be or not to be?
If your result is high enough to
qualify as successful, then you are on
the right track. Keep on reading and
you might find something new.
If your result is insufficient, do not
worry. By the end of the presentation
you will know more about the
entrepreneurial life.
4
Congratulations for taking the test !
7. Enhance the Idea
Define the Idea
1. Do you have an set goal to achieve / vision to realise?
2. Does your product fulfil / solve / improve a specific need,
problem or process?
3. Who is your expected target market? (later in
presentation)
Feasibility & Evaluation
1. Define clearly the purpose / goal of your product.
2. Research your target markets / find how many may
have need for your product.
3. Review the competition for your product / idea.
4. Determine if feasible & profitable to develop / market /
sell your product.
7
8. Define the Idea
For detailed beakdown of
process visit:
https://www.feedough.com/the-
ideation-phase/
Set a goal to achieve and identify a vision to realise
Identify gaps or needs in the market?
Understand the needs of your future customers,
what they look for or troubles they are currently
having with existing services / items or methods.
Search for new niches or emerging technology.
New niches may have some of the highest
potential market. Or changing customers’
behaviour to rely on your product. E.g. Shift from
Blockbuster to Netflix.
Apply personal experience / industry expertise.
Will add considerable value into your idea and
will further make it difficult for competitor to
replicate.
9. Feasibility & Evaluation
Product goal &
purpose
•What sets the product / service apart in the
market.
•The unique selling points must be strong
enough to attract customers away from
competitors.
Market research
•How many may have need for the product /
service
•Identify the right target audience and their
interest.
9
10. Feasibility & Evaluation (2)
Review the
competition
•Evaluate what is already existing in the
market.
•Learn / adapt to what the competitor is
already doing well and determine an effective
entry to the market.
Evaluate
feasibility and
profitability
•What are the required initial investments to
get the business to take-off?
•What revenue model will allow the product /
service to succeed?
•Will customers adopt the product into a
regular habit or usage? This will allow for
projections and trends.
10
12. Whoa! That’s a big number, but what does it say?
12
£196 billion is what start-ups brought
to the economy according to a Virgin report in 2016
In a growing knowledge-based society this is the main
driving force for the economic development and boost of
productiveness. Start-ups are very flexible; thus, they are
the greatest mechanism for commercialising new
products/services.
13. The hidden benefits of entrepreneurship
13
Innovations
New jobs and
economic
growth
New
competitive
dynamics into
the economic
system
Research
and
development
Proactivity
and
initiation
booster
15. Safeguard the business idea
15
Intellectual Property
Economy
and
productivity
boost
instrument
Monopoly
causer
???
Regardless of the criticism for existing businesses, the start-
ups can greatly benefit from the protection of their idea,
which on its own is the first real asset that gets available.
17. How to beat the cheats?
Case Study: Xmi portable speaker
17
Ryan Lee
launches first
portable speaker
in Singapore in
2006
He set a premium
price because of
the high quality
and no matching
product.
Distributors in
Europe are deceived.
Black market for X-
mini replicas
discovered.
Protectionism of the
manufacturing and
logistic process
through innovation
and improvement.
“I’d rather throw my money to the engineers, not to the lawyers. You
innovate faster than your fakes. That’s how you play the technology game”
– Ryan Lee, 2013
18. Place your screenshot here
18
Legal forms
of business
(strengths vs
weaknesses)
Please follow this link for
detailed description.
21. 21
Financial
Objectives
These are the four
main financial
concepts a start-
up should think
about and where
they can be found.
💣
Profitability Efficiency Liquidity Risk
Income
Statement
Balance
Sheet
Cash Flow
statement
Break-Even
Analysis
22. The “money” generation cycle
22
Money retained in
the business
Money leaving
the business
1
Initial capital
investment
2
Buy assets
7
Depreciation
3
Sales
Day-to day
operating costs
Loan interest
and other non-
routine costs
4
Operating profit
Taxation
Withdrawals
and/or dividends
5
Net Profit
6
Retained
Profit
23. There are two sides
of the balance sheet,
which represent the
“double-entry”
bookkeeping where
there has to be a
balance between the
assets (what you
own) on the one
side, and liabilities
(where the money to
fund the assets
comes from) on the
other one.
23
The Balance Sheet
Assets Liabilities
24. How do Cash Flows work?
24
The company could make profits but be short of cash, conversely –
to have cash but without making profits. Cash flow is considered
to be the lifeblood of the company.
To attract more customers, the entrepreneur has to invest in sales
and advertising which can additionally diminish the available cash
resources leading the company into falling in the “Death Valley”
zone or cash-flow deficit.
25. 25
The break-even point
This is the point where the business’s costs have exactly met
the volume of sales, implying that the business hasn’t
incurred a loss, but also hasn’t made a profit.
27. The Open Book Management:
a contemporary approach
The open book management promotes transparency
of information. The people in this system are
appointed with trust for the money-making process
by being exposed to financial statement analyses
and prognoses. This is expected to create:
More engaged employees
Less supervisory costs
Better front-line relationships with customers
Faster approach to changing customer needs
A built-in competitive advantage
A more enjoyable and funnier culture
Higher company valuation
27
29. ““The ability to find and hire
the right people can
make…or brake your
business. It is as plain as
that…
The right people in the
right jobs are instrumental
to a company’s success.”
Michael Dell, founder of Dell
Corporation
29
30. BIG
“Why do people
play a crucial role
for start ups?” –
answered by Steve
Jobs
Please proceed to the
next slide
30
THE
Question
32. Types of contracts
Specification Checklist
This important document helps the entrepreneur to list
the criteria for selection of the candidates into “essential”
and “desirable”. (Click next for example)
Job Description 32
How to find
the most
suitable
team?
Full/Part-
time
Contracts
Regular
Hours/Shift
Work
Salary/
Commission/
Piecework
This is specific for the company and the country where the
business is launched according to the local regulations and
mentality (e.g. IKEA case in US).
Motivation
Education
Work Experience
Skills/Abilities
Personal
Attributes
Personal
Profile
Knowledge
Personal
Characteristics
Personal
Circumstances
Essential
Desirable
33. 33
LET THE SEARCH
BEGIN
Inner Circle Outer Circle
Family, Friends, Fools ? (professional contacts)
After shortlisting the right candidates, the
entrepreneur has to check the level of “shared
cognition” of the applicants. This shows whether
the team members have similar “mental maps”
which is crucial for the effectiveness and
collaboration of the future employees.
35. 35
Why are the team roles important?
Assigning the right
role for the right
person makes the
team members more
motivated to perform
the activity he/she
enjoys and feels most
valuable in.
Please visit www.belbin.com to
discover in depth the research of
Meredith Belbin on team
importance.
37. Before a Business Plan
37
Operating a business
•Capabilities / strengths / weaknesses / knowledge and
experience available
Confirmed the product / service
•Developed from idea to niche, market analysis,
penetration and profitability
Location
•Physical requirements (Space, Staff, Logistics)
•Cost effectiveness of spaces / locations
•Interior and/or exterior spaces
•Visibility, traffic volume and accessibility
•Pros / cons of different site types (malls, storefront, free
buildings)
38. Before a Business Plan (2)
38
Business consultant team
•Gather necessary team of professionals
•E.g. accountant / banker / attorney / others
Financial position
•Availability of funding and support for business to
operate
•Consider: starting capital / loans / credit rating /
investment requirements
39. 39
Forming the Business Plan
•Summary of all elements of
business.
1. Executive
Summary
•An introduction for readers to
understand your company &
business concept.
2. Company
Description
•A snapshot of the industry with
where and how your business
fits into the larger framework.
3. Industry
Analysis
•To evaluate potential market
share. What environment your
business is entering in relation
to market demands and
existing competition.
4. Market and
Competition
12 ordered components covering all areas of business:
40. 40
Forming the Business Plan (2)
•The method on how & where the
business / product / service fit
into the market environment.
Thereby maximising its market
share.
5. Strategies
and Goals
•Description of product / service
and how it ties together with the
Strategies and Goals.
6. Products or
Services
•Marketing method for products /
services and present sales
forecasts based on information
from sections 4, 5 & 6.
7. Marketing
and Sales
•Listing the management team
and staff who will operate all
areas the business.
8. Management
and
Organisation
41. 41
Forming the Business Plan (3)
•Detail how the business is run.9. Operations
•Forecasts of financial
performance for all business
activities.
10. Financial
Performance
•Detailing the types and amount
of assets / funds and financing
required for the completion of
whole business plan. (based on
all previous sections)
11. Financial
Requirement
•Presenting any further case-
studies, information and
supporting documentation which
wouldn’t succinctly fit into other
sections of the business plan.
12. Exhibits
43. 43
Grow & Improve
•What are the key ingredients & factors leading into
future success.
•How to strengthen the business’ market position.
•Identify the golden product / service.
Market edge over the competition
•Clearly define where the business will realistically
intend to be in three years' time?
Overall business aims
44. 44
Grow & Improve (2)
•Income - higher sales, improved margins;
•Customers - new customers, higher ratings of
customer satisfaction;
•Products - enhancing existing products or new
launches;
•Human Resources - sourcing new employees,
promoting new skills.
Identify 5-7 key objectives which will
make a significant improvement.
•Set out clearly what to achieve and specific
time-frames.
Clear targets
•Analyse each business section individually and
construct a step-by-step plan to guide the
business sections.
How these targets will be achieved
45. 45
Marketing & Sales
•High quality and high price versus lower price
points?
•Is it branded as specialist product / service due
to a unique feature?
•What particular selling features does it have?
•Which of these features are focussed on in
branding / marketing?
Position of product / service in the
market?
•Detail how price-sensitive the products / services
are.
•Review each product or market segment.
•Identify where profits are made and where it
may be possible to increase margins or sales.
Set pricing accordingly.
Pricing policy
46. 46
Marketing & Sales
•One or two best working methods per market
segment.
•Any new method should be tested small scale
first. Failed marketing investments may be
costly.
How is the product or service
promoted?
•Compare existing channels with alternatives.
(e.g. Email / Social Media)
•Review competitor’s distribution channels.
•Evaluate the positive and negative trends in
your chosen distribution channel.
Through what channels is the
end user reached?
47. 47
Marketing & Sales
•Cost-efficiency of each selling method. (E.g.
telesales, direct sales force, through an agent /
platform or over the internet.)
•Evaluate all the support, hidden and overhead
costs of each method.
•Identify how long it takes to complete sales (and
secondly to get paid for them).
•What is the average sales value (how to increase
this) and how likely customers are to give repeat
orders.
How is selling done?
48. THANK YOU
FOR THE
ATTENTION!
Now it’s time for some individual
reading of the suggested material.
You will find questions from this
module in the final quiz, thus be
prepared to have your new
knowledge tested.
48
50. References
50
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Belbin, M. (2018). The N ine Belbin Team Roles. Available: https://www.belbin.com/about/belbin -
team-roles/. Last accessed 7th November 2018.
BIS (Department for business in novation and skills). (2011). A Guide To Legal Form Of
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Burns, P (2016). Enlarge Entrepreneurship and S m all Business. 4th ed. United States: Red Globe
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management/?fbclid=IwAR1va9OC0aHKiA-
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through-
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4
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Salamzadeh, A. &. K. H., 2015. S tartup Com panies: Life Cycle and Challenges. [Online]
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Notes de l'éditeur
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33851439
Entrepreneurship is highly beneficial to the economic growth because it makes space for the innovation, which on its own attracts the demand for new products and services. Simultaneously, the demand cannot exist on its own if there is not corresponding supply making the incentives to take risk so important for the development of society (Kressel and Lento, 2007).
According to a Virgin Start-Up report, the UK start-ups add £196 billion to the economy (Clarkson, 2016).
Reference to Shabangu (2014).
Innovations – in a knowledge-based society this is the main driving force for the economic development and boost of productiveness. Start-ups are very flexible; thus, they are the greatest mechanism for commercialising new products/services. In many occasions they hold competitive advantages that large companies have spotted and thus want to add the start-ups to their lines.
New jobs and economic growth – if a country needs to reduce the unemployment levels and increase productivity, then it should invest more in the development of start-ups. These new ventures often cannot be run without a human capital (except technology ones which do not require a lot of workforce), consequently they will offer jobs to the public.
Bringing new competitive dynamics into the economic system – by promoting competition, entrepreneurship creates dynamics in the economic system because individual companies cannot stay stagnant if they want to be successful, which on its own creates a more diligent and healthy market.
Promoting research – start-ups which are part of the knowledge-based services have to continuously engage in research and development activities to be able to stay ahead and bring trends to the market. That could also be a great mechanism for talent discoveries, which supports education and personal development of the young generations.
Bringing the value of proactivity and initiation – entrepreneurship creates a mindset that lays its foundations on personal initiative and creativeness. By having a more engaged and responsible population, countries could be sure they the chance of spillage of talents is less.
The “intellectual property” rights topic has gained the perspective of several parties ranging from it being “boost instrument for the economy and productivity levels” to “causer of monopoly unprotected public interests” (Tian, 2009).
Regardless of the criticism for existing businesses, the start-ups can greatly benefit from the protection of their idea, which on its own is the first real asset that gets available. When searching for ventures and possible partners, the entrepreneur will have to reveal some exclusive information about the future product. Through securing the idea, they could be protected by scrupulous and greedy eyes.
The World Intellectual Property Organisation produces the Guide to Intellectual Property worldwide (available at www.wipo.int).
“I’d rather throw my money to my engineers, not to the lawyers. You innovate faster than your fakes. That’s how you play the technology game.” (Ryan Lee, 2013).
Please read the full case study on the BBC Business website by following this link:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21407916
Table – Reference to Burns (2016).
Full text:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/31676/11-1399-guide-legal-forms-for-business.pdf
Reference to Paul Burns (2016).
The establishment of a corporate governance (responsibility for creating and following a strategy) is a must for companies registered as limited ones. The following three elements are constituting parts of the governance.
The supervision is undertaken by the board of directors who must act in the best interest of the company and the shareholders. Usually, if the funding for the start-up is obtained through equity, then of the requirements is the appointment of a non-executive director. The make a great contribution to the company by incorporating valuable skills and independent and objective perspective.
Probably of the highest eminence for the board is to ensure the prosperous future orientation and development of the company. They should translate the agendas to the rest of the organisation through numerous internal policies. The board should also accommodate the strategic visions and policies according to the present/past performance and potential risks. For additional help, the board could get a reference from the materials published by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) in UK.
Reference to Paul Burns (2016).
The four main financial concepts for a start-up.
Profitability – this is the difference between the sales and the costs. Normally profits are measured by cash, but they can also take a non-monetary form: a sales for which the entrepreneur hasn’t received the payment yet. This puts the business owner in an illiquid position. Consequently, cash is not always an indicator for profit. The profit is found in the income statement.
Efficiency – this objective measures how efficiently is the business using its assets to make profits, or in other words it tells what the quality of the profit is. A good rate is an indicator for creditworthiness. The return must be higher than the interest rate, which justifies the funding the investors are putting in the company. The tension here arise from the aspiration after keeping high levels of efficiency and simultaneously sufficient level of liquidity. The assets could be found in the balance sheet.
Liquidity – it measures the effectiveness of the company to face short-term financial obligations and turn assets into cash to meet them. The most liquid asset is the cash. The estimated inflows and outflows are shown in the cash flow statement. It is a very important document that should be treated with caution because it gives valuable information if they are some liquidity gaps arising (when the cash from sales come in, when the loan payment is taken etc.).
Risk – there are two types of risks measured in the financial statement – operating and financial leverage. The operating one shows what is the intercommunion between the fixed operating costs (rent, lease on a premise – something that is constant most of the time) and the profitability. This level is measured by the break-even point. The financial leverage is the level of interest payment in relation to the profitability. It can be estimated when the borrowing gets compared to the level of total assets. The higher the ratio is, the higher the indicator is that the business is going to make losses if the sales don’t rise.
This document is a snapshot of the current financial state of the company. Itself, it is not designed to predict trends in the long-run, thus a combination of past historic balance sheets and other financial statements can give a more consistent and reliable information. Several ratios could be formed by using data from the balance sheet, such as the deb-to-equity ratio and other capital structure ratios (Investopedia, 2018).
There are two sides of the balance sheet, which represent the “double-entry” bookkeeping where there has to be a balance between the assets (what you own) on the one side, and liabilities (where the money to fund the assets come from) on the other one.
Important to remember that profit does not always mean cash. The company could make profits but be short of cash, conversely – to have cash but without making profits. Cash flow is considered to be the lifeblood of the company. The cash flow is measured when from cash received from sales you subtract the cash expenditure.
When a new business gets set up it takes time and money to buy equipment, stock and the other essentials before the business can even make its first sale. It also takes time before the cash from the sales is collected from the debtors. To attract more customers, the entrepreneur has to invest in sales and advertising which can additionally diminish the available cash resources leading the company into falling in the “Death Valley” zone or cash-flow deficit (Dewhurst, 1993). In this case, if the sales surge without quickly receiving cash from customers (overtrading), then the curve gets deeper.
This is the point where the business’s costs have exactly met the volume of sales, implying that the business hasn’t incurred a loss, but also hasn’t made a profit.
To apply a break-even analysis, the entrepreneur needs to know the following three objectives (Pinson, 2008):
Fixed Costs - All the costs that do not change overtime plus interest expenses.
Variable Costs – costs that change with volume (materials) and direct costs (labour). The sales volume is in direct relation to the costs.
Total sales volumes – projected sales for the period.
The higher the break-even point, the more revenues from sales has to be achieved before the company finally starts making profits. Consequently, the risk also becomes higher. If the break-even point is not estimated to be achieved, then the company is not going to be practical.
Working Capital
The management of the working capital deals with the difference between company’s current assets (cash, account receivables) and current liabilities (account payable). The key to managing this is to not run out of cash and to properly understand the relation between the timing and size of the investments (Longenecker, 2009). This issue shouldn’t be overlooked at the start of the venture, like many entrepreneurs do.
The net working capital consists of the following elements – cash, account receivables, raw materials/inventory (minus current liabilities) and finished goods. The working-capital cycle shows how resources flow through these accounts resulting from the company’s day-to-day operations.
The steps in managing the cycle could be read when you follow this link - https://businessecon.org/2017/02/13/working-capital-cycle/.
VAT
Reference to Business Gateway 2018.
“Value Added Tax” is the tax entrepreneurs have to pay for selling most goods and services. It is compulsory for companies if their sales are higher than the agreed threshold (currently in UK this is 85 000£). It is added to the value of some sales and is paid to the government after collected from customers. Conversely, it could be included in the price of some purchases and then reclaimed back from the government when paid to suppliers.
The open book management promotes transparency of information. The people in this system are appointed with trust for the money-making by being exposed to financial statement analyses and prognoses for a better economics understanding. If they know how to read these numbers and transfer the knowledge into boosting the overall performance, then this shared mutual responsibility will potentially lead to better financial results where everyone has a share of the contribution to it. According to Fotsch and Case (2017) company have a 30% increase in the profitability and productivity in the first year after they adopted and correctly executed this approach.
Apart from creating better results, this way of management benefits the company and its culture in the long-run by building sustainable loyalty and commitment. The same authors have recognised seven strengths and competitive advantage deriving from this method:
More engaged employees
Less supervisory costs
Better front-line relationships with customers
Faster approach to changing customer needs
A built-in competitive advantage
A more enjoyable and funnier culture
Higher company valuation
You are invited to read the descriptions supporting these strengths on the Forbes website by following this link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/fotschcase/2017/07/25/the-business-case-for-open-book-management/#254862225883
A crucial part of the success of a start-up business is finding the right team for your operations. Team members do not only work to meet deadlines, but they bring a lot of skills, capabilities, knowledge and networks which complement the founder’s experience.
To have an industry experience prior to the start-up is very valuable, especially if it comes from a competitive company, because it can bring insights relevant to the industry that are not exhibited in books and papers (e.g. Yahoo! Recruited Marissa Mayer to be their CEO in 2012 after she had a history of previous employment at Google).
Types of contracts
The selection process starts with the identification of the key skills profiles needed for the business – both on operational and functional levels such as marketing, accounting, sales. From a start-up perspective, the entrepreneur has to come up first with the key and most desirable skills from the applicants. Recruiting people with the foundational skills is crucial at the pre-launch level. Here, the entrepreneur could allow himself to create gaps in the posts, until the eventual growth of the business will enable him/her to expand the employee quantity. Here are several bases the employees could be recruited upon:
Full/part-time contracts – not all people want to work full-time, also it could represent a significant amount of the fixed costs section, which the start-up could distribute for better purposes.
Regular hours/shift work – Employees coming from an office environment might prefer the “9 to 5” working scheme, whereas in non-traditional industries, such as hospitality, shift and part-time working is the norm.
Salary/Commission/Piecework – People working full-time/on salary increase the fixed costs of the venture. Sometimes this is inevitable when the entrepreneur wants to attract the “right” person for an important position (e.g. management team). People being part of the sales team will expect their rewards to be based on a commission or bonuses scheme which will stimulate them to sell more to earn more. Other workers, especially in the manufacturing sector, expect the piecework method which pays them for the volume produced.
We can see that the different types of employees needed for the business are attracted through different methods which take into account their primary motivation for involuntary work – the remuneration.
Job Description
Whether to draw a job description by listing the responsibilities and tasks, or not to do so, is a part of the policies of the start-up. This could be a bit problematic for a start-up where the nature of the tasks to be undertaken changes from day-to-day and descriptions should have flexible frames to accommodate such big variations. Despite that, job descriptions should be in correspondence with the specific culture and regulations of the country where the business is about to be launched.
E.G. Swedish company IKEA does not have the policy to give specific job title and description which caused major problems when the company tried to enter the US market. American people are used to clear roles and responsibilities, which forced the Swedish manufacturer to change their selection process in order to meet the local standards and avoid further big staff turnover rate.
Specification List
This important document helps the entrepreneur to list the criteria for selection of the candidates. Depending on the needs of the business, the following suggested checklist could be divided into “desirable” and “essential” skills which set the minimum criteria a prospective employees should meet.
Specification Checklist Example
Personal profile and motivation
Education
Work Experience
Skills/Abilities
Knowledge
Personal attributes (time management etc.)
Personal characteristics (communicative etc.)
Personal circumstances (able to work only weekends etc.)
The process of finding and attracting a new team is not usually very straightforward. The decision whether to join the company or not is theirs, but the responsibility of assuring them in the persuasive benefits of the risky, yet promising business, is upon the shoulders of the entrepreneur. The shortage of initial cash could be compensated with incentives, such as target-linked bonuses, share options and shares (e.g that is how Apple has distributed the ownership in the first stages of the development). Once the entrepreneur determines the reward package, the pursuit for potential team should begin.
Inner Circle (FFF) – the close network of contacts is a good starting point. This includes family, friends, fools or professional contacts are people who are strongly impressed by the idea and are willing to support the business.
Outer Circle – the advertising could take place through the traditional way of using newspapers or nowadays it becoming more popular to take advantage of the booming extension social media has on people’s everyday lives – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram.
After shortlisting the right candidates, the entrepreneur has to make a thorough evaluation which covers not only the requirements and competencies for the specific role but also the level of “shared cognition” of the applicants. This shows whether the team members have similar “mental maps” on viewing the internal and the external environment (Pearce and Conger, 2003). According to researchers, it plays a big role for the understanding on the team effectiveness, dynamics and consensus making by assessing their shared leadership power. Very often the conflict between team members takes two forms – task and relationship. The task conflict is not necessarily a bad thing and it stimulates the creativity process and cooperation, whereas the relationship conflict may erode cohesion and cause negative and irrevocable consequences.
It is not necessarily imperative to find the right person for the role from the first try. It is very much likely that the gaps of professional knowledge and skills, due to lack of experience, could be filled by the additional network with professional advisors. These bodies might include:
Accountants – they can help produce the financial plan, regular financial statements, analyse and interpret results, tax advice, subcontracting for issuing of sales invoices, payroll administration and collection of cash. Very often they have industry financial norms that the entrepreneur could use as benchmark to assess his/her performance/progress.
Lawyers/Attorneys – they can advise on: legal requirements, business licenses and permits; how to protect the idea from being stolen or copied; organise legal contracts with staff partners, suppliers or customers; legal arrangements between shareholders. Good lawyers could be expensive, thus new starters should use their services moderately and wisely.
Business Consultants – they offer advice on marketing and strategic planning, additionally then can help with the construction of the business plan. The governments of certain countries could assign a business consultant to help small firms and stimulate the economy for free. In the UK there are many services offering help and support to SMEs. These are Business Support Helpline in England, Business Gateway in Scotland, Business Wales Helpline in Wales and Invest Northern Ireland in Northern Ireland (UK Government, 2018).
Insurance Agents – such professionals can assist the entrepreneur with different business insurance matters – general liability, employee benefits, various types of coverage for the degree of risk of the business, creation of risk-reduction and minimising programmes, claim issuing.
Bankers – a personal banker will help the entrepreneur to open and maintain a business bank account. He/she will also offer the best package to serve the needs of the business according to the individual situation. A good relationship with the personal banker can help for the future issuing of a loan, business advice or just as a reference.
Technology experts – the hardware and software containing valuable company data should be trusted with an experienced technology expert if the entrepreneur is having difficulties coping with new technology. This service will provide maintenance, troubleshooting, protections and expansion of the system when needed (Lynn, 2015).
In the 1980s Meredith Belbin came up with a theory that identifies three personal orientations, in which the people within a team can fall into other three role subgroups. The model suggests that in order for a team to be efficient and effective, the members must be allocated optimally according to their personality, logic and behaviour (Heinrich and Wall, 2013). Assigning the right role for the right person makes the team member more motivated to perform the activity he/she enjoys most and feels most valuable in. Each of the roles has its driving forces and limitations. They are as follows: Information is taken from the official Belbin website in 2018
Thinking-oriented
Plant – this is the team member who is the ideas’ generator – imaginative, creative and with abstract thinking. However, this big amount of imagination may cause them to be a bit distant and uncommunicative in attempt to express their ideas to the others.
Monitor Evaluator – this is the team’s headquarter. He/she strategic, sober, introverted and knowledgeable. They make deep and thorough analysis of all options by testing huge amounts of data before deciding. Their limitation might be the lack of drive and motivation they awake in others.
Specialist – this is the master of technical knowledge of the team. Passionate, self-started and determined. Nonetheless, their contribution is limited only to a very narrow front and sometimes they can be too picky when it comes to technicalities.
People-oriented
Coordinator – this is the person who allocated the tasks and responsibilities in a group. These people appear as mature, reliable and confident. The decision-making and setting of goals is their strength because of the strong interpersonal skills the coordinators possess. The main downfall of this role is the manipulation they can use to reach the set targets.
Team-worker – the team’s counsellor. He/she is social, tolerant, accommodating, and intuitive of undercurrents. They want to maintain a harmonious working atmosphere and are great diplomats in times of crisis. Their limitation is the indecisiveness.
Resource Investigator – the extroverted team member who is the one with a big record of contacts. They can sense others’ ideas and show them the potential opportunities. Though, they can lose interest and enthusiasm quickly which makes them a bit undisciplined.
Action-oriented
Shaper – the extroverted self-proclaimed task leader who is dynamic, outgoing, finds ways around obstacles and comes up with strong and persuasive arguments, takes action after making promises and can deal accurately under pressure. These members are not among the most liked ones among the team because of the tendency to show bullying behaviour.
Implementer – the conservative, disciplined and trustworthy team member who applies logic and loyalty when converting the idea into an action. Their pain point could be the inflexibility and resistance to change.
Completer-Finisher – this is the person who pays attention to details and makes sure everything is done before the deadlines. The have the amazing ability to spot errors or omissions right away and relentlessly react to mistakes. The major disadvantage is that they are too circumspect, stubborn, can’t let go easily, and don’t like to delegate.
