Resource and Competence (Internal) View vs. Environment and Market (External) View When Defining a Business

Abstract

Startups is a popular phenomenon that has a significant impact on global economy growth, innovation and society development. However, there is still insufficient understanding about startups, particularly, how to start a new business in the relation to consequent performance. Toward this knowledge, we have performed an empirical study regarding the differences between a Resource and Competence View (Internal) vs Environment and Market View (External) when defining a Business. 701 entrepreneurs have reflected on their startups on nine classes of Resources (values, vision, personal objectives, employees and partners, buildings and rental contracts, cash and credit, patents, IPR's and brands, products and services and finally revenues and grants) and three elements of the Business Mission ("KeyContribution", "KeyMarket" and "Distinction"). It seems to be a tendency to favour the Internal View over the External View. This tendency is clearer in Stable Economies (Europe) than in Emerging Economies (South Africa). There seems to be a co-variation between the tendency to favour the Internal View and the tendency to focus on adding Resources. Finally, we found that an order-based analysis seems to explain the differences between the two views better than a number-based method.

Fundamentals of Software Startups

“…Since the release of Shane and Venkamatarans famous article "the promise of entrepreneurship as a science" in 2001, a host of new and modern publications have come out describing an entrepreneurial persona or archetype. This persona is behaving radically differently from the rational financial actor in classic economics: Firstly, the entrepreneur is most often starting with a resource view rather than a market view [10]. This means that the starting point of entrepreneurship is to "find and exploit opportunities" based on entrepreneurs' own skills, assets and network rather than looking for opportunities based on imperfections in the market.…”

“…In many areas of the world, and in many vertical industries, however, entrepreneurship is motivated by the lack of other meaningful employment alternatives. In developing economies, traditional employment opportunities are few and far between, and we also see a large number of "art entrepreneurs" emerging [10]. These are "microentrepreneurial" projects started by people who have no other ambition than to make a living for themselves from their talents.…”

A dynamic and a static approach to the business model - Investigating the potential difference in business model focus

“…The elements are; KeyContribution, KeyMarket, Distinction, EarlyMarketCustomer, UniqueValueProposition, ProductFeature, Partner, HowToSell and HowToGetPaid, and they contain similar information as the Business Model Canvas and Lean Canvas. We refer to Dahle et al [1], [2] for a thorough description of their development and what they encompass. A sample have been constructed to represent a static approach and a dynamic approach to using the nine business model elements in the Entrepreneurship Platform.…”

“…Making decisions and taking actions necessary to realize what is described in the canvas is what should cause success. As mentioned in the introduction, Lean Business combines these two tools in their Entrepreneurship Platform, which provides a visual tool with a defined terminology [1], [2] a canvas available for startups and entrepreneurs.…”