MKT3026 Opportunity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Assignment Sample

• Subject Code : MKT3026
• University : University of Northampton My Assignment Services is not sponsored or endorsed by this college or university.
• Subject Name : Entrepreneurship

Theory of Opportunity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Table of Contents

Introduction

Entrepreneur profile

Theory of innovation and opportunity

The business concept

Conclusion

Reference List

Introduction

Entrepreneurship can be defined as the capacity or capability to run a small business or capacity of managing a business venture along with any risks of getting profit. An entrepreneur is a person starts that organisation and takes risks based on an initiative to make a profit. In the 19th-century, French economist Jean Baptiste put forward the significance of entrepreneurship in terms of how it shifts economic resources and leads to higher productivity and greater yield. Entrepreneur creates something new, something different which makes them different with values.

Entrepreneurs are not job seekers, but they are the person who gives opportunities to people for their better lifestyle. The current governmental system also provides better conditions for an entrepreneur to make their start-up successful. Entrepreneurship also helps in decreasing unemployment and helps in busting the economy of the country. The current study evaluates the organisation of Pure Planet; one of most recognisable clean energy start ups within the UK and conducts an extensive research on the entrepreneurs behind the venture.

Entrepreneur Profile

Andrew Ralston is co-founder and chief executive of a start-up named Pure Planet. Since 1999 he was with a telecommunication company named T-Mobile and while he was satisfied with his employment at the company, the vision for Pure Planet was always there. The clean energy venture eventually came about with partners Steven Day and Chris Alliott, and the company has made commendable progress over the past few years (Purepla.net 2020). One of the key skills for an entrepreneurship to be successful relates to an efficient understanding of business process.

Andrew and his partners knew what they wanted to achieve with Pure Planet, and this certainly benefitted the company in its journey. Customer experience and product management are also key imperatives within the modern business environment, especially in terms of competing with larger and more established players (Arquero-Avilés et al. 2019). Pure Planet was extremely good at managing their products and take on the challenge of establishing their foothold with a customer oriented approach.

They started the UK's first digital-only clean energy supply and aimed to make a revolution in the UK market by supplying renewable power to consumers at cheaper prices. Competitive pricing was one of the key fundamentals behind Pure Planet, and this was primarily achieved with minimal mark-ups. The aim was to ensure that consumers had access to clean and renewable energy, and this eventually saw the company tie up with large scale players such as BP among others. Innovation and capitalising on market opportunities is another key requirement for ventures to be successful in the long run (Yang 2018). Pure Planet was certainly able to internalise the same through an incremental approach towards innovation, and this led the company to quickly gain a fair amount of presence within a short period. It would be important to discuss the theoretical underpinnings related to innovation, as they are extremely relevant when considering the success of Pure Planet.

Theory of Innovation and Opportunity

Several theories have been developed over the years that have progressively highlighted the importance of innovation within entrepreneurship and its subsets. One of the most prominent theories is the diffusion theory of innovation, which helps to identify the ways that influence the rate of adoption of an innovation (Huang et al. 2017). According to this theory, the main aspects that affect the distribution of new ideas or innovation are time, communication, and social system. Schumpeter's theory of innovation is also another widely acknowledged theorised perspective, which tells us about how a cyclical process is almost mandatory to obtain results from innovation in the organisation, both industrial and commercial (Witt 2016). By innovation, we can see the changes in the methods of production, execution, and transportation. Pure Planet was able to internalise the innovation process, and managed to take advantage of the opportunities based on certain key strategic direction.

Market research is arguably the first step to ascertain the innovation requirements within a company (Ind et al., 2017). The company managed to engage in thorough measures of analyses, where the key highly was to determine what the best companies were doing in conventional as well as clean energy. Surging trends that typically have strong momentums within market systems were also accommodated holistically by Pure Planet. Furthermore, Ralston and his partners also managed to obtain feedback from customers to facilitate improvements in the future.

The entrepreneurship innovation theory is also pertinent to the business success of Pure Planet, which essentially deals with the launch of a new product or an upgraded version of an existing product. One of the key fundamentals in this regard relate to the application of new methods of sales or production (Larsson 2017). The key objective was to offer greater value to the end users and the customers while limiting the price points associated with the value.

Considering the nature of operations within Pure Planet, the innovation theory is well aligned with the concept of environmental protectionism. Pure Planet is a digital and renewable energy supplier that strived to create a sustainable future. The innovation has a central focus on providing a cent percent renewable energy that would not entail any form of carbon footprint. The innovation of Pure Planet has zero mark-ups, which allows for competitive pricing.

Naturally, the socially driven innovation approach inherently led to business success for the company and the entrepreneurs behind it, while also allowing for a strong consumer appeal. The key opportunity that Pure Planet was able to capitalise on was the growing concerns regarding the environmental degradation caused by conventional fuels and resource intensive industries that used these fuels (Covert et al, 2016). While the R&D costs were significant, the returns have been impressive by all means, and the success ofthe company has also ushered in a wave of agile and highly adaptive organisations that are beginning to focus on the green energy industry.

The Business Concept

Entrepreneurship is an act of starting own business and start-up rather than working within other businesses. They have to deal with many obstacles, with the most prominent issue relating to the concept of sustainability. The concept is that it is an idea that gives a strategy, plans, or designs its meaning, purpose, direction, and depth. Entrepreneurship in the modern era can be used for financial gain that is usually focused on a product or service that can be offered for money while simultaneously maintaining the ethics of a business ecosystem (Dupus 2018).

The properties for a perfect business concept are innovative, unique, problem-solving, and profitable. Innovation within Pure Planet was primarily aligned with creating new ideas and emphasizing on new product development through continual research. Innovation was the centralised theme within the business, and it allowed Pure Planet to gradually mark its presence within the British clean energy industry.

The modern era has witnessed a steady depletion in fossil fuel reserve, which has subsequently led to a larger demand for renewable sources. This is where the business concepts of start-ups like Pure Planet come into the picture, where the emphasis on capitalising on the opportunity and driving customer satisfaction through incremental innovation are the key fundamentals. The business concept behind this start-up Pure Planet is essentially aligned with the provision of renewable power which is eco-friendly as well as cheap. The best thing about this concept is that its fuel is free, there is no cost of raw materials but there is less efficient as compared to other sources of energy (Newberry 2016). This renewable power can be produced with the help of carious sources such as solar plants, wind plants, tidal plants, and biogas plants.

The model implemented by Pure Planet was essentially to offer electricity to consumers within the UK without any mark ups, as charged by the existent suppliers that ran on conventional energy sources. While the renewable aspect certainly benefitted the company’s appeal, the emphasis on social development and environmental protection only improved Pure Planet’s chances at success in a progressive manner. Pure Planet will provide zero mark-ups that tell that fair price and they do not mark-up the cost of energy.

This also provides a concept of zero guilt which tells it provides a hundred percent electricity and with maximum carbon offsets. The main motto of the organization is to save time, save money, and save the planet. The concept is to go greener, cheaper. As of 2019, Pure Planet produced 80.5 percent of their energy with the help of windmills and 19.5 per cent with the help of layered solar panels (Theswitch.co.uk 2020). Along with the convenience offered in terms of the reduced prices, Pure Planet also strived to improve awareness among the consensus regarding how green energy was mandatory to sustain human life on the planet in the coming decades and how the dependence on fossil fuels would have to be curtailed gradually.

The UK energy grid is already around 33 per cent of renewable energy. Governments around the world are now trying to focus on clean sources of energy, especially when concerning how it leads to environmental sustainability along with economic stability over a prolonged period (Zhang et al. 2020). The only disadvantage of these renewable sources of energy is that it has less efficiency as compared to non-renewable sources of energy. As we know solar energy has the efficiency of a maximum of 20-25 per cent in typical cases (Theswitch.co.uk 2020). As of 2019, Pure Planet increased its customer number to one million. Naturally, business concepts such as the one implemented by Pure Planet have increasingly become viable both in terms of an entrepreneurial venture as well as a sustainable organisation that has limited to no carbon footprint.

The modern world has witnessed the population grow day by day, which has subsequently led to a higher demand for energy and power. Fossil fuel depletion coupled with rapid environmental degradation has significantly compelled organisation to take up their business functions keeping in mind the environmental impacts entailed therein (Zhang et al. 2017). Ralston and his partners through the entrepreneurial venture of Pure Planet essentially tried to solve this problem and fulfil the needs of consensus through clean energy. The theory of innovation puts forward that product or market development must be cause driven and should never be based on the aspect of profitability (Bahaj et al. 2020).the business model implemented by Pure Plane through an entrepreneurial venture has largely found success based on adhering to a cause based innovation, where the benefits are extended onto both the end users and consumers along with the general society at large.

Competing with large scale players that have been established for over hundreds of years was certainly a difficult ordeal, and Ralston managed to holistically address the issue while up keeping the environmental implications at the forefront of his entrepreneurial venture. The UK comprised of a climate that was conducive towards power generation based on wind energy (Bahaj et al. 2020). Pure Planet managed to identify the same and this was the major factor as to how the company was able to generate over 80% of its energy through highly advanced and modernised windmill systems. The Zero hero campaign started by Pure Planet has also been acknowledged throughout the country, which essentially propagated that zero carbon emissions was the way forward in the future.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it was identified that the Pure Planet entrepreneurial venture was largely based on an environmental cause based approach towards innovation that strived to offer clean and green energy to the British consensus. Initiated by Andrew Ralston and his partners, the venture was found to be one of the most rapidly growing green energy organisations within the country comprising of partnerships with large scale corporations such as British Petroleum. Additionally, the theories of innovation including the diffusion theory and Schumpeter’s innovation theory were also found to be highly relevant towards the business model implemented by Pure Planet. Market opportunities and their capitalisation was another key highlight in this regard, and the venture was identified as a success driven company that focused on the needs of the consumers in the most holistic manner possible.

Reference List

Arquero-Avilés, R., Baker, E., Bieraugel, M., Bird, N.J., Boisvenue-Fox, M., Buwule, R.S., Crowe, K., Crumpton, M.A., Pothier, W.G., Gwynn, D. and Harper, J. 2019. Supporting Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

Bahaj, A.S., Mahdy, M., Alghamdi, A.S. and Richards, D.J. 2020. New approach to determine the Importance Index for developing offshore wind energy potential sites: Supported by UK and Arabian Peninsula case studies. Renewable Energy, 152, pp.441-457

Covert, T., Greenstone, M. and Knittel, C.R. 2016. Will we ever stop using fossil fuels?. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 30(1), pp.117-38.

Dupuis, A.2018. Entrepreneurship: New perspectives in a global age. London: Routledge.

Huang, P.C., Hou, C.C. and Chen, J.S. 2017. Analyzing the Trust Mechanism of the Sharing Economy Based on Innovation Diffusion Theory and Innovation Resistance Theory. Management Review, 36, pp.123-137.

Ind, N., Iglesias, O. and Markovic, S., 2017. The co-creation continuum: From tactical market research tool to strategic collaborative innovation method. Journal of Brand Management, 24(4), pp.310-321.

Larsson, L. 2017. Characteristics of production innovation (Doctoral dissertation, Luleå University of Technology).

Newbery, D.M. 2016. Towards a green energy economy? The EU Energy Union’s transition to a low-carbon zero subsidy electricity system–Lessons from the UK’s Electricity Market Reform. Applied Energy, 179, pp.1321-1330.

Purepla.net, 2020. home. Available at: https://purepla.net/ (Accessed: 19 May 2020).

Theswitch.co.uk, 2020. Pure Planet Energy: Review, App, Tariffs & Contact. Available at: https://theswitch.co.uk/energy/providers/pure-planet (Accessed: 19 May 2020).

Witt, U. 2016. How evolutionary is Schumpeter's theory of economic development?. In Rethinking Economic Evolution. United Kingdom: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Yang, M. 2018. International entrepreneurial marketing strategies of MNCs: Bricolage as practiced by marketing managers. International Business Review, 27(5), pp.1045-1056.

Zhang, Y.J., Peng, Y.L., Ma, C.Q. and Shen, B. 2017. Can environmental innovation facilitate carbon emissions reduction? Evidence from China. Energy Policy, 100, pp.18-28.

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