...JOHN SMITH 1 Global Place, Box XXXX, Glendale, AZ, 85306; 555.333.8666; student@global.thunderbird.edu October 12, 2010 Toyota Motor Sales USA 19001 S Western Ave Torrance, CA 90501 Dear Hiring Manager: “Betsy.” This is the name my mom has given her 2010 Toyota Prius. She loves this car as do I because I get to drive my mom around in it when I visit her. The time spent together has generated memories that I will always carry with me. And, that’s why I want to work for Toyota. It’s a brand that brings people together with products that deliver lasting customer satisfaction. I am a MBA candidate at Thunderbird School of Global Management and I am interested in Toyota’s Strategic Resources Track internship that’s offered this summer. Toyota is defining the category and I want to bring my education and ten years of advertising experience to expand Toyota’s leadership position. I offer Toyota a passion for growing brands. In my advertising career I directed the success of regional and global brands and learned how to translate market data into strategies that delivered results. Additional skills relevant to this internship are listed below. Strategic Analysis I directed a team that positioned the fourth largest credit union in the U.S., BECU, as a financial leader in a highly competitive marketplace. Through analyzing our target audience and the financial category I identified insights that built a differentiated strategy. The advertising campaign that subsequently launched...
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...Three Pillars Essay Grand Canyon University: UNV 504 Innovation and Entrepreneurship June 10, 2014 Three Pillars Essay In his video Ken Blanchard, discusses the three pillars of business; servant leadership, innovation and entrepreneurial spirit (Blanchard, 2011). Servant leadership is not being a servant to those that you work with, it is offering direction and vision with stated goals. It sets a platform for all employees to know where the company is headed, while focusing energy on the set goal. It requires that both management and employees live according to the vision with customers being the primary focus. Servant leadership if done correctly draws out the innovation in employees. It asks people to bring their ideas to work and put on their thinking caps to move towards better practices, efficient processes and more satisfied customers. It allows for the entrepreneurial spirit in employees to be developed. Employees not only become a part of the process for development and innovation, but partners in the business. They have a personal stake in the company which can build long term loyal employees working to sustain and grow for the customer, themselves and the business. Although servant leadership focuses on others and needs of the whole in most cases there could be some shortcomings to servant leadership. According to Lynch and Friedman servant leaders might easily focus more on the needs of the followers than the needs of the organization as a whole or considering...
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...Garine Benian Wednesday/ 3:00 10-29-14 Creativity in Business Case Study 1 (pg.35): 1. Prior to starting the EET, what types of things did Michael and Sheena do to help themselves build entrepreneurial knowledge/skills? * Michael and Sheena attended New York University, majoring in management and marketing and communication studies respectively. Prior to this Michael started their own web development company with a partner while he was still in high school. He honed his skills on increased his knowledge of starting and running a small business in the process. Sheena displayed a desire to be independent by establishing her own financial independence at the age of 17. She also funded her own college education, showing a strong work ethic and desire to succeed. While attending college she worked at a venture capital company thus giving her the opportunity to learn entrepreneurial skills. Sheena also taught at a non-profit organization that further increased her educational skills. 2. What motivated Michael and Sheena to start the EET? * They wanted to help college students realize their dreams through entrepreneurship. Michael and Sheena needed to find a way to increase sales and profitability in order to sustain this venture as a viable business. To do this he saw an opportunity in public speaking while promoting his manifesto and formed the EET. 3. How did Michael and Sheena determine that the EET was a sound idea? Did they use a feasibility analysis...
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...Discuss which of the first four (4) stages of organizational growth presents the greatest single challenge and why. The first four stages characterize the period from inception of a new venture to the attainment of organizational maturity. This period includes the development of an entrepreneurship through the stage when the firm becomes a professionally managed firm. Stage III professionalization would the greatest single challenge because an organization must never lose its entrepreneurial mind set or spirit, but it must begin to develop the infrastructure and professional management systems required to facilitate its future growth. This a delicate balancing act. If an entrepreneurship is carried to an extreme in large companies, it can result in chaos, and chaos ultimately leads to organizational difficulties and even bankruptcy. (Flamholtz & Randle, 2007) The entrepreneurial personality can be a barrier to success at Stage III. Making the transition from an entrepreneurship to professional management involves more than just the development of operational and management systems. It requires a profound mind-set change on the part of people, especially the founders—the entrepreneurs. This transition may be a difficult task for entrepreneurs because they may fear of becoming “bureaucratic” and then confuse bureaucracy with systems. Some of this is deeply rooted in their personalities; they do want to be controlled by anyone or anything—not plans, not role descriptions...
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...The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Strategies for Continuously Creating Opportunity in an Age of Uncertainty Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian C. MacMillan Executive Summary * Successful executives will learn to master uncertainty through the skills of entrepreneurial leadership * This calls for different disciplines than in conventional management * There are five key elements: * Creating a climate supporting continuous search for opportunity * Framing * Stocking an opportunity register * Focus * Promoting adaptive execution Entrepreneurial leadership: The most important job Although uncertainty might cause many to freeze, it can be used to your benefit. Uncertain situations are full of new opportunities. Your task is to continuously identify high-potential business opportunities and exploit these opportunities with speed and confidence. Thus, uncertainty can become your ally, not your enemy. Entrepreneurial leaders are distinguished from other managers by their personal practices. These fall into three categories: setting the work climate, orchestrating opportunity-seeking and moving particular ventures forward personally. * Climate setting practices create a pervasive sense of urgency for everyone to work on new business initiatives. Dedicate a disproportionate share of your own time, attention and discretionary resources to finding and supporting new business models. Gary Wendt, who drove massive growth at General...
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...Three Pillars Essay Shacola Columbus Grand Canyon University: UNV 504 Innovation and Entrepreneurship December 24, 2014 The college of business has three very distinctive pillars that help the college of business move a positive direction. The three pillars are servant leadership, entrepreneurial spirit, and innovation these are pillars that the college base there learning on. While looking at all three pillars you can see how they all play a role with each other. The first pillar were actually go in depth into is servant leader. Servant leader is finding out what the people needs and putting them first. Servant leaders help others and also meet their environment need that’s located around them. A servant led environment wants individuals to include their ideas and how they feel. In the article Leadership Excellence by Barrett, Colleen explains how to treat people and shows the power of a servant led organization. Colleen looks at the most important priorities in customer service, is to follow the golden rule. She encourages people to follow the golden rule treat people like they would want to be treated, and then everything else will fall into place. Having a positive and motivating environment will rub off to the customers and something positive will arise from it (Barrett, 2011). The next pillar that comes along with servant leader is innovation. Innovation comes from a servant leaders environment; in this type of environment its helps the individuals...
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...Strategic Entrepreneurship Introduction: In this article, the main topic that is covered relates to precisely how strategic and entrepreneurial management are both combined and unified as a single management function. That is, Strategic Entrepreneurship which is a term vaguely coined by many describes the constant need of mangers focusing on objectives such as finding new business opportunities and taking advantage of creating short-term competition. An expectation of meeting such objectives creates a problem that is caused by having a select few elements of strategic management and entrepreneurship that overlap each other. Due to the general obscure understanding of how both strategic management and entrepreneurship are related, many studies have been conducted in order to better define Strategic Entrepreneurship. The article notes that in recent time, only one study goes to show a conceptual model of SE (Ireland 2003), but lacking in formulating a feedback loop between strategic management and entrepreneurship. Even though SE can be defined as simultaneous pursuit of opportunities and strategic advantages, the model presented by most early studies failed to pinpoint the correlation between the two. Due to the fact that SE is a new field of study, the article reviews all information on entrepreneurship, strategic management, and strategic information in order to determine the origin of SE, find the locus of integration, highlight the common components or elements, and...
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...and Steel business. One of the big projects on the pipeline is Tanjung Benoa Toll Road in Bali. First of all HK Aston is a newly startup company set up in 2009 with mission to differentiate services and bring more value to the industry towards better services as a group of businesses. Main purpose setting up subsidiary company with core business of specific services is to gain focus in asphalt services which value added perceive values. HK Aston business operation is still active during the process of spin off from division under Operation Directorate to become full fledge company. Even though setting up a good foundation of strong business need more than just a legal documentation and given business, moreover they must have a strong entrepreneurial spirits towards vision of the new company. In this case Budi will have to manage the three basic questions, “where are we now”, “where do we want to be” and “How to get there”. Those 3 questions will manage the expectation of action to be taken. Budi saw HK Group trust him and the new company plenty of resources ready to be maximize and also a fruitful connection to be explored. Similar with that on the risk side Budi also facing big risk of big projects outside APBN (Anggaran Perencanaan...
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...Smart Union is a Chinese toymaker located in Dongguan province. It was founded by Tony Wu and was emblematic of the rise of the manufacturing power of China. “Its orders, factories and employees steadily increased in number, and a web of suppliers grew up around it.” Mr. Wu had experience in the toy industry before founding Smart Union, and used his knowledge and entrepreneurial skills and established his own mainland factory in 1997. Within ten years, with clients such as Mattel and Disney, the firm was able to go public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and raise HK$53 million (US$7m). The firm had all of the factors of production going its way: land in mainland China; a large population of cheap labor; plenty of capital and the entrepreneurial ability of Mr. Wu. As all of these things started to go well for the firm, problems arose. “China began to overheat in 2007.” Attendant with the rise in profits, across all of China, the cost of labor started to increase. As there were more competitors vying to supply the same goods to Smart Union’s customers, the prices of their raw materials along with the rest of the production costs for its toys (namely electricity and oil). Further, most of Smart Unions goods were sold to American firms and thus paid for in American dollars. As the yuan appreciated in value, the firm’s profits were squeezed. Also, customers were taking advantage of the increase in suppliers of toys and made “tougher bargains with small...
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...The past thirty years have witnessed the most powerful emergence of entrepreneurial activity in the world. Entrepreneurs are now described as aggressive catalysts for change in the world of business; individuals who recognize opportunities where others see chaos, contradiction, or confusion. They have been compared to Olympic athletes challenging themselves to break new barriers, to longdistance runners dealing with the agony of the miles, to symphony orchestra conductors who balance the different skills and sounds into a cohesive whole, or to top-gun pilots who continually push the envelope of speed and daring. The U.S. economy has been revitalized because of the efforts of entrepreneurs, and the world has turned now to free enterprise as a model for economic development. The passion and drive of entrepreneurs move the world of business forward as they challenge the unknown and continuously create the future (Kuratko, 2002). Several methods have been used to measure the impact of entrepreneurial ventures on the economy—for example, efforts to start a firm (which may not be successful), incorporation of a firm (which may never go into business), changes in net tax returns filed (reflecting new filings minus filings no longer received), and a substantial amount of full-time and part-time self-employment. According to the Small Business Administration, 672,000 new businesses were created in 2005; the largest in US history (even 12% higher than the...
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...External/Internal Factors Paper Diversity is one of the most important things at The Home Depot. It is the catalyst for innovative thinking, entrepreneurial spirit and new ways of building our communities. To this end The Home Depot uses creativity, fresh thinking, and the experiences of people from different cultures and beliefs. The Home Depot believes that talent comes in many different forms and they celebrate each and every talent, because every talent is cultivated and is considered to be the foundation of our culture in America. At The Home Depot, the executive management team is responsible for diversity and creates a culture that welcomes every associate. The company encourages people from diverse backgrounds in all levels of management, and managers are accountable for attracting diverse candidates. The Home Depot realizes that as they continue to grow locally and globally, they will increasingly need for their associates to continue contributing to their efforts. The Home Depot values diversity because it offers a competitive advantage, makes the company a better place to work; and they can understand better their diverse customers’ needs in this way. The Home Depot gives customers better service and deliver. At The Home Depot, Managers are committed to creating a diverse work environment and in these circumstances all employees are included, respected, supported and encouraged associates to do the best work. The Home Depot recognizes with pride the uniqueness...
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...I vividly remember the moment I feel in love with the idea of being an entrepreneur. It was shortly after moving to Silicon Valley, while watching Mark Zuckerberg and Jim Breyer on the Harvard to Facebook lecture by Stanford Technology Venture Program's Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Seminars. During that podcast, I realized that with an idea and the right vision anything is possible. It is this conviction to take a risk to follow your dreams that is at the core of entrepreneurship. Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines entrepreneurship as "the of organization, management, and assumption the risks of a business or enterprise." Yet, this definition makes entrepreneurship seem like a set of actions instead of a mindset. In my opinion, entrepreneurship is not a prescribed set of actions. Following the beaten path does not make one entrepreneurial. Actually, it is the disregard of what is conventional that gives a person an innovative edge. From an etymological point-of-view, the word entrepreneur is based on the Sanskrit word "Antha Prerna," which in translation means "self-motivated." Self-motivation is the hallmark of an entrepreneur. Self-motivation is the x-factor, separating those who have the entrepreneurial mindset from others who are trapped in the conventional way of thinking. Self-motivation is not an ability, but a desire to reach for something greater. Something much larger than oneself. The late Steve Jobs captures this with his famous comment toward an employee: "We're...
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...well as around the globe are starting to develop an Entrepreneurship approach in their businesses. Here is a brief summary that identifies some of the entrepreneurial actions that organizations use to create opportunities for innovation. Independent Action Organization can benefit by allowing and encouraging individual employees or teams of employee’s to be creative and pursue new ideas or visions for the organization (Bateman, Bateman, Snell & Snell, 2012). Risk taking Organizations that are willing to take risks and financially invest in new products and ventures, puts them in the position to launch new ideas into their own markets or create new untapped markets before competitors that tend to stay on a proven path are able to do (Bateman et al., 2012). Proactive Organizations that are proactive in addressing potential problems that may arise and see all the possible opportunities are able to create new markets before organizations that tend to be reactive instead of proactive (Bateman et al., 2012). Competitive Aggressiveness Action oriented organizations are driven to take over a market and capitalize quickly. This allows the company to expand and make opportunities for themselves before their competitors in the marketplace (Bateman et al., 2012). Companies that promote entrepreneurial culture, empower employees to pursue new ideas, take risk backing those ideas, are proactive in their actions and are then able to be highly competitive...
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...IT Makes Cents 99 Cents had an enormous advantage as a pioneer in the one-price field. It was a great risk for David Gold to integrate a new technology to the vision of maintaining massive floor spaces satisfying demand. Now their IS plays a strategic role in identifying, distributing, and inventory control on all of their items. The system is able to alert officers in real time when large discounts are happening. The IS tells the floor workers which bins to fill up while staying away from overstocking. Robert Adams had the right mindset when researching for a system that would support all of 99 Cents activities. This system had to be complete, accurate, and economical which gave them great competitive advantage as the system was constantly generating relevant useful information. This relevant information was the reason why David Gold trusted Robert Adams so much, if the information was not used towards return on investment, the system had to be modified to serve its purpose. It was not clear whether 99 Cent stores were using their own transportation or shipping company, but I am pretty sure they utilized information from their ERPs regarding shipping of items combined with GISs to pinpoint the exact location of shipment. This way 99 Cents managers could tell their customers when and where to expect an item. For example, at the Beverly Hills store management could not afford to make customers dissatisfied at any level and managers would have...
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...Course description and outline The Ice House Entrepreneurship Program is a unique and powerful online learning program designed to inspire and engage participants in the fundamental concepts of an entrepreneurial mindset and the unlimited opportunities it can provide. The overall objective is to empower learners through entrepreneurial thinking and immerse them in entrepreneurial experiences that will enable them to develop entrepreneurial skills. Inspire, Inform and Involve This highly interactive program enables participants to learn from the first-hand experience of successful real-world entrepreneurs. Drawing on the eight life-lessons described in the book, the program combines narrated chalkboard presentations with video interviews and case studies featuring modern-day examples of those who, like Clifton’s Uncle Cleve, have triumphed over hardship and adversity by embracing an entrepreneurial mindset. In addition to the narrated chalkboard presentations, each lesson includes individual learning assessments, discussion topics and assignments that are designed to maximize comprehension and assimilation while encouraging real-world application of the core concepts. The course also includes access to a vibrant online entrepreneurial learning community, a virtual campus that enables participants and facilitators to share their knowledge and experience with other entrepreneurs and educators within their own communities as well as others across the country and...
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