Entrepreneurship Notes

Reputation effects include brand awareness and perception. Customers often prefer to buy from companies with which they have had successful transaction in the past, or companies they know well via friends, family, or companies with effective branding effects. Focus on serving new customers in new ways to make the reputation of the existing competitors irrelevant. Marketing is everything from product design, development, advertising, promotion, distribution and pricing. The brand is what remains after the marketing has swept through the room. It is what sticks in your mind associated with a product, service, or organization. Dimensions of brand equity: 1. Brand awareness: familarity with the brand 2. Perceieved quality: based on desired features 3. Brand associations: connects the customer to the brand 4. Brand loyalty: bond or tie to the brand Ways to build brand equity: 1. Create and communicate your image 2. Build awarenness and familarity 3. Build associations: name, logo, de...

Complementary assets involve tangible (money, equipment, real estate etc.) and intangible (knowledge, relationships etc.) resources. Patents or brands may sit between the tangible and intangible categories. You have advantage over competitors when you have strong knowledge, relationships and financial capital. Beware of starting a company in an area where the company with the most money wins: a large companies with more money may enter a space later and dominate that market. Instead, compete where knowledge and relationships are key resources of competitive advantage. This blog post is based on my learnings from the course on ‘entrepreneurship’ offered by Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute, University of Maryland through Coursera (2014).

The learning curve refers to the speed of learning something new. What you know today, your interests, commitment and availability of resources to learn new things has influence on learning curve. As a novice entrepreneur, you may not start at the same point in the learning curve as an established company - due to their past operations, they've moved up the learning curve through trial and error, research, lessons learned etc. To minimize the gap between your knowledge and your your competitors' knowledge, pursue entrepreneurial ideas in new industries and seek new markets. This blog post is based on my learnings from the course on ‘entrepreneurship’ offered by Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute, University of Maryland through Coursera (2014).

Sustainable competitive advantage - is achieved when a venture has implemented a strategy that other companies do not duplicate. - can only be maintained until competitors are able to duplicate or develop a substitute. - requires a full complement of commitments, decisions, and actions by the entrepreneurs. The five competitive forces that determine industry profitability by Michael Porter: 1. Potential entrants: threat of new entrants 2. Bargaining power of suppliers 3. Bargaining power of buyers 4. Threat of substitute products or services 5. Rivalry among existing firms This blog post is based on my learnings from the course on ‘entrepreneurship’ offered by Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute, University of Maryland through Coursera (2014).