Enterprise

• Enterprise is a skill where individuals or organisations are prepared to show initiative and take risks in order to make things happen
• Businesses and entrepreneurs look for business opportunities and gaps in markets in order to undertake new ventures
• Innovation involves bringing new ideas to the market, inventing and developing ideas into products
• Entrepreneurs look to come up with new ideas and approaches by thinking creatively
• New ideas often result in new products or processes, or improving existing products
• Innovation is often made possible by new and emerging technologies that allow products or processes to be developed in a completely new or improved way
• Crowdfunding is a method of funding a project by raising money from large numbers of people. Instead of getting institutions or a few very wealthy individuals to contribute large amounts of money, it turns this around by using the internet to get lots of people to contribute small amounts of money
• The project that requires finance is decribed on a website that is run by a crowdfunding organisation which uses different communication methods including social media to raise the money required
• There are different types of crowdfunding:

  • Donations: where people give money because they believe in the cause
  • Equity: where money buys shares in the business
  • Debt: where the money is loaned and then paid back with interest added
• Crowdfunding is made possible by the development of the internet and social media
• Looking to the future, virtual marketing and retailing are areas where enterprising businesses are showing interest
• Virtual marketing uses marketing techniques in which social networks and websites are used to increase brand awareness. It does this by getting websites or users to pass on marketing messages to other websites and users; this hugely increases the messages' visibility and effect
• The retail sector is facing the challange of adapting to trends such as showrooming, where shoppers visit shops to examine a product before buying it online at a lower price, which means consumers go elsewhere to make a purchase
• Retailers are looking to give shoppers a whole retail world to explore in virtual reality by using developing technologies
• Recently, Tesco used the walls of a subway station in Seoul, South Korea to display more than 500 of its most popular products with barcodes which customers could scan using an app on their phone; the products where then delivered directly to customers' homes
• A co-operative is a business owned and self-managed by its workers. Worker-owners work in the business, govern it and manage it; they set production schedules and determine working conditions
• Generally, worker co-operatives have higher productivity than conventional companies, although the difference is quite small
• In most worker co-operatives, all shares are held by the workforce with no outside consumer or consumer owners
• Tech co-operatives have grown out of new technologies. These worker-owned co-operatives provide technical support and consulting to other conpanies with communications and computer technology goods and services
• Fair trade is a movement that was created to help producers in developing countries. Its aim is to achieve fair and better trading conditions and opportunities that promote sustainability
• Fair trade supports the payment of higher prices to exporters in developing countries to improve social and environmental standards
• Fair trade focuses primarily on products which are typically exported from developing countries to developed countries
• The use of social media and its accessibility has enabled organisations to connect with people directly, and has encouraged like-minded people to support the Fair trade movement