Resources When Starting a Business
Entrepreneur Research Skills
Written by Samuel Muriithi for Gaebler Ventures
No small enterprise can prosper if the entrepreneur is inept at decision-making. To make the most effective business decisions you require entrepreneurship research skills to better understand what each unique situation involves and demands.
Did you think you were done researching when you walked across the stage at graduation?
Research is a key element of entrepreneurial success. Here are situations that demand the entrepreneur research and learn about all aspects of their business.
1. The entrepreneur must summon some entrepreneurship research skills and go out into the market to establish the nature of his/her business' customers' needs. Doing so will also reveal the market segment(s) that can be tackled for optimal business performance.
2. Entrepreneurship research skills are required when a small enterprise owner needs to grasp an opportunity, tackle a business problem or challenge, adapt to changes, or substantiate a judgment. The entrepreneur may actually know of the existence of a given opportunity but he/she will need factual proof to convince other parties including financiers. It is only through conducting research that an entrepreneur will have concrete arguments in support of business changes he/she intends to make.
3. When a small enterprise is considering carrying out a feasibility study and evaluation of new products and services that can be introduced, entrepreneurship research skills will come in handy. In this case the skills will be useful for informing the nature of test experiments to be undertaken and on what scale these will be done.
4. The entrepreneur may have a need to acquire new knowledge about a prospective opportunity so as to be able to make arrangements to muster the required resources. In such a situation entrepreneurship research skills will help in establishing and clarifying the size and nature of the opportunity as well as the different sources of raw materials. With this knowledge having been acquired the entrepreneur will be better placed and informed to evaluate the feasibility of the opportunity.
5. Research is needed when the intervention of specialists is deemed necessary. This particular situation often starts with some research work being done to examine and explore local business possibilities some of which may be outside the SE owner's current scope. The next phase of things will require the entrepreneur to make a close examination of the domestic situation with an aim to identify how best a given opportunity can be harnessed. The prudent move in this case may actually be to summon the expertise of an organization that has prior experience in the area in question.
6. The need to evaluate the efficiency of existing business activities requires the use of entrepreneurship research skills. Carrying out an objective evaluation about the effectiveness and efficiency of services that the small enterprise currently offers will help resolve nagging uncertainties. The research work will also highlight some of the measures that can be implemented to take care of problematic areas of service delivery.
7. Research is needed when a summary of the present business position is required. From time to time the small enterprise will need to get a clear overview about a current activity and possibly how this relates to other ongoing business activities. An audit-type research evaluation must then be carried out by measuring how cost-effective and efficient the activity's engagements are.
Samuel Muriithi is a business owner in Nairobi, Kenya. He has extensive international business experience in the United States and India.
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