Leadership in Entrepreneurship

Leadership and communication are constantly growing together, being intertwined into one another to help develop an organization. To be an effective leader, communication has to be defined in the organization for it to be successful. Gary Yukl defines leadership as, "the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared objectives". To accomplish shared objectives, communication has to be a transactional process that allows for a constant cycle of information to be sent from source/receiver and vice versa. As leaders continue to send and receive information, building relationships with the followers allows for a bond to be made. Through the bond being made it allows for the followers to share their values, and thoughts for example; this gives them a sense of affiliation because the leader is being concerned about his/her employees. Once an organization is able to define leadership and communication, it can begin to advance to the structure of the organization.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe says, "Treat people as they were that they ought to be and you may help them to become what they are capable of being." As a leader there are two qualities that you need to focus on in an organization: the structure of the organization and how followers are involved. The type of leadership you want in an organization would be a democratic approach. A democratic leader does not feel threatened when followers make suggestions, but instead accepts the contributions to help improve the overall quality of decision making.
Early 19th century French economist J.B. Say provided a broad definition of entrepreneurship, saying that it "shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield." Entrepreneurs create something new, something different; they change or transmute values. Regardless of the firm size, big or small, they can partake in entrepreneurship opportunities.
The opportunity to be an entrepreneur arises with the fulfillment of four criteria. First, there must exist opportunities or situations in which people believe that they can use new means—ends frameworks to recombine resources to generate profit. Second, entrepreneurship requires differences between people. Specifically, the preferential access to or ability to recognize information about opportunities. Third, risk bearing is a necessary part of the entrepreneurial process. Fourth, the entrepreneurial process requires the organization of people and resources.
"The entrepreneur is a factor in microeconomics, and the study of entrepreneurship reaches back to the work of Richard Cantillon and Adam Smith in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, but was largely ignored theoretically until the late 19th and early 20th centuries and empirically until a profound resurgence in business and economics in the last 40 years. In the 20th century, the understanding of entrepreneurship owes much to the work of economist Joseph Schumpeter in the 1930s and other Austrian economists such as Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek. According to Schumpeter, an entrepreneur is a person who is willing and able to convert a new idea or invention into a successful innovation. Entrepreneurship employs what Schumpeter called "the gale of creative destruction" to replace in whole or in part inferior innovations across markets and industries, simultaneously creating new products including new business models. In this way, creative destruction is largely responsible for the dynamism of industries and long-run economic growth. The supposition that entrepreneurship leads to economic growth is an interpretation of the residual in endogenous growth theory and as such is hotly debated in academic economics. An alternate description posited by Israel Kirzner suggests that the majority of innovations may be much more incremental improvements such as the replacement of paper with plastic in the construction of a drinking straw.".
One of the most famous entrepreneurs, Wayne Huizenga owned and operated many companies. He grew Blockbuster Video, Waste Management, Inc., and AutoNation into successful companies. He is also the former owner of the National Football League's Miami Dolphins, the National Hockey League's Florida Panthers and the Major League Baseball's Miami Marlins.
Some scholars have constructed an operational definition of a more specific subcategory called "Strategic Entrepreneurship." Closely tied with principles of strategic management, this form of entrepreneurship is "concerned about growth, creating value for customers, and subsequently creating wealth for owners".
A 2011 article for the Academy of Management provided a three-step, "Input-Process-Output" model of strategic entrepreneurship. The model's three steps entail the collection of different resources, the process of orchestrating them in the necessary manner, and the subsequent creation of competitive advantage, value for customers, wealth, and other benefits.
Through the proper use of strategic management/leadership techniques and the implementation of risk-bearing entrepreneurial thinking, the strategic entrepreneur is therefore able to align resources to create value and wealth. in "one who undertakes innovations, finance and business acumen in an effort to transform innovations into economic goods". An entrepreneur typically has a mindset that seeks out potential opportunities during uncertain times. As a communicative approach, the orientation stage is where the members involved are becoming acquainted both with themselves as well as the problem at hand. The conflict stage is where the problem is analyzed with several possibilities presented to resolve the problem. Upon discussing these possibilities, the emergence phase becomes known when a decision is made about which solution is to be used. The reinforcement stage is the supportive of the decision. These phases are not without objection from many theorists in the field. Morley and Stephenson (1977) claim that such a staged model of decision making is not so rigid between phases and varies depending upon the types of decisions made.
With the growing global market and increasing technologies throughout all industries, the core of entrepreneurship, the decision making, has become an ongoing process rather than isolated incidents This becomes knowledge management which is "identifying and harnessing intellectual assets" for organizations to "build on past experiences and create new mechanisms for exchanging and creating knowledge" This belief draws upon a leaders past experiences that may prove useful. It is a common mantra for one to learn from their past mistakes, so leaders should take advantage of their failures for their benefit. This is how one may take their experiences as a leader for the use in the core of entrepreneurship- decision making.
Global leadership and entrepreneurship
It is important to note that the majority of scholarly research done on these topics have been from North America. Words like "leadership" and "entrepreneurship" do not always translate well into other cultures and languages. For example, in North America, a leader is often thought to be charismatic, but German culture frowns on such charisma due to the charisma of Adolph Hitler. Other cultures, like some Europeans, view the term leader negatively and perverse, like the French. The participative leadership style that is encouraged in the United States is considered disrespectful in many other parts of the world due to the differences in power distance. Many Asian and Middle Eastern countries do not have "open door" policies and would never informally approach their managers/bosses. For countries like that, an authoritarian approach to management and leadership works best, as is custom.
Despite cultural differences, the successes and failures of entrepreneurs can be traced to how leaders adapt to local conditions. With the increasingly global environment, a successful leader must be able to make these adaptations and have some insight into other cultures. Corporate visions, in response to the environment, are becoming transnational in nature due to the changes an organization must make in order to operate or provide services/goods for other cultures

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