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Entrepreneurship – from ideas to reality
Entrepreneurship – from ideas to reality

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Session 2: From idea to reality

Introduction

Many new businesses fail within two years of starting up – 50 per cent within three years (Business Wales, 2018). Have you thought about how you can avoid this happening to you? In the last session you considered sources of ideas; indeed you may already have an idea, but what happens next? In this session you will consider the decisions needed to formally start your business and three vital aspects of a business that you will have to manage simultaneously to succeed:

  1. Delivering the business

    Are you able to produce something that can be monetised in some way? That is to say, can you consistently meet the demand for a product or service that others consider worth paying for (or making use of)? If you can’t, your business won’t even get off the ground.

  2. Running the business

    Running a business or, in other words, fulfilling the functions and obligations required of an organisation properly, observing the law, and at the same time, meeting the expectations of your stakeholders (customers, shareholders, suppliers and so on) is also essential. If you fall foul of the law or regulator (if appropriate), or you consistently fall short of customer expectations, it won’t take long for your business to go under.

  3. Getting the business.

    This is your ability to find, supply and keep on getting new sales, contracts and customers. Again, with no future income streams, you will deplete your initial capital and resources very soon, along with your ability to meet obligations to your creditors.

Image of a woman spinning plates.
Figure 1 Business involves spinning many plates at once

Clearly, having a successful, sustainable business means being able to balance and address all three aspects at the same time.

By the end of this session, you will be able to:

  • describe your own motivation for starting your enterprise
  • identify what support and actions you will need to make your business idea a reality
  • evaluate a number of alternative business structures to refine those that are appropriate to your needs.