Lessons of Success Case Histories of Eight Successful Companies (original) (raw)

l ***** This paper looks at eight entrepreneurial, successful businesses which were set up, from scratch, by people with very little capital- true entrepreneurs. It looks at their motivation for setting up these businesses in terms of ‘push factors’, their desire for independence and their perception of opportunity. It also explores the business partnerships they have entered into and their approach to risk taking. Finally, it looks at the problems they had in setting up the business and the qualities needed to overcome them. This research lends support to a number of theories about entrepreneurial characterics and behaviours. THE STUDY Entrepreneurship was once compared by Peter Kilby to the Heffalump: “It is a large and important animal which has been hunted by many individuals using various ingenious trapping devices... All who claim to have caught sight of him report he is enormous, but they disagree on his particularities. Not