Week 2 Reading Reflection, Week 2

1)        As I was reading, I was surprised to find out that a small business owner and en entrepreneur were two different people with different ideals and strategies. I always believed that any person who owned or created a business was an entrepreneur, but after reading, I realized that an entrepreneur takes risks and provides value to a service. A small business owner cannot take risks and cannot fail or else they will loose everything they have, which could certainly happen to an entrepreneur, but small business owners can't do that in order to stay in business. They rely on a steady sales and profits to stay in business while the entrepreneur seeks opportunities and pushes something to the limit to make it mean something to the world. Since this is the case, I regret to label my mother as an entrepreneur in my previous post when she is just a small business owner. I was also surprised when the author said that needing luck was a myth because the stories I hear about the famous entrepreneurs is that they were in the right place at the right time, but now I could see how they saw an opportunity and took advantage of it.
2)          One part of the reading that was confusing to me was the paragraph about the Dynamics State Approach that says the ventures are dependent on the environment wherever they are located for the survival of the company. This is confusing because the environment is likely to change and at times can not be very consistent. It is confusing to me how this model tends to be more optimistic for entrepreneurs if smaller firms have more flexibility. It doesn't make any sense because the smaller firms do not have the capability of being able to take on the risks that a larger firm can.
3)     If I were able to ask two questions to the author, I would ask how gazelles can be small businesses but then, out of nowhere become a part of the public eye and get funding? I would also ask why gazelles can be so profitable, like Starbucks, if it is under more pressure when it is funded by the public? I ask these questions because I wonder how a company could be under pressure when it has better chance of survival after failures because of the amount of funding they have.
4)       I think the author was wrong about how entrepreneurs are not always inventors because to me, it takes a lot of creativity and inventions in order to make a product sell and be successful. I also believe that all entrepreneurs do need is money because it is the only way that they can take risks and be safe when they fail. Yes it takes a steady mind and calculated risks, but one could make calculated risks and still fail. Then when they need money to try again, they don't have it, making it impossible to promote or sell their ideas.