Entrepreneurship in Zuckerberg’s Case

Chang (2015, p. 25) defines entrepreneurship as “a management process through which… workers seek to support their creativity and autonomy, advance their capacity for adaptability, and create… economic and social value.” Diandra and Azmy (2020, p. 236) state that it “is generating jobs opportunities and lead to economic development.” They are similar in emphasizing the necessity in the generation of both employment opportunities and economic value. They differ in listing the specific components since the definition by Chang also indicates the dynamism of this process (Hisrich and Kearney, 2013).

In 2004, he began writing code for the future platform, fixing the flaws of its predecessor FaceMash, which violated Harvard’s privacy rules (McFadden, 2020). Zuckerberg developed the first version of the site to provide Harvard students with the opportunity to communicate. He notes that he created Facebook to solve an existing problem, not to create a company (Clifford, 2018). The individual-opportunity nexus is a key characteristic for understanding entrepreneurship (Mitra, 2020). The entrepreneur transfers resources from areas of low productivity to areas of high productivity (Drucker, 2014). The individual-opportunity nexus emphasizes that not only talent but also resourcefulness allowed Zuckerberg to excel since the “possibility of entrepreneurial profit requires the preexistence of entrepreneurial opportunities” (Ramoglou and Tsang, 2016, p. 410). He analyzed circumstances and proposed an idea that could potentially lead to new economic activity (Zanella and Castro, 2019; Gartner and Teague, 2020).

According to the trait approach, Zuckerberg’s entrepreneurial activities are based on specific personal qualities(Mazzarol and Rebound, 2019). The behavioral approach emphasizes that he was able to identify opportunities and utilize them for development (Fatma and Ezzeddine, 2020). The limitation of these approaches is not including the organization and management. Joseph Schumpeter’s theory asserts the need for innovation to create a successful business, which in Zuckerberg’s case is relevant since he offered the world a completely new way of communication (Mehmood and Alzoubi, 2019). Compared to Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg has the same traits with regard to innovation, including being visionary and acting primarily for the sake of an idea; they differ in the principles of building organization (What makes Jeff Bezos, 2021).

Zuckerberg provided customers with what they needed but in an unexpected form. Entrepreneurship is based on innovation, as he created not only a revolutionary product and service but also a new type of company. Entrepreneurship allows ideas to be transformed in response to customer needs in anticipation of their desires, as in the case of Zuckerberg, who created Facebook before openly requesting such a resource.

Reference List

Chang, W. (2015). ‘What is arts entrepreneurship? Tracking the development of its definition in scholarly journals,’ Artivate, 4(2), pp. 11-31.

Clifford, C. (2018). How Mark Zuckerberg came up with the idea for Facebook. Web.

Diandra, D. and Azmy, A. (2020). ‘Understanding definition of entrepreneurship,’ Journal of Management Accounting and Economics, 7(5), pp. 235-241.

Drucker, P. (2015). Innovation and entrepreneurship. Taylor & Francis.

Fatma, E. and Ezzeddine, B. (2020) ‘Behavioral entrepreneurship theory: a survey and future directions,’ Academy of Entrepreneurship Journal, 25(4), pp. 1-22.

Gartner, W. and Teague, B. (2020) Research handbook on entrepreneurial behavior, practice and process. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Hisrich, R. and Kearney, C. (2014) Managing innovation and entrepreneurship. SAGE Publications.

Mazzarol, T. and Rebound, S. (2019) ‘The entrepreneur,’ in Mazzarol, T. and Rebound, S. Entrepreneurship and innovation: theory, practice and context. Springer., pp. 35-61.

McFadden, C. (2020) A brief history of Facebook, its major milestones. Web.

Mehmood, T. and Alzoubi, H. (2019) ‘Schumpeterian entrepreneurship theory: evolution and relevance,’ Academy of Entrepreneurship Journal, 25(4), pp. 1-10.

Mitra, J. (2019) Entrepreneurship, innovation and regional development. Taylor & Francis.

Ramoglou, S. and Tsang, E. (2016) ‘A realist perspective of entrepreneurship: opportunities as propensities‘. The Academy of Management Review, 41(3), pp. 410-434. Web.

What makes Jeff Bezos & Mark Zuckerberg generational leaders? Sense of humour and discipline, confirms former colleague. (2021). Web.

Zanella, G. and Castro, D. (2019) ‘The role of the organization in the entrepreneur–opportunity nexus‘. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour & Research, 25(7), pp. 1537-1562. Web.