Overview
This lecture went over the general idea that creative destruction is highly important to furthering society. It also went over differences between innovation and inventions, idea discovery, and the definition of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is a complicated word to define, as there are many types of entrepreneurship, and many ways to run a business. However, a broad way Dr. Sobel described it was "an agent of change". Overall, many topics about entrepreneurship were discussed in this lecture. Most of which I find factually accurate, backed by real life examples. As a result, I will reflect as best as I can, however I do find this lecture more of an informative one rather than an idea based one.
Defining Entrepreneurship
During my time as an entrepreneurship major, I have heard many different definitions of entrepreneurship. A basic one would be: a person who organizes, manages, and assumes the risk of running a business. Essentially categorizing all business owners as an entrepreneur. However, other limiting examples of an entrepreneurship definition include: an innovator who introduces new, disruptive, combinations of resources into the market place" and "someone who continually innovates and grows a company." Both of these definitions prefer an innovator rather than someone who owns a business and just manages it, not growing or attempting to innovate anymore. Personally, I do believe entrepreneurship is starting a new idea that is innovative, and if you have done that at any time, then you are an entrepreneur. If you purchase and own a franchise, I think you are a business owner/manager, not an entrepreneur. You are not innovating but using the premade model one business made. The owner of the overall franchisor is the entrepreneur, because they are growing and incrementally innovating. I also think that someone who made a unique idea and runs that is still an entrepreneur, even if they have stopped innovating majorly. Someone who finds a niche and stays with it is still an entrepreneur, because they innovated to find that niche and have grown their business to be popular in that niche.
The Importance of Creative Destruction
I learned all about creative destruction in previous classes. Creative destruction is a slightly controversial topic for people due to the fact it erases people's livelihoods with new, more efficient methods to do things. I completely agree with the view of Dr. Sobel, because it really does emphasize improving society. Though entire industries become obsolete with creative destruction, the betterment that it provides society is profound. Just look at the example between horse carriages and automobiles. Automobiles are significantly faster, easier to take care of, and are the better innovation. This completely decimated horse carriages as transportation, except for like, specialty purposes. Now you see cars everywhere, different brands and different purpose automobiles. Funny thing is, people were lobbying the government to disallow automobiles in favor of horse carriages! And I completely agree with Dr. Sobel, in the fact that we need to let creative destruction happen naturally and not ban it (besides certain circumstances like China). My vision of creative destruction is basically aligned with this lecture, as I've been taught previously as an entrepreneurship student to appreciate creative destruction for the betterment and efficiency of society.
Idea Discovery
Not everyone that creates businesses invents the product. However, something all entrepreneurs share is that they discovered the idea and executed it better than anyone else before. Idea discovery is a great topic within entrepreneurship, because all businesses need an idea to go off of! I really enjoyed the original vacuum example that Dr. Sobel brought up, as the vacuum was invented by a fella, and his cousin bought the patent and formed it into a massive business venture. The fella that invented it did not pursue it as a business, but just sat on the idea. The cousin is the idea discoverer, because he realized the business it could become, and made it happen. Furthermore, this concept goes right into the difference between "invention" and "innovation"
Invention versus Innovation
Initially, my impression of the difference between inventions and innovations was that: inventions are new creations, innovations are additions, creations, reworks, or different takes upon already made concepts. I still like my definition of it and think it aligns somewhat with Dr. Sobel's interpretation. Now, Dr. Sobel also said that the cousin taking the vacuum invention and making it into a business was an innovation. I personally think he was selling an invention, but maybe marketed it as an innovation over the previous way of doing whatever the original vacuum creatively destroyed. So, a good way to put it would be: an innovation is a change to the idea of how to do things even if the product is a brand new invention. So even if an idea like Netflix was technically an invention, since online television streaming had never been done or at least done in a commercialized manner, it would also be an innovation to Blockbuster, since it was a new way to do what Blockbuster did.
