From the reading, Joseph Schumpeter’s definition of entrepreneurship was based on innovation underlying elemental characteristics such as:
– new products
– new production methods
– new markets
– new forms of organization
An entrepreneurial company that fits under these “elements” is Crowdflower
Crowdflower is what I consider to be an entrepreneurial company, which was founded in 2007 by Lukas Biewald and Chris Van Pelt. It is a company that focuses itself in managing tools related to managing internet “crowd sourcing”, an act of outsourcing commonly related tasks of a company that are normally done by an employee to a large group of people (a crowd). Crowdflower is effectively an online labour force based internationally with companies that need a large volume of simple work completed quickly and because it is international, it is basically a labour force that is available 24/7. This connects to Schumpeter’s points since the company has a unique product in that it is essentially a temporary employee that fullfills the needs of a company at significantly lower costs than what a hired employee would’ve done for that company. Also, the company has arguably, a revolutionary creation of a new market, which is large companies to get small tasks completed but at extremely low costs. Also, its production method is worth talking about, in that Crowdflower continues to train its employees no matter how many years they’ve been in the company and continously assigns them tasks. This is due to the fact that in order to keep the company homogenous in terms of quality of work, it needs to regularly monitor employee output. Also, because an employee may only get paid pennies for working on one task, all that adds up to a significant pay, as a significant amount of tasks are assigned to the employees.
The following TED video by Lukas Biewald, further highlights these points.
Article
“A Definition of Entrepreneurship.” Peter F. Drucker. QuickMBA.com.
November 1, 1996. Online Print.
Video
“TEDxDU – Lukas Biewald – 5/13/10.” Crowdflower Youtube. Web. 14 Nov 2010.
Image
“Crowdflower Logo.” Mission 4636. Web. 14 Nov 2010.