Jeff Bezos: Entrepreneurial Characteristics

JEFF BEZOS Name Course Professor’s Name Institution Location of Institution Date Jeff Bezos Introduction In today’s competitive business environment, the success of an entrepreneur depends to a great extent on his/her abilities to identify opportunities and take risks. One of such entrepreneurs is U.S-based Jeff Bezos. He is one of the most successful entrepreneurs with Forbes listing him as the richest person in the world with a net worth of $111.7 billion (Forbes, 2019). Bezos is the CEO and founder of Amazon, one of the world’s biggest companies. The entrepreneur owns two other major companies: Blue Origin and the Washington Post (Forbes, 2019). It is through his entrepreneurial capabilities that Amazon grew to the globalised company it is today. This paper examines the entrepreneurial capabilities of Bezos and offers recommendations for future growth. Background of Jeff Bezos Born in New Mexico, US, in 1964, Bezos developed interests in how things work right from a young age (Biography, 2019). As a teenager in high school, he came up with an idea for his first business, the Dream Institute, an educational camp that targeted students from 4th to 6th grades. He showed early love for computer and joined Princeton University to pursue a computer degree. After graduation in 1986, he worked for several firms on Wall Street and by the age of 30, he had developed an impressive career.  However, as informed by Greene (2017), Bezos in 1994 became aware of the growing usage of the World Wide Web and as a result, realized that there existed expansive opportunities for selling products online. He then began exploring the possibilities of starting an online business. He quit his job and started an online bookstore. The actions of Bezos, in this case, are consistent with discovery theory given that he saw opportunities arising from technological changes in the market .According to Allen (2011), discovery theory identifies opportunities from the changes in the external factors in an industry or market. These factors include changes in customer preferences, regulations, or technology. In the case of Bezos, he discovered opportunities from technological changes in the form of rise of internet usage. He launched Amazon.com on July 1995 and within the first month of operations, the e-commerce company had managed to sell books to in US and 45 other countries (Biography, 2019). Despite having no promotion in the press, the first year of operations saw the sales of the company reach $500,000 (Greene, 2017). In several years that followed, Bezos diversified the product offering of Amazon bringing on-board videos and CDs, electronics, clothing, toys, among many others. According to the creation theory, the actions of the entrepreneur are the source of opportunities (Thota & Munir, 2011). In creation theory, entrepreneurs are considered actors. Their experiments, actions, and reactions around new business models, products, or services are sources of opportunities. The opportunities, according to the theory exist in the mind of the entrepreneur. In this sense, Bezos’ actions are consistent with the creation theory given that his initial action of starting an e-commerce company gave rise to more opportunities. Through experimenting, the entrepreneur managed to develop new products and services that characterise the operations of Amazon today. Entrepreneurial characteristics Bezos possesses a high need for achievement, which is consistent with McClelland’s need for achievement motivation theory. Such individuals, according to Duening, et al. (2010), are driven by the need to achieve challenging goals. The need to accomplish challenging goals is what drives such people. As a result, they take calculated risks as they seek to accomplish the goals they set. McClelland’s theory thus describes well the behaviour of Bezos as he wanted to accomplish something as an entrepreneur. It is this need for achievement that drove Bezos to create one of the world’s biggest firms today. High-risk appetite is one of the major entrepreneurial characteristics of Bezos. It is this risk-taking ability that prompted him to quit his job and enter the world of entrepreneurship. As informed by Duening et al. (2010), such entrepreneurs believe so much in their achievement ability that they do not see the possibility of failure. They thus accept and are motivated by taking risks. Therefore, by leaving his job and starting selling boo...