Geography & History Notes | KCSE, NECTA, ZIMSEC & GCSE

 1. Most small business owners are willing to try new approaches to make their businesses more successful. 2. Small businesses understand customer needs, identify new opportunities and fix problems quickly and efficiently. 3. Small businesses can quickly implement new business practices and adapt to changing market conditions. 4. When pursuing new opportunities, many small business entrepreneurs experiment and improvise. They accept failure as part of the path to success. 5. Small businesses are adaptive at doing with less. The resource constraints lead to their innovative mindset. 6. Small businesses traditionally rely on strong social networks to share information needed for innovative thinking.

 Every business can benefit from innovation in the following ways; 1. Developing new products. A firm can make an exclusive basis based on the review of the needs of the end- users of its production and their environment. Through innovation, new technologies can be located. 2. It assists in marketing Innovation helps in packaging and positioning the business products for global distribution, for example, developing state-of-the-art electronic commerce and distribution programs. 3. It helps in developing additional distribution channels and added value that can make one’s service stand out. 4. It helps the entrepreneur to find new applications for existing software. Therefore improvement in effectiveness eases the use and perceived value of one’s software. 5. It enables the entrepreneur to successfully market on internet. Through innovation, an entrepreneur can review his or her objectives and compare to customer needs. He or she can determine what is not working and implement a sol...

  Common sources of business ideas include the following; 1. Mass media This includes newspapers, magazines, television and the internet. These form a great source of information, ideas and often business opportunities, for instance one may read that there is more interest in physical fitness. In this, one may need to look for new enterprise ideas that are related to physical fitness such as sporting goods, health foods. 2. Hobbies/interests These are activities pursued for pleasure and relaxation. They are often a source of ideas for new enterprises, for instance one enjoys photography he or she may be able to expand his or her hobby into a profitable full-time enterprise. A business related to one’s hobby will enable him or her to spend more time doing what he or she enjoys. 3. Vocational training/personal skills and experience A business idea can be developed from one’s area of training. For instance, a teacher who starts a private school, a carpenter who starts a carpentry work...

 1. Innovators have compelling visions. They believe that they are part of something better to come in business and that their willingness to contribute to the vision will make that happen. 2. An innovator is opportunity oriented. He/she always seems to find an opportunity in any situation. One has enough confidence that if one thing does not work out, there is always another way to do it. 3. An innovator is self-disciplined. He/she knows that it takes self-discipline to achieve results. They prioritize their time so that they do the important work first. 4. An innovator is passionate about what he/she believes. Successful people have great passion for what they do. They put their efforts in achieving a particular thing and are totally focused on it till they achieve their goal. 5. An innovator is inner-directed. They are goal-oriented and do not need any one else to motivate them (they are self-driven). 6. An innovator is extraordinarily persistent. He/she just keeps on going and ...

 Innovation is the way of transforming the resources of an enterprise through the creativity of people into new resources and wealth. It relates to renewal or improvement and this takes place when people change the way they make decisions or make choices outside their norms. This leads to new product categories as well as increasing productivity. There are a variety of innovations which include the following; 1. Business model innovation This involves changing the way the business is done in terms of capturing value, for example WBS Vs Bukedde television, MTN Vs Warid Telecom, e.t.c 2. Marketing innovation This involves the development of new marketing methods with improvement in product design, packing, product promotion or pricing. 3. Organizational innovation This involves the creation or alteration of the business structures, practices and models and may therefore include process, marketing and business model innovation. 4. Process innovation This involves the implementation of...

 Innovation can result from internal and external forces. INTERNAL FORCES 1. Unexpected occurrences. These can be failures or successes. It is through unexpected occurrences that new ideas are born from new information brought to light. 2. Incongruities This results from a company’s or industry’s perception and reality, for instance, the demand for steel continued to grow between 1950 and 1970, in the steel industry fell. This incongruity caused some innovators to develop a steel mill with a less expensive method of making steel. 3. Process needs These are innovations inspired to support some other products or process. For example, newspaper publishers devised advertisements to cover the expense of printing newspapers using the new printing equipment acquired. 4. Industry and market changes. Innovation is stimulated by changes in the market to meet the changing customer needs and to compete favorably with new products on market. EXTERNAL FORCES 1. Demographic forces This affects al...