Entrepreneurial Decision Making Every Human Being Makes

Entrepreneurial Decision Making

Every human being makes decisions constantly, almost every waking minute of his or her day. The difference between decision making for one's own business enterprise, and the typical human decisions to be made, in general, is in the purpose and the process of decision-making in the former scope, especially in regards to meeting the goals that a said business entrepreneur has set out for himself or herself.

A perfect example of decision-making in a well-known company is that of Steve Jobs in creating the first iPod, a drastic new direction for the under-represented Apple Corporation. After losing a significant share of the market in the PC arena in the 1990s, Apple CEO Steve Jobs radically reshaped the future image of the Apple brand. His platform was not to compete in a technical battle, which was already flooded with competitors from all over the world, but rather decided to differentiate Apple completely, adopting the image of the casual user and everyday consumer audience.

Through its well- designed devices and simplicity in setup, Apple was in a prime position to enter the new market of digital content with its peerless image intact from its iMac line of computers, which was not so successful. Needles to say, today, Apple has touched almost every person around the United States and, perhaps, the globe. iPhones and other Apple products have now truly become part of life, and certainly have become household names (Apple, 1).

There are a variety of things that both affect and are affected by decision making, as in the above example. These five things are: legal and regulatory issues, political agendas, cultural perceptions, demographic diversity and financial resources. Cultural perceptions, for instance, in the above case, have drastically changed from where they started, with regards to Apple, in the late 1990's. A specific example is that of where music would be headed after the age of compact disks. With the first iPod, which stored access to one's entire musical library in one device the cultural perception of Apple, the iPod, and how music is listened to in general drastically changed. The iPod worked so well because Apple had an existing software and hardware infrastructure to support the device; competitor digital music devices were always packaged with sub-par hardware or buggy software (All About Steve Jobs, 1).

Yet in setting up such a successful enterprise decision-making must take into account legal issues, and especially political agendas. In the case of Apple, these may not have been prime targets for the company to address, yet they were nonetheless present in the early 1990's, when the company was struggling to keep itself afloat. The decision of Steve Jobs were wise in addressing 'moving forward,' rather than focusing on the latter two subjects, or improving technology. Jobs appealed to the masses with his ultra-posh devices, most of which the general public would not be able to afford. The only reason that he was able to overcome demographic diversity was the unsurpassed quality of these devices. In this way, Jobs was very successful in creating a lasting brand.