Antony Jacobson Australian Entrepreneur - Case Study Example

Student’s Name Instructor’s Name Course Date Antony Jacobson Introduction Antony Jacobson is one of the most acclaimed entrepreneurs in Australia with interests in the media and food industry. Credited for popularizing Tibetan Goji beries, Antony has made a mark in the business world with his recent success being in the media. Mr. Antony’s BreakingNews.com.au is making forays in the digital space, having acquired a trove of domain names belonging to every individual country in the world (Lince 1). Antony Jacobson has built two of the most notable brands in the Australian business sector. Antony is full of ambition, with his eyes now focused on raising a large amount of money to realize his vision of a multinational media empire with operations in many countries around the world, starting with operations in Australia, Singapore, and Hong Kong, China. This report discusses Antony Jacobson, his background, the characteristics of the entrepreneur, how he recognizes and develops his business ideas, and the kind of business he has developed. Finally, the paper offers some suggestions for future ventures in different business avenues to the entrepreneur. Background of Antony Jacobson Antony Jacobson is a Professor of Practice at La Trobe University Business School. Antony is a highly accomplished business and brand strategist, industry commentator and entrepreneur. The 52-year old professor has interests in entrepreneurship with extensive global experience and has created and developed global media brands, consumer organisations and corporate brands (Parry 1). Again, his acumen has seen him transform small start-ups into multimillion success stories. Professor Antony is credited for his business innovation and strategies that enabled him to transform the lives of millions of Tibetan Goji berries farmers two decades ago when he created the Tibet Authentic (La Trobe University 1). The success of Tibet Authentic has been phenomenal, with the organization popularising and shipping thousands of tonnes of Tibetan Goji berries for consumption in the Western countries like the UK, the US, and other parts of the developed world. Professor Antony is considered one of the most influential business strategy commentators and his successes have featured in the international media with media houses like The Daily Mail in the UK, Gala Magazine in Germany, South China Morning Post-Hong Kong, and Australian Financial Review, profiling his business ideas and development (La Trobe University 1). Characteristics of Antony Jacobson One feature that can describe Antony is that he is never short of ambition and resilience. Again, Antony is a focused business innovator who uses his business knowledge and skills to predict future business dynamics. For instance, his ambition has seen him develop, BreakingNews.com.au. Antony saw the future potential of online media and communication a decade ago when he founded the organisation (Lince 1). Today, his focus is how to expand its presence in major international markets, particularly capturing big and breaking stories in each region. According to Antony, newspapers are dying and cannot offer concepts like breaking news, and his aim in developing the online media outlet is to create a digital news force that can compete with internationally recognised media organisations like the BBC, News Corp, and Fairfax among others. In innovating BreakingNews.com.au, Antony was categorical that his ambition is to be more than a news aggregator, but set up dedicated newsrooms in all the countries that they will have operations. Antony is optimistic, a characteristics that all successful entrepreneur possess since business start-ups can be unpredictable and take time to be on their feet (Lince 1). Antony’s optimism is borne from his past success with Tibet Authentic and the realization that his domain is the most widely uses news tag in the world. Having ensured that the domain is registered in their company’s name, Antony understands that big media organisations may partner with them in the future. Again, Antony has demonstrated that he is a strategist and an innovator through the start-ups that he has created in different areas. One of his most successful business ventures is the Tibet Authentic, a marketing outfit that he created to popularise and distribute Tibetan Goji berries. Started as a small organisation, the past success demonstrates that Antony’s strategy has worked because his company was recognised by the Tibetan authorities as the number one marketer of the berries produced there (Parry 2). Again, as strategist, Antony has purchased a number of international “BreakingNews” domain names. Some of these domain names have been sought after by reputable media companies but Antony was able to convince them to sell their domain names to his organisation. As an innovator with big dreams, Antony has his eyes fixed on creating a global news network consisting of websites that can compete with the major international media conglomerates. To demonstrate the potential growth of the BreakingNews.com.au, the Twitter account for the domain has a following of over five million followers (Lince 1). As a strategist, Antony formed a London-based company called Equity Media to leverage on the competitive pressure in the media industry. Opportunity recognition and idea development According to Baron Robert and & Ensley Michael (1332), opportunity recognition and idea development are critical components of venture creation. At this stage, entrepreneurs consider the possibility of initiating new businesses or improving their start-ups. Research demonstrates that there are three steps in opportunity recognition that include perception, discovery, and creation where entrepreneurs perceive an impending opportunity, and create new business concepts that match their resources with the identified market needs. In most cases, sources of venture concepts include particular problems and social encounters. Additionally, relevant business knowledge can develop an entrepreneurial mindset, and the ability to recognise the problems and turn them into opportunities. Such mindsets are characterised by their ability to sense, act, and mobilise resources within unique environments (Davidson 675). Therefore, to recognise the opportunities and develop ideas, entrepreneurs must be alert to note any challenges in their domain of experience. It suffices to note that Antony Jacobson demonstrates the ability of entrepreneurs to recognise opportunities and develop ideas to address the problems in such markets. For instance, Antony says that his interest in creating Tibet Authentic was borne out of a social encounter when he went to the Himalayas as a tourist. Antony says that went there for he felt overworked in his franchise and licensing business venture in Melbourne. Because of the encounter, especially seeing women and children eating the berries and smearing them on their faces and hair, yet they had a greater life span than those in the West, Antony recognised an opportunity (Baron & Ensley 1334). He conducted research on the Goji berries, especially their nutritional value, and found that they were nutritious with great impact on the skin, hair, and a valuable source of minerals and vitamins. As a result, Antony developed concepts of how to set up a framework to produce the berries with the aim of benefiting the farmers and his organisation. Antony then created the Tibet Authentic as a means of marketing, distributing, and producing the Goji berries to the world market. Today, Tibet Authentic is a global brand with stores and stockists in critical global markets like the UK, the US, The Netherlands, Canada, and Spain among other markets, including Australia (Parry 2). The brand created by Antony has received huge international press and has been hailed as a true pioneer in the superfruits’ global market estimated to be over a billion dollar industry. Again, Antony’s knowledge has allowed him to identify opportunities and develop ideas. For instance, when he created BreakingNews.com.au, Antony has recognised that online media will grow and overtake the traditional media platforms like newspapers and television. Again, he knew that newspapers cannot offer real-time breaking news and thus his venture was suited to filling that gap. Business developed by Antony Jacobson and their competitive advantages As stated, Antony Jacobson has innovated two big startups that have been hailed as unique. The first start up created and developed by Antony is the Tibet Authentic in mid 2000s. The competitive advantage of this organisation is its product offering that sets it apart from the rest (Parry 2). Goji berries were never known to be healthy, but a trip to Himalayas and subsequent research on their health benefits has turned the berries into one of the most sought after health products in the West. Tibet Authentic derives its competitive advantage from being the first organisation to popularise and market the Tibetan Goji berries, and because of that, it is a trusted international brand, with its US-based outfit, Interhealth Labs, that distributes and Tibet Authentic and other health and dietary products. Secondly, Antony has created and developed BreakingNews.com.au, an online media company that offers breaking news items in the countries it operates in using the same domain name (Lince 1). The competitive advantage of this venture is that it has purchased most of the domain names in those countries, giving it leverage on the traditional media companies that cannot have patents for the name. Again, it offers news items in real-time as compared to traditional news channels like newspapers, television, cable news network and radio. Conclusion As an entrepreneur, Professor Antony Jacobson demonstrates that Australian entrepreneurial minds can register global success, especially when they understand the concept of opportunity recognition and idea development in business and entrepreneurship. Further, Antony comes out as an accomplished strategist, business innovator, and influential personality in entrepreneurship. Works Cited Baron, R.A. & Ensley, M.D. “Opportunity Recognition as Detection of Meaningful: Evidence from Comparisons of Novice and Experienced Entrepreneurs.” Management Science, 52(9), 1331-1344, 2006. Davidson, Per. "Entrepreneurial opportunities and the entrepreneurship nexus: A re- conceptualization." Journal of Business Venturing 30.5 (2015): 674-695. La Trobe University.”Meet the Man who introduced goji berries to the West,” web 2017. Accessed on April 8, 2017, from http://knowledge.blogs.latrobe.edu.au/business/meet-the-man-who-introduced-goji-berries-to-the-west/ Lince, Tim. “More than a domain? The ongoing tale of BreakingNews.com.au,” web 2013. Accessed on April 8, 2017, from http://influencing.com/au/story/more-than-a-domain-the-ongoing-tale-of-breakingnews-com-au-1 Parry, Simon. “A fruitless search for the Tibetan goji berry.” South China Post,” web 2006. Accessed on April8, 2017, from http://wolfberry.org/documents/ParryFruitlessSearchforGoji12-06.pdf Read More