Individual entrepreneur and venture analysis : ALEXIA HILBERTIDOU

Assessment Task 1 - Individual entrepreneur and venture analysis

Entrepreneur:   Alexia HILBERTIDOU

Country of the entrepreneur: New Zealand

Company:         GirlBoss NZ

Student : Carla Rosas

ID La Trobe : 20197007

ID Montpellier Business School: 03406370

Tutor's Name: Subject Coordinator Dr. Quan Nguyen, Lecturer Mr. Guillaume Fontan

Introduction

I chose to study New Zealand entrepreneur Alexia Hilbertidou, a young woman of barely 20 years old who has risen to a strategic field that is not well regarded by women. I admired his way of wanting to revolutionize the world and make it more egalitarian. She fights not only for women to find their place but also for them to excel and conquer the world.  His leadership and need-for-achievement skills have guided him to international success and we will see how Alexia has built her "empire".

Background of the entrepreneur & Entrepreneurial traits/characteristics: The story of a young entrepreneur woman.

Of Cypriot origin, she moved to New Zealand with her family when she was just a baby, growing up and studying at Albany Senior High Scool High School in Auckland. She then studied computer science and physics and quickly realized that she was the only girl in her class in her field. It doesn't bother her and on the contrary, the seed started growing in her head at that very moment. She began to wonder why women do not engage in such studies and that is how her project began." I really felt there needed to be a community for ambitious young women in New Zealand, and really create a space for young women who are passionate about leadership, entrepreneurship, science, technology, engineering, IT and maths," said Alexia in an interview. When she was entering university, she wondered a lot about the importance of a university degree in the workplace. She believes in the ability to start a very young company and already has a self-entrepreneurial mentality (Bonnett et al 1991).

Some sociological theories identify the will to entrepreneurship because of a sociological context, in this case, Alexia Hibertidou found herself alone as a girl in her field and this difficulty was a decisive factor and pushed her (Virtanen 1997). In litterature it is also state that "The experiences of people could influence their thought and action so they want to do something meaningful with their lives." (Kwabena, et al 2011).

In 2017, at the age of 16, she founded GRILBOSS in New Zealand, a non-profit organization that encourages women to become entrepreneurs, scientists, mathematicians, etc. (STEM). In less than 2 years, the platform has more than 10,500 members, GirlBoss targets high school students and aims to empower them through school clubs, workshops and presentations, and welcomes women business founders and star entrepreneurs at its events. She fights for gender equality and promotes access to success for all women in New Zealand regardless of economic status.  She also became an Eisenhower Youth Fellow and New Zealand representative at the Global Teen Leader Summit. In July 2017, Hilbertidou was invited by NASA to participate in the SOFIA project and to board NASA's wide-body 747 aircraft on a night exploratory mission. She is the youngest person to receive such an invitation.  Hilbertidou is also the youngest member of the Super Diverse Women Network led by Mai Chen.

She is a woman full of ambitions, a quality necessary for entrepreneurship. She is motivated and above all studious because when she finished high school she spent a year creating Girl BOSS without really knowing if it was successful. This is a feature of Personality Traits theory since she is optimistic, persevering and hardworking (Kwabena et al 2011). She seeks success and even wants to transmit it to women from all walks of life, which also places her in Need for Achievement theory since "there is evidence for the relationship between achievement motivation and entrepreneurship" (Johnson, 1990).

Opportunity recognition and idea development process:

The birth of a project.

Alexia Hibertidou started from an observation in order to set up her project: In the NZX 50, there are more CEOs named John than CEOS who are women. She created a project to increase women's potential and enable them to support each other in order to accomplish their projects. As a non-profit company it had to rely on Attracting corporate sponsorship like KPNG, Chorus, BNZ and Xero.

Hulbert et al (1997) state that a business opportunity is the chance to meet an unsatisfied need that is potentially profitable.

The process of opportunity recognition was born during an observation in her class as explained earlier, she made the connection between the lack of presence of women in technological fields and the opportunity she saw there. She therefore strategically wanted to jump on the opportunity by encouraging women to grow in these areas.

The perception of opportunity is often based on the conclusion that demand in industry and at the firm level far exceeds supply - a simple but powerful economic factor that can be considered as an indication of value creation (Hills 2005). Here, we can see that the opposite observation has been made, wanting to bring together all women working in STEAM fields to push them towards success.

After several investigations into the lack of women in her field, she concluded that "An alienating culture, misconceptions of difficulty and a lack of female role models were the key reasons why young women were missing in action from influential areas like technology and the C-suite of senior executives," (alexia hilbertidou 2018). She knew how to detect an opportunity and is part of the "opportunity-based-theories" since she was able to make changes in this technological case, her desire was to change this situation which was abnormal according to her.

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