Key Business Terms and Definitions

Entrepreneur and Intrapreneur

Entrepreneur: An individual who, rather than working as an employee, runs a small business and assumes all the risks and rewards of a given business venture, idea, or good or service offered for sale. They are commonly seen as business leaders and innovators of new ideas and business processes.

Intrapreneur: Executives who can innovate and lead from within a company. An employee of a large corporation who is given freedom and financial support to create new products, services, systems, etc., and does not have to follow the corporation’s usual routines and protocols.

Product and Funding

Product recall: A request to return a product after the discovery of safety issues or product defects that might endanger the consumer or put the maker/seller at risk of legal action.

Crowdfunding: The practice of funding a project or venture by raising monetary contributions from a large number of people.

Angel investor: An investor who provides financial backing for small startups and entrepreneurs. The capital angel investors provide may be a one-time investment to help the business propel or an ongoing injection of money to support and carry the company through its difficult early stages.

Marketing and Brand

Marketing mix: A set of actions, or tactics, that a company uses to promote its brand or product in the market. The 4Ps make up a typical marketing mix – Price, Product, Promotion (promotion = activities undertaken to make the product known to the user, e.g. advertising, incentives) and Place (the point of sale).

Brand stretching: The process of using a successful brand name to launch a completely new product or a modified product in the same product market.

Market Dynamics

Market challenger: A firm that has a market share below that of the market leader, but enough of a market presence that it can exert upward pressure in its effort to gain more control. The number two player in a market after the market leader.

Cash flow: The rate at which a business takes in money through sales and pays it out for the things it needs to continue operating.

Consumer boycott: The decision of customers not to use or buy products/services in order to show support for a cause.

Corporate Actions and Legal

Takeover bid: A type of corporate action in which an acquiring company makes an offer to the target company’s shareholders to buy the target company’s shares in order to gain control of the business. Takeover bids can either be friendly or hostile.

Insider trading: A malpractice wherein trade of a company’s securities is undertaken by people who, by virtue of their work, have access to otherwise non-public information which can be crucial for making investment decisions.

A lawsuit: A problem taken to a law court by an ordinary person or an organization rather than the police in order to obtain a legal decision.

Mass redundancies: A situation in which a large number of employees of a company lose their jobs within a short period.

Communication

Elevator pitch: A brief speech that outlines an idea for a product, service, or project. The speech should be delivered in the short time period of an elevator ride, usually 20-60 seconds.