Question Zambrero Article – Analysis of Entrepreneur Traits.
“Here I am, a Scottish-born Australian doctor with Sri Lankan heritage running a chain of Mexican restaurants and doing aid work in the Asia-Pacific region in places like Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam and now in remote communities in the Northern Territory,” says Dr Sam Prince. “So I guess I find my life a bit of a mess.”
It’s a mess that many other 28-year-olds would like to find themselves in.
Prince started the restaurant chain Zambrero Fresh Mex Grill at 21 while still at medical school and has gone on to grow the chain to over 17 stores while holding down a full-time job as a doctor. With 170 staff and an annual turnover of $13.7 million, BRW magazine named it the fastest-growing franchise in Australia for 2011.
Lesson one: Before you do any kind of aid work ensure you have a clear understanding of what you believe is a basic human right and what you believe is a basic human responsibility. And, yes, there’s a clear line between the two, he says. “As doctors we take the Hippocratic Oath of ‘first do no harm’. If you actually don’t understand where that line is you can end up harming people by taking power away from them when you start doing things that you think are basic human responsibilities,” says Prince.
“You have to run an aid organisation with the same rigour as you would a business.”
Lesson two: When he thinks back to working in emergency departments in hospitals, he recalls the look of sheer desperation in the eyes of people wheeled into the emergency departments after suffering a medical emergency, such as a heart attack. He saw the same look in the eyes of the people he was helping. “It’s the eyes of people who are truly desperate for your help, money, time, effort, education or healthcare,” says Prince. “For me to sleep at night and to be able to look into the mirror and know that I’ve done things ethically every step of the way I knew I could have no agenda. No political or financial or religious agenda. That seemed so important to me and it was a value that we didn’t ever cross.”
Lesson three: You have to run an aid organisation with the same rigour as you would a business. “I thought that just because people were in need and needed a hand up that they were all good people,” he says. “The reality is that’s not the truth. People are good and bad, just like there are good and bad people in every other demographic.”
From Asia, his focus shifted closer to home to indigenous communities. The idea behind One Disease at a Time was sparked by a conversation with one of his mentors, Frank Bowden. The professor of medicine at the Australian National University Medical School had eradicated the sexually transmitted disease donovanosis out of Australia permanently in four years at a cost of $4 million and 10 staff. “That’s not a lot of money, time or resources and I thought ‘wow, that’s something I can do as a doctor, aid worker and entrepreneur’,” says Prince.
Question Zambrero Article – Analysis of Entrepreneur Traits
The Overall Task
The following questions are all based on the above Zambrero article published in Australia Unlimited. Basing your arguments on the topics that you have studied in the first five weeks of this unit, write a report addressing the following two questions:
- Entrepreneurs have been identified as having certain traits and characteristics. Discuss the extent to which Zambrero founder Sam prince exemplifies these traits and characteristics. Justify your response with reference to academic sources (e.g. academic journal articles, textbooks, etc.).
- The article clearly outlines what we might consider ‘social entrepreneurship’, whereby an entrepreneur establishes and/or leads an organisation or initiative engaged in social change. Within the article, Sam Prince notes three lessons or challenges in running a social enterprise. In this section of your paper, we are asking you to describe at least three more major boundaries or challenges involved in running a social enterprise not mentioned by Sam Prince. Again, you should be looking to use academic sources as the foundation of your review. Wikipedia or web blogs are not considered as ‘sound’ academic sources. Page 6 of 9 Write up your analysis. This should be in a report format. Here is a suggested structure:
- Executive Summary
- Introduction
- Analysis of Entrepreneur traits/characteristics (ie. linking them to Dr Sam Prince)
- Major Boundaries or Challenges in Social Entrepreneurship
- Conclusion
- References
- Appendix (if required)
Submit the report via the Turnitin Submission Link (under Assessment Details on the Blackboard site)…be fully aware of the plagiarism rules in the School; plagiarism will not be tolerated.
The marking criteria for the assignment can be found on the following page. They are published to give you detailed guidelines about the way in which your mark will be calculated. Please read them carefully. Note that they are a guide, not a definitive formula for allocating marks, and no set of criteria can accurately describe every possible assignment. Your final mark will reflect the application of academic judgement by your marker to your whole assignment.