Corporate Venture and Greg Stamboulidis: How a Start-Up Became a Big Business

1. Characterise the development of the entrepreneur’s corporate venture from the start up of the business to the present day. Grey developed his business through innovative management of value chain activities. In 1985, at the first place, Grey Stamboulidis was working as a food product seller to school canteens and fish shops in Melbourne, Australia. Then Greg decided to develop his business by focusing on the development of value chain which are the activities in the organization until all of the processes of production to the end users (Pech, 2009). Then Gerg decided to start off the business by buying the business which selling foods to school canteen and fish shop around Melbourne. At that time, Grey is a 25 year young man. He had never worked related to fishing area before. The only supplying source for his business is from Melbourne markets. The profit margin of the firm is very low, at 10 to 15 percent. Obviously, they had no competitive advantage over their competitors. So Greg started finding sources abroad because the number of fish in Southern America is limited and the Government regulation is very strict. Another cause that Greg looked for overseas fish is in 1990, the price of the shark, labor cost and competition are very high. Besides, the quality of the product varied continuously. Thus, Greg regarded South Africa as the new supplier. In this country, there was more shark and the price was lower than in Australia which was AUD$ 3.00 per kilo. In this period, Greg enjoyed 100 percent profit margin, much more than when he bought from Melbourne markets. Christensen (2010) says that competitive advantage is the activities that the company is doing better than competitors in minds of customers. In this case, the brand-new source that Greg found was more reliable and cheaper than Australia markets. So Greg has competitive advantage than his competitors. He also jointed venture with South African suppliers for reliable product and good