There is no formula as such or a magic spell that you can chant and you’ll be a successful entrepreneur. It’s a continuous process of growing by doing and experimenting with things. It often involves failing and still getting back up on your feet to fight back strong. We tell a child when it falls down while it’s crawling, trying to walk to get up and try, try and try. The child fails thousands if not hundreds of time before it finally can walk but what do we do when we fail? Few times and we’re so demoralized and hopeless, one seeking to be an entrepreneur must thus have a strong set of skills, values, talents, abilities, and mindset to overcome all those hurdles that might come in the way. The person should be prepared to make his/her own way. In the paragraph to follow a few of the most important set of skills, values, talents, abilities, and mindsets which one needs to cultivate as an entrepreneur.
You must be a persevering person meaning that regardless of the times of failure that you might have, the problems that you might face, you must always have that fighting attitude (Sexton & Bowman, 1985). That belief in goal and the ability to face all the problems heads on. You must always have the energy level high and keep doing what you’re doing. You must also be ready to face the failure at times and learn from it to get back stronger. If you want to gain success, failure can function like a ladder for you.
Entrepreneurship is all about taking a calculated risk and the world of uncertainty. You might be doing all the right thing but still, fail if you are unable to cater to the needs of the customers like in the case of Nokia when it lost its charm from its number one spot to fall down and sell its IP rights out to Microsoft. There’s no set path to ensure the success, you must have to take instant at times completely out of normal decisions. This is why an entrepreneur must learn to anticipate failure and take lessons from it to develop oneself (Oosterbeek, van Praag & Ijsselstein, 2010). Take an example of a bus as a business and the driver as an entrepreneur. The bus has a serious problem including break failure along with damaged indicators all around. Will the driver add more passengers (resources) into the bus? Obviously not, the driver would try to stop the bus to get everyone out. Similarly, entrepreneurs must identify when it’s too much and stop adding more resources into it. But rather save those resources when failure is imminent and put it into another one.
Ability to manage time and the resources available is very important for an entrepreneur to have. One must be able to see into the future and plan the time in the best possible way for oneself and the company’s direction. The addition, reduction or usage of resources is what one must also be able to guide and supervise (Roberts, 1968). The entrepreneur must inspect all the resources that he/she has at his disposal including the workforce and not just expect from them and it goes on. One must also have the tenacity to stand behind what is said. If you say, the office will open 24/7, open it anyhow. You must always stand behind your idea and your words while managing the time in the best possible way to make the most out of the same time.
The entrepreneur must be a good communicator. He/she must be able to pass the message in simple and clear language to everyone. In today’s world, you can’t force people to do anything but you can certainly influence one. Personal influence to win the trust is vital in today’s world. You must have the charm to persuade staff to work and the clients and others to trust your business.
One must also be adaptive and flexible. You can’t just say that this is what I believed in and this is exactly how I’ll produce my product - I’m not going to change it at all. You must be flexible enough to cater the product to the need of the wider mass so while under the development stage, before or even after, if you know that the product needs some tweaking just do it. It’s perfectly fine to stand behind your idea, your wider goal but to reach that you must be able to adapt to any situation and environment and be flexible enough when needed to ensure product growth. If you’re not flexible and don’t care about the needs of the client, in near future, they won’t care about you or your product either (Kirzner, 1999). So, it’s always necessary for one to exercise flexibility.
Finally, entrepreneurs should always put the past behind, work on the present and think about the future in realistic terms. They can use their past experiences to drive the business forward in present and set strategies based on the past and present events/experiences. But, one should always be focused on the goal and think about the same going into the future. One can certainly change the path which will take the business and him/her to the goal. If you know where you’re going you’ll find a way to go there and chances are that you can actually reach there. However, if you don’t know where you’re going, where will you reach? You may end up nowhere with no goal in mind. Thus, entrepreneurs must also be forward-looking.
References
Kirzner, I. (1999). Creativity and/or Alertness: A Reconsideration of the Schumpeterian Entrepreneur. The Review Of Austrian Economics , 11 (1/2), 5-7.
Oosterbeek, H., van Praag, M., & Ijsselstein, A. (2010). The impact of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurship skills and motivation. European Economic Review , 54 (3), 442-454.
Roberts, E. (1968). Entrepreneurship and Technology: A basic study of innovators; how to keep and capitalize on their talents. Research Management , 11 (4), 259-266.
Sexton, D., & Bowman, N. (1985). The entrepreneur: A capable executive and more. Journal Of Business Venturing , 1 (1), 129-140.
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There is no formula as such or a magic spell that you can chant and you’ll be a successful entrepreneur. It’s a continuous process of growing by doing and experimenting with things. It often involves failing and still getting back up on your feet to fight back strong. We tell a child when it falls down while it’s crawling, trying to walk to get up and try, try and try. The child fails thousands if not hundreds of time before it finally can walk but what do we do when we fail? Few times and we’re so demoralized and hopeless, one seeking to be an entrepreneur must thus have a strong set of skills, values, talents, abilities, and mindset to overcome all those hurdles that might come in the way. The person should be prepared to make his/her own way. In the paragraph to follow a few of the most important set of skills, values, talents, abilities, and mindsets which one needs to cultivate as an entrepreneur.
You must be a persevering person meaning that regardless of the times of failure that you might have, the problems that you might face, you must always have that fighting attitude (Sexton & Bowman, 1985). That belief in goal and the ability to face all the problems heads on. You must always have the energy level high and keep doing what you’re doing. You must also be ready to face the failure at times and learn from it to get back stronger. If you want to gain success, failure can function like a ladder for you.
Entrepreneurship is all about taking a calculated risk and the world of uncertainty. You might be doing all the right thing but still, fail if you are unable to cater to the needs of the customers like in the case of Nokia when it lost its charm from its number one spot to fall down and sell its IP rights out to Microsoft. There’s no set path to ensure the success, you must have to take instant at times completely out of normal decisions. This is why an entrepreneur must learn to anticipate failure and take lessons from it to develop oneself (Oosterbeek, van Praag & Ijsselstein, 2010). Take an example of a bus as a business and the driver as an entrepreneur. The bus has a serious problem including break failure along with damaged indicators all around. Will the driver add more passengers (resources) into the bus? Obviously not, the driver would try to stop the bus to get everyone out. Similarly, entrepreneurs must identify when it’s too much and stop adding more resources into it. But rather save those resources when failure is imminent and put it into another one.
Ability to manage time and the resources available is very important for an entrepreneur to have. One must be able to see into the future and plan the time in the best possible way for oneself and the company’s direction. The addition, reduction or usage of resources is what one must also be able to guide and supervise (Roberts, 1968). The entrepreneur must inspect all the resources that he/she has at his disposal including the workforce and not just expect from them and it goes on. One must also have the tenacity to stand behind what is said. If you say, the office will open 24/7, open it anyhow. You must always stand behind your idea and your words while managing the time in the best possible way to make the most out of the same time.
The entrepreneur must be a good communicator. He/she must be able to pass the message in simple and clear language to everyone. In today’s world, you can’t force people to do anything but you can certainly influence one. Personal influence to win the trust is vital in today’s world. You must have the charm to persuade staff to work and the clients and others to trust your business.
One must also be adaptive and flexible. You can’t just say that this is what I believed in and this is exactly how I’ll produce my product - I’m not going to change it at all. You must be flexible enough to cater the product to the need of the wider mass so while under the development stage, before or even after, if you know that the product needs some tweaking just do it. It’s perfectly fine to stand behind your idea, your wider goal but to reach that you must be able to adapt to any situation and environment and be flexible enough when needed to ensure product growth. If you’re not flexible and don’t care about the needs of the client, in near future, they won’t care about you or your product either (Kirzner, 1999). So, it’s always necessary for one to exercise flexibility.
Finally, entrepreneurs should always put the past behind, work on the present and think about the future in realistic terms. They can use their past experiences to drive the business forward in present and set strategies based on the past and present events/experiences. But, one should always be focused on the goal and think about the same going into the future. One can certainly change the path which will take the business and him/her to the goal. If you know where you’re going you’ll find a way to go there and chances are that you can actually reach there. However, if you don’t know where you’re going, where will you reach? You may end up nowhere with no goal in mind. Thus, entrepreneurs must also be forward-looking.
References
Kirzner, I. (1999). Creativity and/or Alertness: A Reconsideration of the Schumpeterian Entrepreneur. The Review Of Austrian Economics , 11 (1/2), 5-7.
Oosterbeek, H., van Praag, M., & Ijsselstein, A. (2010). The impact of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurship skills and motivation. European Economic Review , 54 (3), 442-454.
Roberts, E. (1968). Entrepreneurship and Technology: A basic study of innovators; how to keep and capitalize on their talents. Research Management , 11 (4), 259-266.
Sexton, D., & Bowman, N. (1985). The entrepreneur: A capable executive and more. Journal Of Business Venturing , 1 (1), 129-140.