Factors as they accelerate or enhance the career of an entrepreneur

Definition of entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is the process of starting a business, a start-up company or other organization. The entrepreneur develops a business plan, acquires the human and other required resources, and is fully responsible for its success or failure.Entrepreneurship operates within an entrepreneurship ecosystem. Entrepreneurship within an existing firm or large organization has been referred to as intrapreneurship and may include corporate ventures where large entities spin off subsidiary organizations.

Entrepreneurs are leaders willing to take risk and exercise initiative, taking advantage of market opportunities by planning, organizing, and employing resources, often by innovating new or improving existing products. More recently, the term entrepreneurship has been extended to include a specific mindset resulting in entrepreneurial initiatives, e.g. in the form of social entrepreneurship, political entrepreneurship, or knowledge entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurial activities differ substantially depending on the type of organization and creativity involved. Entrepreneurship ranges in scale from solo, part-time projects to large-scale undertakings that create many jobs.

Factors of entrepreneurial development

An entrepreneur is someone who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise. An entrepreneur is an agent of change. Entrepreneurship is the process of discovering new ways of combining resources. When the market value generated by this new combination of resources is greater than the market value these resources can generate elsewhere individually or in some other combination, the entrepreneur makes a profit. Entrepreneurial efforts are like biological experiments in nature: Many variations are tried, but only a small percentage of those go on to thrive. You, however, have an advantage over nature. As an entrepreneur, you can set up your experiment with forethought.

The following are the necessary factors of environmental development:

1. Personal characteristics

First, examine your personal characteristics, values, and beliefs. Do you have the mindset that’s typical of successful entrepreneurs?

Optimism: Are you an optimistic thinker? Optimism is truly an asset, and it will help get you through the tough times that many entrepreneurs experience as they find a business model that works for them.
Vision: Can you easily see where things can be improved? Can you quickly grasp the “big picture,” and explain this to others? And can you create a compelling vision of the future, and then inspire other people to engage with that vision?
Initiative: Do you have initiative, and instinctively start problem-solving or business improvement projects?
Desire for control: Do you enjoy being in charge and making decisions? Are you motivated to lead others?
Drive and persistence: Are you self-motivated and energetic? And are you prepared to work hard, for a very long time, to realize your goals?
Risk tolerance: Are you able to take risks, and make decisions when facts are uncertain?
Resilience: Are you resilient, so that you can pick yourself up when things don’t go as planned? And do you learn and grow from your mistakes and failures? (If you avoid taking action because you’re afraid of failing, our article on Overcoming Fear of Failure can help you face your fears and move forward.)

2. Interpersonal Skills

As a successful entrepreneur, you’ll have to work closely with people – this is where it is critical to be able to build great relationships with your team, customers, suppliers, shareholders, investors, and more.

Some people are more gifted in this area than others, but, fortunately, you can learn and improve these skills. The types of interpersonal skills you’ll need include:

Leadership and motivation: Can you lead and motivate others to follow you and deliver your vision? And are you able to delegate work to others? As a successful entrepreneur, you’ll have to depend on others to get beyond a very early stage in your business – there’s just too much to do all on your own!
Communication skills: Are you competent with all types of communication? You need to be able to communicate well to sell your vision of the future to investors, potential clients, team members, and more.
Listening: Do you hear what others are telling you? Your ability to listen can make or break you as an entrepreneur. Make sure that you’re skilled at active listening and empathetic listening .
Personal relations: Are you emotionally intelligent? The higher your emotional intelligent, the easier it will be for you to work with others. The good news is that you can improve your emotional intelligence!
Negotiation: Are you a good negotiator? Not only do you need to negotiate keen prices, you also need to be able to resolve differences between people in a positive, mutually beneficial way.
Ethics: Do you deal with people based on respect, integrity, fairness, and truthfulness? Can you lead ethically? You’ll find it hard to build a happy, committed team if you deal with people – staff, customers or suppliers – in a shabby way.

3. Critical and creative thinking skills

As an entrepreneur, you also need to come up with fresh ideas, and make good decisions about opportunities and potential projects. Many people think that you are either born creative or you are not. However, creativity is a skill that you can develop if you invest the time and effort.

Creative thinking: Are you able to see situations from a variety of perspectives and come up with original ideas? (There are many creativity tools that will help you do this.)
Problem solving: How good are you at coming up with sound solutions to the problems you are facing?
Recognizing opportunities: Do you recognize opportunities when they present themselves? Can you spot a trend? And are you able to create a plan to take advantage of the opportunities you identify?

4. Practical skills

You also need the practical skills and knowledge needed to produce goods or services effectively, and run a company.

Goal setting: Do you regularly set goals, create a plan to achieve them, and then carry out that plan?
Planning and organizing: Do you have the talents, skills, and abilities necessary to achieve your goals? Can you coordinate people to achieve these efficiently and effectively? (Here, effective project management skills are important, as are basic organization skills.) And do you know how to develop a coherent, well thought-through business plan, including developing and learning from appropriate financial forecasts?

Decision making: How good are you at making decisions? Do you make them based on relevant information and by weighing the potential consequences? And are you confident in the decisions that you make?
Business knowledge: Do you have a good general knowledge of the main functional areas of a business (sales, marketing, finance, and operations), and are you able to operate or manage others in these areas with a reasonable degree of competence?
Entrepreneurial knowledge: Do you understand how entrepreneurs raise capital? And do you understand the sheer amount of experimentation and hard work that may be needed to find a business model that works for you?
Opportunity-specific knowledge: Do you understand the market you’re attempting to enter, and do you know what you need to do to bring your product or service to market?
Venture-specific knowledge: Do you know what you need to do to make this type of business successful? And do you understand the specifics of the business that you want to start? (This is where it’s often useful to work for a short time in a similar business.)

5. Creativity

Entrepreneurs are not dissuaded by the challenge to be creative. They do not be the original wheel creator to improve upon a stone cylinder. By standing on the shoulders of giants, they can take existing ideas and make small improvements upon them. The best ideas may come to them as you are falling asleep or while you are taking a shower. They recognize when to have a fresh idea and do not let them get away from them. By accumulating ideas, they are able to distill the great ones from the rest and be ready to run with the best.

6. Risk tolerance

Rewards rarely come without risk. The entrepreneur’s ability to take advantage of an opportunity will depend, in part, on his or her tolerance for risk. As the founder of a start-up, investors will expect you to have a vested interest in your business. If you will not bet on your idea, why should anybody else? If you cannot afford the risk, financially or emotionally, then you might make decisions that are too tepid to be successful. To do well, an entrepreneur needs the strong sense of self-efficacy to believe the risk will be surmountable.

7. Responsiveness

Opportunity can leave quickly. With the Internet, the spread of information and ideas has led to deeper, faster competition to be the first mover. The ability to respond to the market and new business opportunities can be the difference between a successful entrepreneur and a failed business model. To be responsive, an entrepreneur must have the flexibility of mind and resources necessary to see and take advantage of new and upcoming possibilities. Successful entrepreneur learn from their mistakes and those of others to implement change that can keep businesses afloat. Calcifying rigidity, on the other hand, can turn a start-up into dust.

8. Leadership

It is up to the entrepreneur to marshal assets. Leaders are challenged with taking possibilities and turning them into inspiring visions for others. You will inevitably have to sell either your idea or your product to begin your entrepreneurship. It will be up to the entrepreneur to take the idea and turn it into actions and products to capitalize on the opportunity. Leadership can come in many forms, but it is nevertheless essential to entrepreneurship. You must take the lead for your ideas to come to fruition.

Other factors enhancing entrepreneurial career development are:

Hirsch and Peters (1998), adopting the life cycle approaches to entrepreneurial development, view the stages of entrepreneurial career development, as dynamic “with each stages of reflecting and interacting with other stages and event in the individual life, past, present and future. Some of the major factors enhancing care development in entrepreneurship are:

Education and early childhood work experience: Entrepreneurial career development requires some innate abilities and knowledge which can be achieved by good basic education and early childhood work experience. This promotes the thinking ability of the entrepreneur and also helps in the conversion of ideas to real life situation which is required in entrepreneurial career development.
Influence on the Individual’s Personality during Childhood: The ability to imagine several concepts during childhood and ability to try to develop imaginations into real life situation is the bedrock of entrepreneurship. The individual’s personality during childhood such as training, life situation, problems, exposure and the quest to produce something to solve problems faced strengthen the entrepreneurial ability of the individual which latter develop into full entrepreneurial capabilities.
Childhood family environmental: Family has been recognized as the first place that enhances an individual’s awareness about entrepreneurship. Family is one of the most important institution that develop the individual’s attitude towards entrepreneurship, develop the capabilities to step into new venture creation, creativity in developing new ideas and thereby improves the intention to choose entrepreneurship as a career path. For instance, growing in a family where one of the relatives, and particularly, parents established and running their own business not only provides and inspiring and supportive environment and the requisite information and resources for launching a new business but also create an opportunity to experience realities and challenges of the business world.
Employment history: Work experiences such as past regular employment, internships, summer jobs, youth-run businesses, service projects and volunteer work, and part-time jobs contribute immensely in enhancing entrepreneurial career development. This will provide the individuals with the required experience to start and effectively carry out entrepreneurial career effectively.
Adult development history: Adult development history provide entrepreneurship abilities for the acquisition of skills in our information driven society. This will enable individuals to will develop or improve career aspirations and professional choices in entrepreneurial development.
Adult family/non work history: Adult family and non work determine an individual’s intentions to start a new business have been the order to predict entrepreneurial behaviour, the first step should be to understand how entrepreneurial intentions are formed, since these ‘can be viewed as the first step in an evolving long-term process of organizational founding and entrepreneurial intentions is focused on predicting individual’s entrepreneurial propensities. Characteristics and past experiences influence the formation of entrepreneurial intentions.
Current work situation: Individual’s current perspectives and current family/networking situation. Current work skills can play a large role in career development. Often, the technical skills can be of great importance in entrepreneurial abilities. To help individuals move forward in their career, they need soft skills such as the ability to be a good leader which can be developed on the job. Therefore, current work skills are considered to be important traits which can help individuals to get to the top of their entrepreneurial career field. Good leadership qualities ability is so important.