A LESSON IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP... & IMPROVISATIONAL CREATIVITY

[continued from the Last Post.]

Entrepreneurial Characteristics

The general characteristics of an entrepreneur are:

• Willing, perhaps eager, to live with the fear of failure.

• Stimulated by a feeling of elation and aliveness when confronting risk.

• Able to perceive risk as common sense, as he or she has weighed the pros and cons of the issues in question.

• Impelled by the certainty of success, an entrepreneur is happy to accept the occasional, or repeated failure; this is considered the price of eventual success, “failing forward to success” as stated by Mary Kay Ash.

• Failure = Learning, and moving on

• Not primarily motivated by money, since the pursuit of money per se would create an unwillingness to take the (calculated) financial risks from which real wealth flows.

• Work = Fun in accomplishing worthwhile aims

• Devoted to business, often at the expense of their personal lives. No job is too menial for them, and laserlike focus on the goal is their raison d’être.

• Passionate belief in a quest for the best. Negativism in/from others = Positivism, and optimism, within themselves. They are driven by confidence in their resolve to attain their objectives. Ignorance is an asset, and thus, they succeed because they don’t know what can’t be done.

• Constantly on the lookout for products and services that that might satisfy genuine needs in the marketspace.

• Churn problems into opportunities with the idea of turning them into profit.

• Persist in checking out the competition, in order to determine what they might be doing right, or wrong.

• Expect frequent rejection when they seek funding, as they have a different mentality to bankers and investors

• For really new products, an entrepreneur tends to go with his or her instincts, and creates a market by educating the consumer, as follows:

- Creating buy-in for the product by demonstrating how it solves a problem or delivers a benefit.
- Repositioning the product in the consumers’ minds by illustrating its uniqueness, and superiority over competing products.

- Flipping a perceived liability into an asset.

• They invest in advertising, promotions, and publicity (via good press relations, for example) to create and amplify market awareness of their presence. The objective is to build sales and establish a strong brand image; that is, to attract customers.

Add your own contributions:

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Some Notable Entrepreneurs:

- Richard Branson, Virgin empire
- Bill Gates, Microsoft
- David G. Neeleman, JetBlue Airways
- P. Diddy, Bad Boy Entertainment
- Ben Cohen, Ben & Jerry’s
- Steve Jobs, Apple and Pixar
- Henry Ford, Ford Motor Company
- Walt Disney

These entrepreneurs exhibit the following common characteristics:

- They crave thrill, excitement and speed;
- They are highly creative problem solvers;
- They are impulsive;
- They are ambitious and industrious;
- They have tons of energy;
- They love being the hero in emergencies;

NOTE:

It is NOT my intention to portray entrepreneurs as being of a certain fixed ‘tupe’. History has enough evidence of entrepreneurs coming in all flavours. The above are just the common characteristics of the category of entrepreneurs given as examples.

[Excerpted from the 'Lifescaping' seminar participant's manual. The 'Lifescaping' seminar is conducted by Dilip Mukerjea about four times a year under the auspices of the Singapore Institute of Management.]