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- What is Entrepreneurship and Who is an Entrepreneur ?
- We often hear that so and so is an entrepreneur who has started his or her own business. It is also the case that when we hear the term entrepreneur, we tend to associate it with a person who has or is starting their own ventures or in other words, striking it on their own. This is indeed the case as the formal definition of Entrepreneurship is that it is the process of starting a business or an organization for profit or for social needs. We have used the phrase for profit or for social needs to delineate and separate the commercial entrepreneurship from social and charitable entrepreneurship. After defining entrepreneurship, it is now time to define who an entrepreneur is and what he or she does. An entrepreneur is someone who develops a business model, acquires the necessary physical and human capital to start a new venture, and operationalizes it and is responsible for its success or failure. Note the emphasis of the phrase responsible for success or failure as the entrepreneur is distinct from the professional manager in the sense that the former either invests his or her own resources or raises capital from external sources and thus takes the blame for the failure as well as reaps the rewards in case of success whereas the latter or the professional manager does the job and the work assigned to him or her for a monetary consideration. In other words, the entrepreneur is the risk taker and an innovator in addition to being a creator of new enterprises whereas the professional manager is simply the executor. Attributes of Entrepreneurs Moving to the skills and capabilities that an entrepreneur needs to have, first and foremost, he or she has to be an innovator who has a game changing idea or a potentially new concept that can succeed in the crowded marketplace. Note that investors usually tend to invest in ideas and concepts which they feel would generate adequate returns for their capital and investments and hence, the entrepreneur needs to have a truly innovative idea for a new venture. Leadership Qualities Apart from this, the entrepreneur needs to have excellent organizational and people management skills as he or she has to build the organization or the venture from scratch and has to bond with his or her employees as well as vibe well with the other stakeholders to ensure success of the venture. Further, the entrepreneur needs to be a leader who can inspire his or her employees as well as be a visionary and a person with a sense of mission as it is important that the entrepreneur motivates and drives the venture. This means that leadership, values, team building skills, and managerial abilities are the key skills and attributes that an entrepreneur needs to have.
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