What Is All About Entrepreneurship?

Entrepreneurship is the process of converting prevailing problems into profitable solutions. It requires huge appetite on the part of the entrepreneurs to convert threats into opportunities. It needs the skills and abilities to minimize risks and maximizes returns. It calls for extraordinary courage to work under uncertainty and complexity.

Entrepreneurship is confluence of three skills such as technical skills, business management skills and entrepreneurial skills. All these skills focus on communication, human relations, environmental scanning, planning, organizing, staffing, leading, controlling, directing, risk-taking, innovation, passion, persistence and perseverance.

Any entrepreneurship requires four players basically where entrepreneurs are actors, angel investors are producers, mentors are the directors and the fourth players are customers.


Are Entrepreneurs Born or Made?

People often debate whether entrepreneurs are born or made. It is always the problems that lead to prospects. When faced with uncertainly and complexity in life, people risk themselves and find out the solutions for the existing problems. For instance, Ross Perret who worked in IBM found out several solutions for processing of data and attempted to sell to IBM. After rejection from IBM, Ross Perret set up enterprise and sold it for handsome amount. As necessity is the mother of invention, human mind explores and experiments only when there is a necessity. Most of the successful entrepreneurs in the world are self-made and are not born as entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship is more of skill rather than talent. Skills can be acquired while talents are inborn. It is for these reasons the educational institutions are encouraging entrepreneurship as a discipline in their curriculum. Therefore, it can be firmly said that entrepreneurs are not born but made out of necessity and out of fire in their belly.


Characteristics of Entrepreneurs:

They are highly passionate and pursue their dreams till end. They treat themselves like round the clock workers. They have strong business acumen and are die hard optimists. They never give in and never give up. Yet they are flexible and adaptable. They know ‘where to go’ and delegate and deploy their team in ‘how to go’. They have higher levels of energy and enthusiasm. And last but not the least, they are highly motivated and focused.


Role of Entrepreneurs:

They should be conflict managers and trouble shooters. They should be able to link both internal and external environment of enterprise to accomplish organizational goals. They must be able to oversee and interlink several functions of human resources, finance, production, operations, marketing through big picture. They should know the knack of handling investors, bankers, suppliers, clients and bureaucrats. In a nutshell, they must be all-rounder.


Recession and Entrepreneurship:

During steady and consistent growth, people will be in their comfort zones and don't think of changing and reinventing themselves. Right now, recession is a right opportunity to explore and experiment entrepreneurial instincts. Huge opportunities are waiting where in people need to do extensive research in finding out the needs of the others with changing times and with changing consumer preferences and filling the same innovatively.

Recession is also an opportunity where less number of people dare to enter into entrepreneurial ventures. There will be least traffic towards this area. The strong and bold who have vision can enter, as things are available cheaper rates such as labor and raw materials are available at cheaper prices. Once the enterprise is set up at this recessionary period, then it can gain rapid momentum when economy is in full swing.


Reasons for Entrepreneurial Failures:

For any business to survive, the cash flow has to be smooth. The business must go on and on. The marketing must be strong to cater to the needs of the consumer. When there is no adequate revenue generation then the cash flow gets affected, the business may collapse. When the rate of interest is higher, most of the profits can be eaten away by the interest resulting into loses. There is continuous need for innovation. It is basically not because of competition that the companies have to innovate but also to stay ahead, it is desirable to constantly and continuously resort to innovation. When there is failure in this front, the chances of debacle are higher side.

Inadequate access to information may result into improper judgment thus leading to wrong decisions. Lack of teamwork leads to lack of cooperation among the founding members and that may result into collapse of enterprise. Adjusting to luxurious life just because the enterprise has taken off well in the initial stage itself on the part of new entrepreneurs may prove to be costly for business. To put it finally, overambitious attitude, overconfidence and miscalculation of entrepreneurs may doom the prospects of an enterprise.


Conclusion:

Entrepreneurship is not for faint hearted. It is purely meant for brave hearted. It requires lot of struggles and sacrifices to make things happen. It is a trial by fire scenario. If everything goes on well, the entrepreneurs come out with flying colors. Or else, they would end up in a fiasco.

Geographically small countries like Finland, Germany, Britain, Japan, Korea have produced several successful entrepreneurial giants. Just imagine a country like India with a billion plus population should produce number of entrepreneurs?


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