Vision, grit, focus: do you have what it takes to bring something new to the market?
Many who are entrepreneurs do not know it. They are wasting their potential in dead-end jobs, watching their lives pass them by. And some people who think they are entrepreneurs, really are not. They, in turn, may need to face the truth, lower their expectations and seek employment in full-time jobs.
So what makes an entrepreneur? Is it personality, age, education, experience, family upbringing or something else? In the past 20-odd years there has been a raging debate in academic circles about who and/or what is an entrepreneur. The early discussion was mostly around personality types. Most of that research proved fruitless, as it seems entrepreneurs represent many different personality types. They also come from different industries, backgrounds and education levels.
However, over the years I have met many entrepreneurs - and they did have things in common. They were passionate about what they were doing. They were optimistic, demanding, energetic, determined and had great vision. They could persuade, negotiate, lead and change direction when they had to. They were more pragmatic than perfectionistic. The biggest difference between the entrepreneur and the small businessman or woman or the small-firm consultant was an overriding ambition to expand the venture. They all had big visions.
I like to think of entrepreneurs as people who make things happen. This might be in a commercial endeavour, whether a start-up or inside a large corporation, or it could be in a not-for-profit venture. However this does not mean they are good managers; in my experience, few really are. But they have the vision and energy to bring people together to create an organisation to deliver something of value to a customer or to their communities.
Entrepreneurs are not necessarily inventors. In fact, few inventors are entrepreneurs. Just because someone invents a new gadget does not mean they have the knowledge, skills, experience and motivation to commercialise it. Most entrepreneurs create businesses around existing products, but they create new ways of delivering them to the market through new means. Entrepreneurs find new combinations of means and ends; that is, innovating by seeing how to do something a different way.
The New Zealand forest products company Carter Holt Harvey initiated an internal program to find innate entrepreneurs. The company felt that these people would be able to come up with new ideas to produce new revenue. They had a novel way of defining the entrepreneur. They called it the Six Fingered Hand. They determined that entrepreneurs had the following attributes:
- Chameleon: The shuffling of ideas into new combinations and the ability to think laterally, learn quickly and adapt existing knowledge for new situations.
- True grit: Determination grounded in vision, optimism and the ability to focus, providing the ability to overcome significant obstacles.
- Extreme sport: Risk-tolerance and the capacity to be comfortable with and operate efficiently in a situation that contains risk and uncertainty.
- Half-full: The ability to see possibilities where others are overwhelmed; problems become opportunities and failure no longer provides a reason for retreat.
- Follow me: Leadership derived from a sense of wellbeing combined with a self-starting mindset that allows the effective translation of their vision, inspiring commitment and motivation in others.
- Hunger: The undivided focus on winning that builds the endurance required to push themselves to the absolute limit.
Professor Adolph Hanich of the Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship believes that some people have an innate disposition for business in the same way that others have an innate talent for music, mathematics or athletics. Sometimes it is only necessity or an overwhelming opportunity that brings out the entrepreneurial capability inside us.
So are you an entrepreneur? Do you have this range of talents that could take new ideas into the market or to create new community ventures? If so, do not waste the opportunity to bring an idea to the market, create new jobs and improve the community's standard of living. And welcome to the club.
Buy Tom McKaskill’s Audio Seminar CD from the Resource Centre:
An Inside View Of The Life Of An Entrepreneur