In this assignment, I will be analyzing and expanding on the skills and tendencies of what it is to be an entrepreneur and how my entrepreneurial skills have developed throughout the course of this module. Entrepreneurship is not an inborn skill; it is a product of the environment. Withstanding that, I will be highlighting the fact that I have never attempted or successfully used any entrepreneurial assets before taking this module. I want to use this assignment as a descriptive walkthrough of the development of my skills and how I put them to use in the real world during and after taking this module. I’m going to express my findings and analysis carried out on my personal abilities, skills, and experience to develop my newly found entrepreneurial skills, as well as an analysis of the lessons learned from this module. Furthermore, the identification of my strengths and weaknesses will be analyzed along with how I address these and what actions I took in doing so. Finally, a reflection on the skills, experience, and information, gained from carrying out this assignment will be explained.
“Entrepreneur is defined as a person who starts a business and is willing to risk a loss to make money” (Merriam-Webster.com). The word ‘entrepreneur’ is derived from the French word ‘entre’, meaning ‘between’, and ‘prendre’, meaning ‘take’. The word was originally used to describe people who ‘take on a risk’ between buyers and sellers, or who ‘undertake’ a task such as starting a new venture. There are numerous definitions of entrepreneurship. These all stem from the perspective that entrepreneurship has been explored. The three main categories came from: the economic approach, the trait approach, and the social identity approach.
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The role of entrepreneurs today is not just for self-fulfillment but for causative to frugality and helping resolve many of the difficulties in society. There are specific types of characteristics that one must develop when wanting to be an entrepreneur. For example, there is a need for independence, achievement, internal locus of control, innovation, and proactivity. When pursuing the role of an entrepreneur all these characteristics don’t have to be fulfilled, but I do agree it would help you develop a variety of different, useful skills. The two main roles of entrepreneurs are: first, taking the risk of developing new products or services, and second, successfully bringing new products and services into the marketplace.
I learned a fair amount of new skills during this module. One skill I developed further throughout the course of this is originality and creativity. I have creativity seeping out of my pores, hence the university degree I’m taking, which is English and creative writing. So, by no means, am I at fault for this trait. These are useful traits for entrepreneurs because the fondness for ideas and brainstorming is a part of the tendency to be creative and original. A specific love for testing boundaries and an ability to communicate boldly and directly give the entrepreneur a means to be original and creative.
Another viable skill that I really feel will help me in my future is team management skill. A known quote by George S. Patton is the best example of the difficulty in team management. The quote is as follows: “If everyone in a group is thinking alike, then someone is not thinking anything”. This skill seems almost significant in the development of being an entrepreneur. Whether you work in a team with many people or only a few, having good team management skills helps the process a lot more. As stated in the quote above, a team must have a variety of different people to have different assets and ideas within the team. Communication is also viable when working with other people. Ignorance towards other people and their ideas cause conflict within the group. Making sure you listen and acknowledge one another’s ideas, whether you agree with them or not, is highly important within the deed of communication.
Most entrepreneurs think that their concepts are very innovative when they start their businesses. Withstanding that, whether or not they truly are, it will command the long-term achievement or failure of their business. The main barrier to innovation is the refusal to acknowledge that your idea has already been put out there and has possibly been done better by someone else. But, standing the grain of your ideas in contradiction of your opponent’s shows deep and true innovation.
Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about your ideal future, and for motivating yourself to turn your vision of this future into reality. The process of setting goals helps you choose where you want to go in life and what you want out of it. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know where you can concentrate your efforts. You’ll also quickly spot the distractions that can so easily lead you astray.
By setting sharp and clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals, and you’ll see a forward process in what may be previously have seemed a long pointless grind. You will also raise your self-confidence as you recognize your own ability and competence in achieving the goals that you’ve set. For me, clearly defining my goals and achieving them was an area that needed to be greatly improved. A useful way of making goals more powerfully prioritized is to use the SMART mnemonic. While there are plenty of variants, SMART usually stands for: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.
When writing a personal development plan, there are specific things you could include to make sure you get the full use out of it. For example, you should set yourself some goals, realistic or not, and then you must prioritize them. Setting deadlines for when you want to achieve said goals is an effective way to correctly prioritize them. Personally, using a SMART personal development plan would have greatly improved my whole entrepreneurial development significantly and would have overall made my ideas and plans more organized.
One weakness I found myself having was my incompetent presentation skills. It is not something I thought would be valuable when developing my entrepreneurial skills, as showing off good communication skills and personal attributes makes a good entrepreneur. Whether I have to present something to a group I’m working in or to a class of people, I find it hard to fully pitch any ideas I may have. I focused mainly on the fact I’m such a creative person and that no ideas are bad ideas. With that being said, I also focused on the fact that there are always going to be several people who don’t agree with some ideas I may come up with, and that’s a hurdle you just have to get over yourself.
To conclude, many people have entrepreneurial skills within themselves, but may not even know them. The assets can be worked on and grown into something bolder. With the help of this module, I can explore more of these traits deeper and can apply them to my use in the real world. Things like presentation skills and teamwork have really helped me grow and will come into use in the future.