CS Foundation Entrepreneurship Notes

CS Foundation Entrepreneurship Notes

Entrepreneurship is about seeing opportunities and bringing about change. An entrepreneur is actually a French word that means “undertake”. The English understanding of this term is someone who wants to start a business or enterprise. An individual who, rather than working as an employee, runs a small business and assumes all the risk and reward of a given business venture, idea, or good or service offered for sale. The entrepreneur is commonly seen as a business leader and innovator of new ideas and business processes.

→ Four key elements of entrepreneur
In many countries, the term entrepreneur is often associated with a person who starts his own new business. The early history of entrepreneurship in India came from the culture, custom and tradition of the Indian people. The entrepreneur is the one who undertakes to organize, manage and assume the risks of a business. In recent years entrepreneurs have been doing so many things that it is necessary to broaden this definition. Today, an entrepreneur is an innovator or developer who recognizes and seizes opportunities; converts those opportunities into workable/marketable ideas

The elements of entrepreneurship are Innovation

  • Risk taking
  • Vision
  • Organising skills

→ Characterstics of entrepreneurs

  • Entrepreneur are Person who owns and develops his business
  • Entrepreneurs have Talent
  • Entrepreneurs have a way of thinking in innovative ways about ordinary things that leads to their ability to create new value
  • Entrepreneurs have an ability to acquire the necessary skills and expertise to push their new ventures forward
  • Entrepreneurs have strong urge to be independent
  • Entrepreneur is commonly seen as a business leader
  • Entrepreneurs have a ability to fight competitiveness
  • Entrepreneurs are risk taking
  • Entrepreneur organises their business to earn higher profits
  • Entrepreneur takes personal responsibility
  • Entrepreneur converts a situation into opportunity
  • Entrepreneur looks at the world differently rather than the way it is
  • Entrepreneur identifies an opportunity ’
  • Entrepreneur pursues that opportunity beyond your current resources
  • Entrepreneur believes that the opportunity^can be achieved.

→ Who is an Entrepreneur?
Entrepreneur is derived from the French word which means one who takes an endeavour.
He has no age, income level, gender, differ in education level and experience. Entrepreneur have some personal attributes which is common to all. These are

  • Creativity: Entrepreneurship is about creativity. They are the people who develops new product or new ways to do business. Entrepreneurs use innovation and hardwork to overcome obstacles to their success. They are the people whom can be called continuous thinkers.
  • Determination: Entrepreneurs are not thwarted by their defeats. They look at defeat as an opportunity for success. They are determined to make all of their endeavours succeed, so will try and try again until it does. Successful entrepreneurs do not believe that something cannot be done.
  • Dedication: The successful entrepreneur will often be the first person to arrive at the office and the last one to leave. These are the people who work 12 hours a day, seven days in a week. Their mind is constantly on their work, whether they are in or out of the workplace.
  • Flexibility: They are the people who have the ability to mould themselves as per the changing environment.
  • Leadership: It is their ability to create rules and to set goals. They have the ability to look at everything around them and focus it toward their goals. They are disciplined enough to take steps every day toward the achievement of their objectives.
  • Passion: Passion is the most important trait of the successful entrepreneur. They genuinely love their work. They are willing to put in those extra hours to make the business succeed because there is a joy their business gives which goes beyond the money.
  • Self-confidence: The entrepreneur does not ask questions about whether they can succeed or whether they are worthy of success. They are confident with the knowledge that they will make their businesses succeed. They exude that confidence in everything they do.
  • “Smarts”: They have common sense joined with knowledge or experience in a related business or endeavour

→ Why Entrepreneurship?
The advantages which promote the people to be entrepreneur are

  • Do what you enjoy: What you get out of your business in the form of personal satisfaction, financial gain, stability and enjoyment will be the sum of what you put into your business. So if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, in all likelihood it’s safe to assume that will be reflected in the success of your business or subsequent lack of success. In fact, if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, chances are you won’t succeed.
  • Freedom: Entrepreneurship is about freedom. Few things in life are as empowering as being able to determine what work you will do, when, where and with whom you will do it. Freedom does not mean freedom to take vacations or so because early years of business demands lot of hard work.
  • Income potential: They will able to get much more from what they would have got in case they were working for someone else. There is no one to decide their salary cause their salary is dependent on the market conditions and not on the board members.
  • Recognition and self-fulfilment: Entrepreneurs bring ideas to life. They are involved from the creation to the sales of a business. A new thing developed gives a sense of prestige.
  • Own boss: They are their own boss and they are not required to take instructions from anyone. They can choose to work from a home office, a leased office or the beaches of the world.
  • Innovation: entrepreneurs enjoy the creative freedom associated with calling their own shots. That freedom includes, “the freedom to create authentically, to create a life, job, relationships and greater purpose that represents your deepest values and to create without fear, self-recrimination, or judgments. Steve Jobs is an example of an Entrepreneur.

→ Types of entrepreneur:

  • Idealist: The idealist entrepreneur is the most common type of entrepreneur. He/She likes innovation and enjoys working on something new or creative or something personally meaningful.
  • Optimizers: The optimizer entrepreneur comes in a close second and is content with the personal satisfaction of simply being a business owner.
  • Hard workers
  • Improver: If you operate your business predominately in the improver mode, you are focused on using your company as a means to improve the world.
  • Sustainer; The sustainers entrepreneur category consists of people who like the thought of the balancing work and apersonal life. Most often they do not wish the business to grow too large where it will cut into their personal life too much. They do not do new things.
  • Advisor: This business personality type will provide an extremely high level of assistance advice to customers. The advisor’s motto is : the customer is right and we must do everything to please them.
  • Artiste: Often found in businesses demanding creativity such as web design and ad agencies. As an artist type you’ll tend to build your business around the unique talents and creativities you have.
  • Superstar: Here the business is centred around the charisma and high energy of the Superstar CEO. This
    personality often will cause you to build your business around your own personal brand.
  • Visionary: Visionaries are entrepreneurs driven by a desire to change the world – and the capacity to imagine how to do so.
  • Analyst: If you run a business as an Analyst, your company is focus on fixing problems in a systematic way.
  • Jugglers: The juggler entrepreneur likes the concept that the business gives them a chance to handle everything themselves. They are usually people with lots of energy and exist on the pressure of meeting deadlines, paying bills and of course making payroll.
  • Fireball: A business owned and operated by a Fireball is full of life, energy and optimism. Your company is life-energizing and makes customers feel the company has a get it done attitude in a fun playful manner.
  • Hero: You have an incredible will and ability to lead the world and your business through any challenge. You are the essence of entrepreneurship and can assemble great companies.
  • Healer: If you are a Healer, you provide nurturing and harmony to your business. You have an uncanny ability to survive and persist with an inner calm.

→ Differences between entrepreneur and manager
Although manager and entrepreneur look same but they are very much different from each other.

The main differences between manager and entrepreneur are:

  • Entrepreneur is the person who starts the business and develops it while manager is the person who provides services to the entrepreneur.
  • Entrepreneurs have a certain set of skills that is superior to that of a manger in terms of productivity and profitability.
  • Entrepreneur has more income uncertainty than manager
  • Entrepreneur is a person who attempts to profit by risk and initiative while managers do not have that risk
  • Entrepreneur is opportunistic, innovative, self-confident and acts proactive and decisive. He is highly self-motivated by his vision and is therefore willing to take even greater risks and can live with a high uncertainty while manager is administrating, or in other words managing, an entity that does not belong to him.
  • Entrepreneur is not involved in fraudulent behaviour while a manager may involve himself by not working hard
  • Entrepreneur can be manager but manager cannot be an entrepreneur

→ Intrapreneurship:
Intrapreneurs are employees thinking and acting as entrepreneurs, but within a company. They are aware of and accept the goals of the company. Within their scope of responsibilities they do their best to actively contribute to the achievement of these goals.

The word intrapreneur comes from Intra – corporate and preneur- entre. Intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs are essentially the same thing. Having either title requires that an individual be remarkably innovative, patient and resourceful. Both types of “preneurs” must be willing to be inventive and take risks. The biggest difference between the two is where they decide to use their skills. An intrapreneur is someone with entrepreneurial ability who utilizes his or her creative streak within a bigger company. Intrapreneurs take existing businesses and transform them. Whereas an entrepreneur would take an idea and build a business around it,

Key characteristics of Intrapreneur:

  • Intrapreneurship is a novel way of making organizations more profitable where imaginative employees .
    entertain entrepreneurial thoughts
  • An intrapreneur thinks like an entrepreneur looking out for opportunities, which profit the organization.
  • It is in the interest of an organization to encourage intrapreneurs.
  • Intrapreneurship is a significant method for companies to reinvent themselves and improve performance.
  • In intrapreneurship there is backing from the headquarters so there is less chances of failure.
  • Intrapreneurs create wealth for Company
  • Intrapreneurs are responsible for keeping companies current.

→ Differences between Intrapreneur and Entrepreneur

  • An entrepreneur is an independent person .who starts his venture and bears full risk of his failure and enjoys the fruit of his success whereas intrapreneur is partially independent and is sponsored by the corporation in which he is working. He is also not liable to bear the losses in case of his failure.
  • An entrepreneur raises the finance from various source and also guarantees their return whereas an intrapreneur does not own the responsibility to raise the capital or to return it.
  • An entrepreneur has no relation with any organization whereas an intrapreneur operates within the organization where he is working. ‘

CS Foundation Entrepreneurship Notes 1