The Spirit of Entrepreneurship

I have move my blog to www.spotalks.com

Entrepreneurship is a new buzz word not only in India but also around the globe. This might be attributed to the fact that now “The world is flat”. I think, most of you may be amused because I say “The world is flat”. Seriously I’m not the one who discovered the world is flat but the famous journalist Thomas L Friedman rediscovered that the world is flat. What provoked Friedman to say that world is flat, He argues that everyone anywhere in the planet now has the opportunities and resources to compete in the globe. The person who taps those opportunities and turns into viable and sustainable business venture is called “The Entrepreneur”.

There exist thin line of difference between an entrepreneur and a business person. The business person runs or owns business entity through inheritance or he might have started with group of friends like a brick and mortar company. The entrepreneur is a person who starts a new business venture and turns into great money spinning viable business organization. Most of the Hawker or food restaurant owners are business people but the person who converts those restaurants into chain of restaurants like McDonalds or KFC are entrepreneur. The subject of entrepreneurship is very intriguing for research at prestigious management institutions like Stanford, Harvard, Wharton, etc. These institutions are rigorously analyzing what are the skills sets needed to become an entrepreneur and they also coined some of the programs for entrepreneurship education. Here, comes the question, Will these programs definitely make an entrepreneur?

I also had gone for a minor in Entrepreneurship at my university, NTU Singapore. My personnel opinion and feeling about these programs is molded on the basis of virtual business platform and makes you understand whether you have those skills to become an entrepreneur and it may acts as a platform for budding entrepreneurs to hone their skills too. The certainty of becoming an entrepreneur after these kinds of program is only meager. The next big alluring question is what personality traits entrepreneur must possess if he/she wants to be entrepreneurs. I learn it from some of the books on entrepreneurship; person has to be conscientious, extrovert, gregarious, loquacious (sometimes may help), shrewd, perseverance. The entrepreneur need not necessarily must have all these skills but must at least have some of the skills. Most of the entrepreneurs in the real world had conscientiousness which is considered to be one of the pivotal skill in the success of new business venture. The real world problems are many and sudden; entrepreneur must know how to tackle it, for that he/she must be conscientious.

The personality trait can be sometimes shaped by the environment but what about business acumen. The entrepreneurship is all about starting a new business venture, if they don’t possess business acumen in the beginning “Is it possible to start a viable business venture? Certainly, the epitome of the answer to this question is “Larry page and Sergey Bin”, the founders of the search giant “Google". Larry and Sergey doesn’t have a business idea when they started Google in Stanford university campus. They had strong passion for technology which searches the information in web rather making money. They are tech savvy and don’t want to be nouveau riche but strongly believed in the technology which will sometime revolutionize the world. They even approached the venture capitalist without having at least a business plan, VCs funded based on the positive attitude rather on business acumen; but now without Google obviously implausible for anyone to survive in this information rich world. Even though the CEO of Google is a business graduate but behind scenes operations are controlled by Larry and Sergey only.

I shared this example with you because entrepreneurship is not about making big money but it’s about conceiving some great ideas and turning the ordinary stone into beautiful statue. Starbucks founders realized that ordinary coffee beans can be converted into incredible business venture. They gave perceived value to those cheap coffee beans. Entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs converted delusive fruit “Apple” into real fruit which can employ more than thousands of employees. There are lot many entrepreneurs like these people who actually shaped the modern age of capitalism and amassed wealth not only for them but also for the whole country where they hail from. All these people really cherished true success because success is defined by how many people are well off because of you. So, entrepreneurship not only makes a person successful in life but also remembered.