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Who can be an entrepreneur? - The HR perspective

A lot has been said and written about the real life entrepreneurs- revolving around the life’s of Dhirubhai Ambani, the Tatas, Birlas, Steve Jobs or Bill Gates to name a few. Reading about their biographies motivates everyone to be like one of them, have name, fame, money, thrills and chills. But is it practically possible for everyone to be an entrepreneur? Moreover think of a picture sketched where everyone has become an entrepreneur has opened his/her small businesses aiming to embark on a path that no one has followed previously and achieve the unthinkable. Wait a minute from where will now one get the employees or support staff required to run the businesses, isn’t it in such kind of a scenario there will be more employers than employees (if any). To maintain this balance nature has not provided everyone with same kind of ability and social environment which has a direct impact on his/her attitude. However hard we may try one cannot become a successful entrepreneur until and unless he has certain abilities and has developed minimum basic necessary skills. Some of these skills have been discussed in the next section.

The first and foremost is the leadership skill. Apart from developing the vision for his venture, a successful entrepreneur needs to imbibe that vision into his subordinates, colleagues and the society he is going to serve. He should take up the mantle of providing the guidance and direction required to be shown when one goes on such kind of unseen nascent voyages. Networking skills are also very important to engage people in the venture, garner political and financial support for the initiative. Creativity and innovative skills are again very important in the sense that they lay the foundation for the distinctive feature required to be embedded in your product or services if it has to survive the brutal competition of the modern business world. Last but not the least an entrepreneur needs to have pressure handling skills and the skills to absorb and learn from failures. He should be able to remain calm as cucumber during the time of crisis. Only god can be correct each and every time he does something new. There are bound to have failures at times simply because we are following a path that has not been taken before. Rather than getting disheartened and lose motivation he should see it as an opportunity to learn something new. In the next section we will describe the level of motivation required to be an entrepreneur taking a cue from the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs model.

A person at physiological and Safety level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs will simply be too engrossed in fulfilling his day to day needs that he will hardly have any time to wake and listen to his creative side of mind. In addition to it his risk appetite will be very low. At Social level of the model a person will be busy building social relations to have a sense of security. He will be in the process of exploring himself and the society hence again not much can be counted upon him to go on a path rarely taken. Maximum expectations can be put on a person having motivation level sky high depicted by being present at either Esteem level or Self Actualization level of the model. Either out of the curiosity to explore and redefine own limits or out of utter selfishness to prove himself better than his fellow human beings, a person is expected to display great hunger and will power required to succeed as an entrepreneur.

Creative Links

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9SWNLZvA8g - Intel Making of a chip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo  - United Breaks Guitar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1NnyE6DDnQ  - Coca Cola assembly line operations explained in creative manner

https://www.google.com/  -most creative links when it comes to celebrating some great personality’s birthday or some special occasion. Cheerful, creative and link is informative. Right now the theme is London Olympics.

http://ignitioncreative.net/ - the most creative stories I have ever heard of

My definition of an Entrepreneur

As per my observation a person needs to have at least three basic qualities to qualify being as an entrepreneur:

1)      Vision- An entrepreneur needs to have a clear, well defined and achievable vision for his future course of actions. In addition to that he/she needs to have the hunger and ability to convert the vision into reality.

2)      Ability to take ‘Big Decisions’- To define ‘Big Decision’ in short they are the course of action an individual takes that have the capability of changing the way things happened or are happening in his personal ‘environment’. All of us don’t have this ability or mindset because there is a fair chance the decision might produce result quite opposite to what was desired.

3)      Penchant towards serving the society at large- The initiatives that an entrepreneur takes affects not just him/her but others as well. His activities provide employment to scores as well as the outcomes serve many others. Although the primary purpose might be monetary profits but directly or indirectly he serves society as well.

Introspection- An Idea for a better world

All the problems in the world could be solved or could at least be minimized to their ineffective best if we all start focusing on making ourselves better. The root cause of the problem is that we don’t have enough time for ourselves or that is how we project it to be. Sometimes we don’t know what we are good at or can do best simply because we have never talked to ourselves. A little bit of introspection (may be half an hour daily will do) about our day’s activities, how it affected ourselves and others can give a lot of insights and scope for further improvements. After all, the entire world is like a big organization made up of different individuals with different personal goals and in the process of achieving these goals they do different activities which define the overall well-being of the ‘organization’ -our mother earth.