Entrepreneur vs Manager: Understanding the Characteristics and Success Factors

This article explores the characteristics of entrepreneurs and managers and how they contribute to success. It discusses the differences between risk-taking entrepreneurs and risk-averse managers. The case study of Steph Croft Simon, founder of Nom Food, highlights the entrepreneurial journey and innovation in the food industry. The article also analyzes the Big 5 Model and Maslow's pyramid in relation to entrepreneurship. Additionally, it discusses factors influencing entrepreneurship such as education, culture, and capital.

ENTERPRENURSHIP AND
SMALL BUSINESS
MANAGEMENT

Table of Contents
Task 3 - Essay..................................................................................................................................1
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

Task 3 - Essay
Entrepreneur is known as owner of a company, who integrates the skill and knowledge into
launching a new venture in unique way (Honeyman and Jana, 2019). Therefore, they are also
called as initiator or leader who has the potential of bringing the business idea for innovation.
While manager is only an employee of a firm whose main role is to manage and optimise the
entire resources into systematic manner. So, person on management position is responsible to
administer the entire business and mainly accountable for smooth operational functions.
Achievements for an entrepreneur is key motivation, while for a manager, they believe that
motivation is only come from position and power to manage. Thus, entrepreneur is said to be
risk-taker, whereas managers are risk-averse (Bereczki, 2019). The characteristics which makes a
person to become good entrepreneur in future, includes creativity, persuasiveness, vision,
versatility and risk tolerance etc. Hereby, vision refers to be strategic planning that aid an
entrepreneur to able to make a better workplace having talented employee. By sharing vision,
entrepreneurs can provide specific direction to workers to contribute their talent and efforts in
achievement of business (Khyareh, Khairandish and Torabi, 2019). Similarly, versatility shows
that an entrepreneur can adapt easily the changing business environment and run operations
accordingly. Having this characteristics, such a person can easily handle the business related
problems easily, like how to implement new technology in organisation with sufficient skills and
management of employee resistivity. In addition to this, as every employer aims to grow
business continuously, that often involves a number of risks like product development, therefore,
in such case, entrepreneurs do not afraid to take the risks (Amaliawati, Martono and Indrawati,
2019). This shows that every entrepreneur possesses risk-taking abilities that aid them to get high
success in business. Other than this, skills that make an employer a good entrepreneur includes
strategic thinker, efficient, persistence and flexibility. Here, having a curiosity shows that an
effective entrepreneur always engages in discovering new ideas to solve real world problems,
like Mark Zuckerberg who has invented the Facebook to connect entire people on internet with
each other (Choi, Lee and Hwang, 2019). Similarly, strategic thinker makes entrepreneur to
create innovations and make a history.
In context with Step Croft Simon, who is known as founder of Nom Food, has become a
good entrepreneur by creating innovation in food section. She has made a simple innovation in
Popcorn but making organic food has made her a good entrepreneur (Q And A With Nom Foods
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Founder Steph Croft-Simon, 2019). During teaching job at university, she has suffered with a lot
of allergies, due to dairy and sugar intolerance with serious metabolic condition. After this
situation, she has tapped into hygienic and clean eating market so, fascinated with nutrition and
diet she has started experiments with natural ingredients such as using coconut oil in food. So,
after many struggles, she has made her name in the top 50 food stars as per UK Government list,
by creating an ethical emission in national snaking habits (Ncanywa, 2019). To analyse the
entrepreneurial characteristics, Big 5 model can be used that includes five main traits as -
Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Openness to Experience, Extraversion and Conscientiousness.
These five characteristics distinguishes if entrepreneurs are different from others on the basis of
basic personalities.
Conscientiousness indicates a degree of organization of an individual including skills like
persistence, creative and hard work, with motivation to achieve a certain goal (Honeyman and
Jana, 2019). So, in this regard, diagnosed with intolerance and so many allergies, making an
experiment with coconut oil and innovate the organic Popcorn and other food stuffs in snacks,
has shown that Croft Simon has possessed different skills and proof her conscientiousness type
of characteristics.
Extraversion shows the different aspect of personality which includes entrepreneurial
characteristics like sociability, talkativeness, ambition and assertiveness (Bereczki, 2019).
Therefore, it is considered as a valuable trait for individuals who have potential of
entrepreneurship because they spend their most of the time in interacting with investors, workers
and other associated people to increase value of business. So, as per this trait, individuals who
have made inventions in the age of adulthood are more extroverted than others. Thus, it can be
said that Croft Simon is extroverted because she has created invention in food at the adult age,
when she has diagnosed with allergies.
Openness to Experience is another main trait that includes genetic factors like innovative,
imaginative and reflective for own experience (Khyareh, Khairandish and Torabi, 2019). So, it
states that entrepreneur to put unique ideas into business, must have possess such skills. Hereby,
reflecting on own condition and see how people are facing health related problems due to sugar
and salty foods, Croft Simon has put efforts in changing the ethnic emission in snacks. So, she
has such genetic factors also that enable her to become a good entrepreneur (Amaliawati,
Martono and Indrawati, 2019).
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Agreeableness states that entrepreneurs need to be soft-hearted, tolerance, cooperative and
trusting type of characteristics (Ncanywa, 2019). In this regard, selling food that are free-from
snacks to people who are diagnosed with such major disease like Croft Simon has shown that she
has soft-hearted characteristics by helping others to handle allergic issues.
Neuroticism states that entrepreneurs must have resilience and confidence to cope from
high stress level than other neurotic persons who are emotionally unstable (Choi, Lee and
Hwang, 2019). In this regard, facing the most tragedy and stress in life due to allergic issue, yet,
Croft Simon has patience to not only handle the same, but also fight with this, by creating
innovation for making organic snacks.
Thus, through all over the discussion as per Big 5 Model, it has been analysed that Croft
Simon has possessed effective skills that makes her different from others, in terms of
entrepreneurial characteristics (Ncanywa, 2019). This model helps in understanding and
differentiating some individual skills from others, to determine entrepreneurship. For further
analysis that how entrepreneurial characteristics aid an individual to gain high success, Maslow’s
pyramid can be used as per below stages –
Stage 1 – Physiological (Getting paid for something that an entrepreneur has created) – It
states that launching a new venture is easy but if other organisations want to do the same by
paying then it shows a good growth for running own business.
Stage 2 – Safety (Business which support itself) – Getting payment for innovation gives a
sense of security for more creation and support own business to operate successfully.
Stage 3 – Love & Belonging (Effective business relationship) – This stage states to feel
integrated in solving others’ issues and shared values with them (Amaliawati, Martono and
Indrawati, 2019). As Croft Simon who has helped other allergic people to eat healthy and
organic snacks for enjoying their life by keeping balanced diet.
Stage 4 – Esteem (Excellence in business) – It states that if an entrepreneur receives award and
recognition for own innovation than it boosts more growth and success in business (Khyareh,
Khairandish and Torabi, 2019). For example – Croft Simon after innovation is ranked under top
50 Food Stars in Government list of UK, so it shows a successful growth of her entrepreneurial
success.
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Stage 5 – Self-Actualisation (Purpose & Legacy) – It refers to biggest entrepreneurial need
which states individuals after accomplishment of goals starts discovering the new ideas, to create
something more better (Choi, Lee and Hwang, 2019).
There are number of distinct factors presents that influences the entrepreneurship in both
positive and negative manner such as – economic development, cultural background, education
and technological development. In areas where such factors are present, are expected to see have
strong as well as consistent entrepreneurial growth (Bereczki, 2019). If a person has good
cultural and education background than it helps in fostering the entrepreneurial qualities, like
integrating own skills into new business ideas. While if individuals are belong to poor education
background then it hinders the entrepreneurship also, due to shortage of finance and support of
surrounding ones in integrating own ideas into launching a new venture (Honeyman and Jana,
2019). In case of Croft Simon, she belongs to good educational background whereby when she
has diagnosed with a number of allergic issues, she has worked on innovation in organic foods to
help others who are suffering from same. This factor shows that her educational spirit has helped
in dealing with health issues and put entrepreneurial skills into creation of healthy food items.
Similarly, Capital considers as one of the most vital factors of production to launch and establish
the new enterprise. Increase in investment of capital into viable projects leads to enhance ratio of
profitability while, shortage of same creates issued in accelerating the whole process of capital
formation (Choi, Lee and Hwang, 2019). Therefore, entrepreneurship activity will get a boost
through easy availability of finance and funds for investment, otherwise it may arise barrier for
further growth in business. In case of Croft Simon, she has taken loan from banks to create
experiments in food items and innovate the organic snacks. But after successful innovation, she
has launched the venture named by Nom Food as Nom Popcorn within UK market in 2015. With
great success, helped in sourcing more funds to create innovation in the dietary foods and
nutrition to support allergic people to leave a normal life. Thus, all these things state that apart
from entrepreneurial skills and characteristics, individual own culture, education and other
factors also foster or hinder the entrepreneurship in them.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Amaliawati, S., Martono, T. and Indrawati, C. D. S., 2019. The Influence of Entrepreneurship
Education on The Business Performance Through Entrepreneurial
Intention. International Journal of Educational Research Review, 4(2), pp.162-171.
Bereczki, I., 2019. An Open Innovation Ecosystem from a startup’s perspective. International
Journal of Innovation Management, p.1940001.
Choi, J., Lee, N. and Hwang, K., 2019. A Study on the Effects of Career Interrupted
Women'Personal Attitude and Subjective Norm on Entrepreneurial Intention: Focusing
on Moderating Effects on the Entrepreneurial Supporting Policy. Asia-Pacific Journal
of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship, 14(4), pp.113-132.
Honeyman, R. and Jana, T., 2019. The B Corp Handbook: How You Can Use Business as a
Force for Good. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Khyareh, M.M., Khairandish, M. and Torabi, H., 2019. MACROECONOMIC EFFECTS OF
ENTREPRENEURSHIP: EVIDENCES FROM FACTOR, EFFICIENCY AND
INNOVATION DRIVEN COUNTRIES. International Journal of
Entrepreneurship, 23(1), pp.1-21.
Ncanywa, T., 2019. ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND DEVELOPMENT AGENDA: A CASE OF
HIGHER EDUCATION IN SOUTH AFRICA. Journal of Entrepreneurship
Education, 22(1), pp.1-11.
Online
Q And A With Nom Foods Founder Steph Croft-Simon. 2019. [Online]. Available through: <
https://www.lady-first.me/article/q-and-a-with-nom-foods-founder-steph-croft-
simon,17828.html>.
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