Entrepreneurship

This essay discusses the process of entrepreneurship, the mindset and characteristics of entrepreneurs, and the factors that influence entrepreneurial behavior. It also includes a reflective report on the author's experience in an entrepreneurial team.

Running Head: Entrepreneurship 0
Critical Essay on Entrepreneurship

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Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship is the process of launching, running, and designing of a new enterprise.
People who create that particular enterprise are known as entrepreneurs. These are basically
the sole proprietors, who love to work for themselves. The process by which individuals or
team of individuals identify a business opportunity and start gathering all the natural
resources which are necessary for exploiting that particular business opportunity. Generally,
entrepreneurs start a business by keeping three things in mind which are a desire to be their
own boss, to find out a good opportunity and to start something from its scratch. These things
make entrepreneurship more dynamic and vast (Pearce, 2012).
An entrepreneurial mindset is known as a state of mind which is oriented towards the
entrepreneurial outcomes and activities. This means an entrepreneur should always work to
make more and more profit by making more and more innovation in the activities. These are
often drawn for the creation of value chain. Entrepreneurship as a subject matter will also
become a parameter for the entrepreneurial mindset (Hoskinson and Libecap, 2011). For
example, if some people will think of entrepreneurship as a gambling so they have a different
meaning for the entrepreneurial mindset. These are the basic set of skills, attitudes, and
behaviour that need to be succeeding personally, professionally and academically. It includes
self-direction, risk-taking, initiative, adaptability, flexibility, problem-solving and critical
thinking. These are considered as some of the basic elements of an entrepreneurial mindset.
Apart from the elements mentioned, entrepreneurs are free thinkers which means the people
who always think beyond the moment, problem-solving category, innovation in their
approach, willingness to fail and then eventually to win an acceptance towards employee
mindset (Stewart and Cotton, 2013).
The major characteristics of entrepreneurship include firstly, this is a dynamic activity. This
means the creation of an enterprise by the generation of wealth and value by optimum
utilization of resources. There must be a continuous improvement in performance with an
uncertain environment of the business. This is the major reason which makes
entrepreneurship the dynamic activity. Secondly, Entrepreneurship is an innovative activity
(Sine and David, 2010). This means that it is a continuous research of new ideas which
enables the individuals to continuously bring innovation to the existing modes of business
operations and to increase the profits. The risk-bearing capacity of an individual also

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increases by the implementation and creation of new business ideas. This ensures the positive
results which are more profitable. This profit is not only for the innovation but also to take
the potential risk of developing a new idea and to apply that to an actual business venture.
The potential profit is the amount which needs to be generated in future by the entrepreneur,
through its continuous efforts and innovation in their existing products. Lastly, the most
important thing in entrepreneurship is taking initiative as this is also the major characteristic
of entrepreneurship. An initiative is always the basic necessity for the innovation. The
entrepreneurs need to do a continuous improvement in the product so they need to take the
initiatives so that the people will like the product and purchase it as they need to make a
profit for the short term or for the long-term (Sassmannshausen, 2012).
The entrepreneurs are considered different from the normal people as these kinds of people
have some of the qualities which initiate them to become successful entrepreneurs.
Motivation is considered one of the major characteristic which helps them to do something on
their own. They have their basic nature which states that they cannot rely on some other
person to achieve the pre-decided goals (Lumpkin and Katz, 2010). They themselves are
motivated to work more. They believe that their actions will always inspire others to dream
and achieve more. Entrepreneurs are always very optimistic as their nature. This means that
they love to study about the variety of the subjects. As an entrepreneur, they need to know
about all the available subjects because, in case of sole ownership, they need to know about
all the subjects in order to run the entire business on their own. They need to have some
creativity level a little bit higher than the normal person. This personality trait will help them
to continuously bring innovation in the existing product line. The creativity is just a though,
but the innovation is the implementation of those innovative thoughts (Mullen, Budeva and
Doney, 2009)
The entrepreneurs are always passionate about what they do as the primary motive is to start
a business and to earn more and more profit but apart from this, they always love what they
do. This helps them to work more and put on all the extra efforts needed to run the business.
They are very much adaptable and flexible by nature. This means that they need to be flexible
about the needs of the clients so that they will get what the clients had expected from the
product (Hoskinson and Kuratko, 2015). Also, they need to adapt to the new changes going
on in the market. So that they must be updated about their surroundings and can find out the
correct marketing strategy to attract their clients. Another and one of the most important traits
necessary to run the business is knowledge. To, run any enterprise the entrepreneur must have

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proper knowledge about the product or service which they are going to sell and the
knowledge of the market which means they must be aware of the market in which they are
going to sell their product or service (Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2010).
Other than this, there are many factors which are related to the environment that impact the
entrepreneurial behaviour. One of them is psychological factors. This includes the behaviour
of people towards the entrepreneurs. This means, they generally do not get that much respect.
In some parts of the world, there is less respect of entrepreneurship as a profession as
compared to other professions. This happens because initially, the condition of entrepreneurs
is not good but now because the conditions have changed, but some people believe in the old
techniques and principals (Casil, 2018). There are many kinds of motives behind starting the
enterprise and on the basis of these motives, entrepreneurs are also characterized. The major
types of entrepreneurs are Managing entrepreneurs; these are the entrepreneurs who start their
enterprise with the motive of security. Innovating entrepreneur; these entrepreneurs start the
enterprise because it is an exciting and challenging task for them. And lastly Controlling
Entrepreneurs; their motive to start is the want for more authority and power. Entrepreneurs
generally work for the achievement of their needs. They always like to take the risk and they
put all the efforts needed to do the same (IGI Global, 2018).
Other than these there are several economic factors which give more immediate and direct
influence on the people. These factors generally occur when people likely to become
entrepreneurs due to no other jobs or no better opportunity is coming their way. These factors
include the basic necessities which are required to start a business. These are Raw material,
labour, capital, infrastructure and the market. Lastly, the social factors which can influence
the person to become an entrepreneur are caste factor, education, family background, cultural
values, the attitude of the society are the major factors (Gordon, Natarajan and Arora, 2009).
In the following, the family background plays an important role as the occupational and
social status of the family plays an important role. This means that if any of the members of
the family is involved in this occupation for a long-term, their experience in the field can help
the person to become an entrepreneur as from the other perspective the person can come to
know about the basic requirements and basic personality traits to become an entrepreneur. In
some of the places, there is a cast boundary which does not allow the person to choose the
carrier in their own (Venture well, 2018). For example, in India, the person is not allowed to
choose the carrier as per their own will, in some of the families people are bounded to follow
only the profession which is followed by their families for the generations. Education is the

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basic necessity to solve all the basic knowledge problems as with the help of education the
person can get the knowledge of the market and the product. Cultural value plays an
important role as the cultural values must accept the profession and the person who is there in
that profession. The attitude of the society towards the product and an enterprise should
always be positive so that the entrepreneur and the enterprise can earn more profit (Kimmons,
2018).
Reflective Report
Entrepreneurship is a way of living for entrepreneurs as they love to work for their enterprise.
An entrepreneurial team consists of people who are independent and want to work for
common goals and venture success. In this part of the essay, things that I have learned while
being a part of an entrepreneurial team has been discussed. As a part of the team, I had
experienced many things. Firstly, about the team I was a part of a team in which there are
eight members, each one is assigned some work by the leader of the team. I have gained the
knowledge about entrepreneurship as a subject matter in detail. This helps me to find out
about the entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs, their mindset, their personality traits and the
reason why more people want to become entrepreneurs (Sustainability, 2018).
Two of the team members were also interested in becoming entrepreneurs. They are the ones
who first introduced me to the term entrepreneurship and they are the ones who gives me a
brief idea about the major personality traits an entrepreneur must have like what makes them
start their own enterprise, to know the reason for their motivation to work for themselves,
how they are going to earn profit, what can be the sources of information and lastly the most
important thing which is how they are going to sustain in the market. I got all the answers
from my experience being in this entrepreneurial team. While searching I was told to gain the
basic idea about the market and marketing, which is also one of the basic requirements to
start an enterprise. I learn about the marketing and as per my research, I came to know that
market research is one of the crucial tasks to do. At the start, I just need to tell the basic
meaning and the market in which the company needs to operate and sell their products. But
while conducting a marketing strategy with the team I learn to know about marketing that it is
a very broad term and had many parameters on which it can be defined. I came to know about
marketing, marketing mix and its elements, marketing segmentation and new ways of
conducting marketing strategy. This made me realize how much the entrepreneurs need to do
while getting an idea about the market and the product. In this, I had also experienced that

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competitors also play a major role in setting the price of a product. Before I thought it’s just
an element which needs to be mentioned in research. But now I had experienced that price of
the product is also affected by the price of the product of the competitor. There are various
values which I have gained while being a part of that team.
From our team leader, I came to know how to be motivated enough to do the work.
Motivation plays a very big role in entrepreneur’s life as well. A motivated person can work
more efficiently. The type of motivation I experienced is acceptance, independence and
curiosity to do any particular task. I had experienced that how motivation among the
members can play a big role in decision making. This means that motivated people will easily
accept the difficult task and this will also increase the scope of improvement for the members
not only as an individual but also as a team. This helps me in concluding that the motivation
can lead to increase in overall performance and quality of work among the team members.
For example, there is some work given to a particular team member and that person is not
willing to do that work but only because of the motivation of team leader the person was
ready to take that task and also had successfully completed the work, that too without any
kind of decrease in the quality of work. This incident made me realize that a motivated
person can work more of what is expected out of him (Reuber et al., 2018).

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Reference
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