Traits and Characteristics of an Entrepreneur

This report discusses the traits and characteristics required to become a successful entrepreneur. It also explores the challenges faced by social entrepreneurs. The case study of Fairphone is used to illustrate these concepts.

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Entrepreneurship
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4/6/2019

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Executive Summary
A social entrepreneur is one, who identifies and explores business opportunities in social
issues and through his commercial strategies try to resolve those problems and create social
value in order to enhance environment and well-being of people. Materials used for the
manufacturing of mobile phones’ batteries are derived from mines of Democratic Republic of
Congo by small kids and children. Ban van Abel identified this issue and started a project to
raise awareness. The success and response to the project motivated him to become an
entrepreneur and he stared his business of manufacturing ethical mobile phones and named it
Fairphone. This report discusses about traits and characteristics required in a person to
become a successful entrepreneur and also the challenges that he/she has to face in this way.

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Contents
Executive Summary...................................................................................................................1
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Traits and Characteristics of an Entrepreneur............................................................................3
Challenges for Running a Social Enterprise..............................................................................5
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................6
References..................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
Fairphone is a social enterprise which was emerged from a social activism. Fairphone was
started as a project to raise awareness about conflict minerals used in the consumer
electronics. Officially, Fairphone was established in 2013 as a social enterprise by Ban van
Abel. The aim of Fairphone is to develop a smartphone which has minimum impacts on
environment and maximum social impact at each stage of its development that is from
sourcing to production to recycling and distribution (Akemu et al., 2016). This paper
discusses about entrepreneurs, their traits and characteristics, and challenges to face in
becoming an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs have certain kind of traits and characteristics that
make them motivated to start their own business. However, the case study of Fairphone
describes social entrepreneurship but some of the traits and characteristics of an entrepreneur
can be derived from it.
Traits and Characteristics of an Entrepreneur
Any kind of business’s oldest form is entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs are the one who bring
innovation in an economy by discovery of new services and products. This leads to the
economy of a nation towards progress and development. From study of about various
entrepreneurs it can be observed that the success story of each of them is different. Every one
of them has their individual and unique path to success (Harris et al., 2009). But, there are
some common characteristics and traits that all entrepreneurs have. Below are some traits and
characteristics of an entrepreneur:
1. Vision and Passion: A clear vision and passion for the work is essential for an
entrepreneur. Fairphone was started as a project but Bas was passionate about this
project as he wanted to make people know about dark side of smartphones (Cukier et

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al., 2011). He made his all efforts for this project to be successful. Because of his hard
work, project gained that much popularity and people started demanding Fairphones.
2. Innovative: Being innovative is the main characteristic of an entrepreneur. He senses
the opportunities available in market and capitalizes on it. Bas was an innovator as he
invented a smartphone which is cool and puts the human values on first priority
(Kobia & Sikalieh, 2010). His idea behind Fairphone manufacturing was completely
different from rest of other smartphones.
3. Risk Taker: Risks are associated with every business and it is more important in
entrepreneurship because an entrepreneur is the one who has to bear all risk of
business. Hence, an entrepreneur should have risk-taking and adventurous personality.
In case of Fairphone, when people started demanding for the Fairphone, Bas was not
sure about the organization’s success as he did not have solid customer base,
employees who have industry experience, enough capital, and prototype for mobile
phone (Renko, 2013). But, still he decided to start an organization for Fairphone
manufacturing.
4. Leader: Leadership plays an important role for every organization’s success. But it is
very crucial in entrepreneur because employees need motivation and effective
guidance in order to compete with existing competitors in market (Harris et al., 2009).
Bas started his organization with just six staff member and along with these members
he launched a crowd-funding campaign and led the campaign effectively and
successfully.
5. Persistent: Nature of a good entrepreneur is being persistent because success does not
come in a night. It takes extreme hard work. Campaign of Fairphone started in
September 2009 and it was launched in 2013 (Dacin et al., 2011). It took almost three

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years to start the organization and launching of Fairphone is result of an extreme hard
work of Ban.
6. Ethical: A business’s success is dependent on its integrity and ethics. It is very
difficult for someone to sustain his business with compromised morals for long time.
Fairphone started its business as social entrepreneur and it has maintained its basic
ethics till now (Stevaet & Hjorth, 2008).
7. Resilient: One of the most important characteristic of an entrepreneur is resilience
because path to success is not always straightforward. One has to face several
roadblocks and failures in the way. An entrepreneur is therefore has to be steadfast
and resilient in his chase of success (Certo & Miller, 2008). During start of Fairphone,
Bas did not have enough capital, experienced employees, solid customer base, and a
mobile phone prototype but he remain resilient during tough times and derived
solutions for each problem through his dedication, strategies, and hard work.
Therefore, a person who wants to become a social entrepreneur should have the above
mentioned traits and characteristics.
Challenges for Running a Social Enterprise
A social enterprise is a business whose major intention is to addressing and solving the social
issues while making minimum or no profit. Commercial strategies are applied to make
improvements in environment and human lives (Makhbul & Hasun, 2011). But as like other
businesses, social enterprises also have their unique challenges that one must be considered
before initiating an entrepreneur enterprise. These challenges are described below:
1. Raising Investment Capital: Investors or capitalists want to invest in organizations
where they see chances of large and fast growth and this cannot be promised by social
enterprises to deliver. Hence, they have to go some other ways for raising funds such

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as family, friends, or crowd-funding. One other option is seeking investments from
large number of small investors to all of them they have to report (Fayolle, 2010).
Most of the time social entrepreneurs do not able to raise all the funds required by
them through crowd-funding and they have to use other resources like small strategic
investors, their personal assets, and grants. This is very time-consuming.
2. Low Profit Margins: Social entrepreneurs however does not concerned about their
profits. Their main goal is to make impact in the social environment. But still social
entrepreneurs have to accept lower profit margins as compared to their other
competitors (Abu-Saifan, 2012).
3. Retaining a Social Purpose: It is challenging for a social entrepreneur to continually
restating a social vision and running a business towards it. Social businesses that
focus on social value creation as well as making profit have to make sure that in chase
of revenue generation they do not drift away from their core purpose (Dacin et al.,
2011).
4. Enhance Social Impact through Participation from Community: Social
enterprises focus on bringing positive changes in society. This requires a model which
effectively ad actively include communities (Renko, 2013). It is challenge to find the
best level of community participation which will enhance entrepreneurial approach
instead of resisting it.
5. Organizational Form: A form follows function but this is complicated for social
businesses because there are not legally defined forms within which such
organizations can function (Kobia & Sikalieh, 2010).

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Conclusion
Therefore from the above discussion it can be concluded that social enterprises are creating
positive impact on the society and there is need of more of this kind of initiations. Fairphone,
a New Zealand based company, recognised negative effects of materials derived from mines
of Democratic Republic of Congo by small kids and teenage children. To resolve this issue,
Fairphone started its business of manufacturing an ethical phone which has minimum social
and environmental impact. However, there are some traits and characteristics are required in
a person to become an entrepreneur because initiating and managing a business is not an easy
task as several challenges are associated with social entrepreneurship.

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References
Abu-Saifan, S., 2012. Social Entrepreneurship: Definition and Boundaries. Technology
Innovation Management Review, 2(2).
Certo, S.T. & Miller, T., 2008. Social Entrepreneurship: Key Issues and Concepts. Business
Horizons, 51(4), pp.267-71.
Cukier, W., Trenholm, S., Carl, D. & Gekas, G., 2011. Social Entrepreneurship: A Content
Analysis. Journal of Strategic Innovation and Sustainability, 7(1), pp.99-119.
Dacin, M.T., Dacin, P.A. & Tracey, P., 2011. Social Entrepreneurship: A Critique and Future
Directions. Organization Science, 22(5), pp.1203-13.
Fayolle, A., 2010. Handbook of Research on Social Entrepreneurship. UK: Edward Elgar
Publishing Limited.
Harris, J.D., Sapienza, H.J. & Bowie, N.E., 2009. Ethics and Entrepreneurship. Journal of
Business Venturing, 24(5), pp.407-18.
Kobia, M. & Sikalieh, D., 2010. Towards a Search for the Meaning of Entrepreneurship.
Journal of European Industrial Training, 34(2), pp.110-27.
Makhbul, Z.M. & Hasun, F.M., 2011. Entrepreneurial Success: An Exploratory Study
Among Entrepreneurs. International Journal of Business and Management, 6(1), p.116.
Renko, M., 2013. Early Challenges of Nascent Social Entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship
Theory and Practice, 37(5), pp.1045-69.
Stevaet, C. & Hjorth, D., 2008. Entreprenuership as Social Change: A Third New Movements
in Entreprenurship. UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.

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