Entrepreneurial Mindset: Business Start-up Show - Presentation 2018-19

This presentation delves into the entrepreneurial mindset, defining an entrepreneur as someone who identifies opportunities and gathers resources to create value. It explores the characteristics of entrepreneurs, such as being vision-driven, risk-takers, critical thinkers, and opportunity seekers, highlighting skills like financial and business management, problem-solving, and human resource management. The presentation also examines the impact of background, environment, and experience on entrepreneurs, noting how these factors can provide resources, opportunities, or even restrict the implementation of ideas. It further touches on the role of education, suggesting that while it can enhance critical thinking, it's not necessarily a determinant of entrepreneurial success. The presentation references real-world examples like Richard Branson, Jack Ma, and Andela to illustrate key points.

The Mindset Of The
Entrepreneur
By

Who is an Entrepreneur?
• An entrepreneur is someone who spots a business opportunity and
gathers the resources needed to start that particular business (Drucker
2014).
• With entrepreneurship being the fourth factor of production, an
entrepreneur, therefore, combines land, labor, and capital to create
value.
• The entrepreneur assumes all the risks associated with the venture and
enjoys profits/ returns from the venture.
• An entrepreneur can be viewed as an innovator, a source of new business
ideas, new goods, services, and business processes (Drucker 2014).

What is an Entrepreneurial mindset?
• It can be defined as a state of mind that orientates a person’s behavior
towards entrepreneurial activities and outcomes (Scarborough 2016).
• Entrepreneurship, therefore, starts from the mind where an individual
conceives a business idea, thinks of the resources needed, the
customers to be, and visualizes the business in their mind.
• The mindset is the most powerful tool for any entrepreneur since it is
the one that governs every business stage that an entrepreneur goes
through (Scarborough 2016).
• For example, Richard Branson ventured into entrepreneurship at a very
young age since he had the entrepreneurial mindset (Virgin 2018).

Characteristics of entrepreneurs.
• Vision driven- entrepreneurs are governed by a desired future state that
they want to achieve in their life as business people. For example when
Jack Ma the Founder of Alibaba was an English teacher he had the vision
to become a prominent business person that’s why he quit teaching and
started Alibaba (Forbes 2018).
• Risk takers- once an entrepreneur identifies a business opportunity they
take the risk of investing their resources in the opportunity (Audretsch
and Keilbach 2010). They believe that the higher the risk the higher the
possible returns.
• Critical thinkers- they are able to assess a situation to know if it is worth
investing in or not.

• Opportunity seekers- they are able to see an opportunity where others
cannot see. For example, Andela was able to detect that in Africa there
are many people who are talented in technology development and they
started a venture to nature these talents (Andela 2018).
• Flexibility to change- They adapt to change very easily and quickly thus
maintaining their competitiveness (Kuratko 2016).
• Hardworking- They put the effort that is needed to attain their vision and
to deliver on their mission or that of their ventures.
• Innovative- they continuously develop new products and services ideas.

Skills of entrepreneurs
• Financial management skills- ability to manage cash inflows and outflows
in a business.
• Business Management skills- refers to planning, organizing, controlling,
and coordinating of business operations. It is useful in the dairy business
administration (HigherNationals 2018).
• Problem-solving skills- refers to the ability to address business problems
in the right way and come up with the most appropriate solution.
• Human resource management skills- refers to the ability to hire, train,
develop, and motivate staff to work towards achieving the business goal.

Impact of background on
entrepreneurs.
• Provision of needed resources- entrepreneurs who come from a
resourceful background can easily acquire the resources that they
need to start a business. For example, it was easy for Richard Branson
to start the Student magazine since the church provided him an
opportunity to interview prominent people (Virgin 2018).
• Provision of business opportunity- for example, Jack Ma detected that
there was no E-commerce site in China which can help rural people to
buy merchandise from the city, therefore, he came up with the idea of
Alibaba (Forbes 2018). Similarly, Andela detected an opportunity in
developing African technology talents (Andela 2018).

Impact of background environment
on entrepreneurs.
• Restrict implementation of an idea- This is where factors such as
legislation, ethical and moral values deter an entrepreneur from
implementing a business idea (Kuratko 2016).
• Promote or deter business growth- the prevailing background
environment can be so competitive and resistant to change thus
deterring the progress of the business or it can be less competitive and
open to new ideas thus promoting the quick growth of the business. For
example, Richard Branson’s Student magazine penetrated the market
since people were adaptive to change in that region (Virgin 2018), while
Jack Ma’s Alibaba did not generate much revenue in its first year of
operation since the Chinese were slow in embracing it (Forbes 2018).

Impact of experience on
entrepreneurs
• Experience enables entrepreneurs to foresee and control risks proactively
thus preventing the damage that the risk would have caused (Toft-Kehler,
Wennberg, and Kim 2014).
• Overreliance on experience may make some entrepreneurs overlook
changes in the business macro environment which may later negatively
impact their business.
• Enough experience in a particular business industry enables
entrepreneurs to become more innovative in diversifying their business
operations. For example, due to enough experience in the field, Andela is
able to develop unique software that matches the market needs (Andela
2018).

Impact of experience on
entrepreneurs
• Experience enables entrepreneurs to gain a competitive edge in the
market by adopting marketing ploys that suit that particular market.
For example, Jack Ma’s Alibaba Started Ali express which is a logistics
subsidiary to help in delivering goods to clients (Forbes 2018).
• Experience enables the entrepreneurs to understand their personal
weaknesses and strengths and those of their businesses. This helps
them in knowing the right strategies to use to enhance business
sustainability (Toft-Kehler, Wennberg, and Kim 2014).
• Less experience may make some entrepreneurs be ignorant about
legislation, policies and quality standards that affect their businesses.

Impact of background education on
entrepreneurs
• Education enables craft entrepreneurs to be better critical thinkers and
to understand prevailing factors that may affect their ventures (Lipset
2018).
• The type and level of education have no influence on the success of
entrepreneurs. Therefore, any person so long as they have basic
education and the resources to hire expatriates in the field of their
ventures can become an entrepreneur. For example, Jack Ma trained as
an English teacher in the university but now he is an entrepreneur in
Electronic commerce (Forbes 2018). Similarly, Richard Branson dropped
out of school at age 16 when he started his first venture Student
magazine (Virgin 2018).

References
Andela (2018). Software Developers | We build Future Developers for
you to Hire | Andela. [online] Andela. Available at: https://andela.com
[Accessed 25 Sep. 2018].
Audretsch, D.B. and Keilbach, M., 2010. Entrepreneurship and growth.
In Knowledge Intensive Entrepreneurship and Innovation Systems (pp.
309-320). Routledge.
Drucker, P., 2014. Innovation and entrepreneurship. Routledge.
Forbes (2018). [online] Forbes.com. Available at:
https://www.forbes.com/profile/jack-ma/#717272cd1ee4 [Accessed 25
Sep. 2018].