Entrepreneurial Characteristics: Influence of Background & Experience

This essay delves into the multifaceted world of entrepreneurship, analyzing the characteristic traits and skills that differentiate successful entrepreneurs from business managers, using case study examples. It assesses how aspects of the entrepreneurial personality reflect motivation and mindset, exploring arguments on whether entrepreneurs are born or made. The essay also examines how background and experience can either hinder or foster entrepreneurship, providing examples such as Simon from Nom Foods, Matthew Boulton, and Milton Hershey. It critically evaluates the positive and negative influences of personal background and experience on entrepreneurs, highlighting the importance of passion, innovation, self-confidence, and focus in achieving entrepreneurial success, with resources available on Desklib.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND SMALL BUSINESS
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Table of Contents
Task 3.........................................................................................................................................3
3.1 Determine and analyse the characteristic traits and skills of a successful entrepreneur that
differentiates them from other business managers. Illustrate your answer with examples from
the case study.............................................................................................................................3
3.2 Assess and analyse how aspects of the entrepreneurial personality reflect entrepreneurial
motivation and mindset?............................................................................................................5
3.3 Explore and examine different arguments relating to entrepreneurial characteristics, such
as are entrepreneurs born or made? Can anyone learn to be an entrepreneur?..........................6
3.3 Examine, using relevant examples from the case study, how background and experience
can hinder or foster entrepreneurship.........................................................................................7
3.4 Analyse the link between entrepreneurial characteristics and the influence of personal
background and experience to specific successful entrepreneurs. Critically evaluate how the
background and experience influences entrepreneurs, both positively and negatively.
Illustrate your answer by............................................................................................................8
Reference list............................................................................................................................10
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Task 3
3.1 Determine and analyse the characteristic traits and skills of a successful
entrepreneur that differentiates them from other business managers. Illustrate your
answer with examples from the case study.
An individual who come up with the business ideas and start a business is known as
entrepreneur. Entrepreneur is the one who takes the initiates to start the business, taking all
the risk. They are the one who manage, organize and develop the business in order to make a
profit for the business. An entrepreneur is also known as innovators as they come up with
new ideas and implement those ideas in the business. They are also known as the risk taker as
they take the risk to start a business. Entrepreneur is the owner, decision maker and controller
of the business activities. Therefore, an entrepreneur plays an important role in the economy
as they deal with all the uncertainties of the production and their new business can increase
the standard of living, this can create a job opportunities as well (Lee, 2015).
The following are the characteristic traits and skills of a successful entrepreneur that
differentiates them from other business managers:-
 Entrepreneur is the one who sets up their own business whereas the managers are the
one who is responsible for controlling and managing the organisation.
 Entrepreneur is the owner of the business whereas manager work for the others.
 Entrepreneur takes the risk for the business whereas manager does not take any risk
for the business.
 Entrepreneurs are the owner of the company whereas the managers are an employees
of the company.
 Entrepreneur earns profit whereas manager earns the salary.
Entrepreneurs and Managers (Ioanid, et al 2015), both plays essential role in the business
but when it comes to traits there are many differences between them. They both have their
own role to play and they have their own responsibilities. An entrepreneur can have the
qualities of the manager as well. As it is already mentioned in the case study that the
Simon who is an entrepreneur of nom popcorn, she knew that the demand for the popcorn
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in U.K. is high so she survey the market and came up with the innovative idea of
launching a flavour popcorn in the market. After seeking advice and carrying out several
trial runs she finally launched with salted, salted maple and cinnamon maple flavours,
each containing about 100 calories a bag. Thus, Entrepreneur has to be an innovator to
run his business in this competitive world.
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3.2 Assess and analyse how aspects of the entrepreneurial personality reflect
entrepreneurial motivation and mindset?
Entrepreneurs should have the ability to spot opportunities arising from change and to
innovate. However, entrepreneurs are the people who try to practise innovation. Now a day
for any firms, of any size, innovation has become so important to survive in the market and
do the business. Entrepreneur is the one who takes the initiates to start the business, taking all
the risk. They are the one who manage, organize and develop the business in order to make a
profit for the business. An entrepreneur is also known as innovators as they come up with
new ideas and implement those ideas in the business. They are also known as the risk taker as
they take the risk to start a business. Entrepreneur is the owner, decision maker and controller
of the business activities. Creativity is also linked to innovation but they are not the same.
Creativity is the new or unique ideas of generation whereas innovation is to implement that
idea. Entrepreneur should strongly be motivated to overcome the obstacles and to achieve
their desired goals (Klotz, 2016). All entrepreneurs are different from one another and they
have different mindset and personalities according to their chosen field of work. The
following are the mindset that almost every entrepreneurs follows :-
 Customer is the most important asset for the business to run and giving the
first preference to the customer in business always works, so approaching
customer or reaching the customer first always helps. Before starting any
business, you should your potential customer and their demands for the
product.
 Finding a right market for the product is very important. Entrepreneur should
know that where is the more demand for that product and accordingly, he
should find a right market and place it.
 Building network in business is another important factor. The more
entrepreneur build their network, the more strong of presence of their business
will be.
Therefore, those who have the mindset of taking action to their ideas or
strategies and is not scared of any obstacles that can come in business and
always ready to tackle those, being resourceful with whatever they have,
challenging, fearful, focused can be a successful entrepreneur.
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3.3 Explore and examine different arguments relating to entrepreneurial
characteristics, such as are entrepreneurs born or made? Can anyone learn to be an
entrepreneur?
There are different types of enterprise and they are small business, these types of business are
generally sole proprietorship and local shops. In small business, there are less than 500
employees. Home based business, in this business entrepreneur’s work from their home itself.
Online business, this business also can be home based work but here the work totally depends
on the internet because the work here is online. Inventors, they are one one who come up
with new product in the market, inventors can come up with new product or the development
in existing product (Buckley, 2016). Therefore, here are the characteristics of entrepreneurs:-
 Passion is the factor that can lead an individual to achieve the success, so having
passion in the work or what you want to do can always help you to achieve your
goals. Many entrepreneurs follows their passion.
 Entrepreneur always think unique, their contribution to the business is always new or
bring some change in the existing product or services. So thinking out of the box
make entrepreneurs innovative.
 Entrepreneurs are so self confident and take a risk in business. They have faith in
themselves
 Entrepreneurs are focused and determined in their work. These characteristics exist in
every entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurs are can be born or made; this totally depends upon the characteristics of the
entrepreneur. The personality also contributes to become an entrepreneur because it
influences the outcomes. Taking the entrepreneur courses will not help because if one is not
capable of taking risk he cannot become an entrepreneur no matter how much in-depth
knowledge he/ she has. Entrepreneurs should be different and they should have the
capabilities of dealing with the things and uncertainty, to tolerate and take risk. As there are
many entrepreneurs, who have failed as well succeed and the reason behind their failures are
that they lack somewhere. Therefore, in my opinion entrepreneur can be both either born or
made because it is not only about the knowledge thing but the personality also plays a major
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role as personality reflect entrepreneurial motivation and mindset. Yes, entrepreneur can be
learn if one is very passionate and have self-confidence (Lee, 2015).
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3.3 Examine, using relevant examples from the case study, how background and
experience can hinder or foster entrepreneurship.
From the above case study it has been noticed that Simon, founder of Nom Foods, launched
Nom Popcorn in 2015, she analyse and survey the market come up with new idea regarding
popcorn. Therefore, she launched with salted, salted maple and cinnamon maple flavours,
each containing about 100 calories a bag. Therefore, she already knew that there was a
popcorn market and the demand for the popcorn is high in U.K. market (Markey, et al, 2015).
So she make that thing an advantage for it. As, her popcorn was available from stockists such
as Ocado, Whole Foods and Abel & Cole, she faced a competition by the big brands as
Metcalfe’s Food Company’s Skinny Popcorn and Tyrrell’s Poshcorn but she had believe in
herself that she can compete and was ready to take risk. Therefore, the background and the
experience can hinder or foster entrepreneurship as there can be many obstacles while doing a
business just like Simon; the popcorn market was already there so the business of Simon can
or cannot work but the idea she came up with was very innovative that made her business
successful. For that she really worked hard, analyse the market, and took necessary action
related to that.
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3.4 Analyse the link between entrepreneurial characteristics and the influence of
personal background and experience to specific successful entrepreneurs. Critically
evaluate how the background and experience influences entrepreneurs, both positively
and negatively. Illustrate your answer by
An entrepreneur plays an important role in the economy as they deal with all the uncertainties
of the production and their new business can increase the standard of living, this can create a
job opportunities as well.
Characteristics of entrepreneurs:-
 Entrepreneur should be Passionate about the work. Many entrepreneurs
follow their passion
 Entrepreneur always think unique, their contribution to the business is
always new or bring some change in the existing product or services
So thinking out of the box make entrepreneurs innovative
 Entrepreneurs are so self confident and take a risk in business. They
have faith in themselves
 Entrepreneurs are focused and determined in their work. This is the
characteristics that exists in every entrepreneurs
The background and experience influences entrepreneurs, taking the example of:-
Matthew Boulton, was a pioneer in manufacturing. His father was a toy maker. He joins his
father in his business. After his father death, he was into his father business, later he found
interest in metal. Therefore, he decided to switch his business from toy to metal industry. He
introduced a modern production method and came with technological advancement. He
successful and was known as perfectionist. Therefore, his background and experience helped
him to become a successful entrepreneur (Mukherjee, 2016).
Milton Hershey, he is the owner of the Hershey chocolate. Now he is a successful
entrepreneur but before that he was fired from an apprenticeship then he started the business
of candy, that business was a big fail. He did not quit that time rather he researched and came
up with new idea of milk chocolate and that gave him a big success. Therefore, the
experience taught him that those who are successful not because of that they know but
because of the eagerness to know more.
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Reference list
Buckley, P.J. and Casson, M., 2016. The future of the multinational enterprise. Springer.
Ioanid, A., Scarlat, C. and Militaru, G., 2015, August. How Managers and Entrepreneurs use
the Innovative Social Technologies. In European Conference on Innovation and
Entrepreneurship (p. 298). Academic Conferences International Limited.
Klotz, A.C. and Neubaum, D.O., 2016. Research on the dark side of personality traits in
entrepreneurship: observations from an organizational behavior
perspective. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 40(1), pp.7-17.
Lee, S.M. and Lee, B., 2015. Entrepreneur characteristics and the success of venture exit: an
analysis of single-founder start-ups in the US. International Entrepreneurship and
Management Journal, 11(4), pp.891-905.
Markey, O., Lovegrove, J.A. and Methven, L., 2015. Sensory profiles and consumer
acceptability of a range of sugar-reduced products on the UK market. Food Research
International, 72, pp.133-139.
Mukherjee, K., 2016. The psychology of the successful entrepreneur. International Journal of
Advanced Engineering and Management, 1(1), pp.25-32.
Peprah, J.A., Afoakwah, C. and Koomson, I., 2015. Savings, entrepreneurial trait and self-
employment: evidence from selected Ghanaian Universities. Journal of Global
Entrepreneurship Research, 5(1), p.1.
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