BUS 201: Analysis of Entrepreneurial Traits in Fairphone Report

This report analyzes the entrepreneurial traits of Bas van Abel, the founder of Fairphone, a social enterprise known for its environmentally conscious smartphones. The report identifies and discusses ten core entrepreneurial traits, including passion, strong work ethics, determination, creativity...Read More

Running head: ANALYSIS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP TRAITS IN FAIRPHONE
ANALYSIS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP TRAITS IN FAIRPHONE
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Author Note

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Executive Summary
The purpose of the report is find out the common entrepreneurial traits which makes an
entrepreneur achieve success. The paper will discuss the ten core traits, which are important for
an entrepreneur in order to accomplish the company goals and strategies. The paper will also
highlight the challenges, which are faced by the social entrepreneurs. The paper will summarize
with the entrepreneur traits and challenges faced by the social entrepreneurs.
Introduction
Fairphone is a social enterprise company which are known for developing smart phones
having minimal impact in the environment. The company is headquartered in Amsterdam,
Netherland and is supported by a startup base in Waag Society which is a foundation which is
dedicated in experimenting and developing new technologies, art and culture. Fairphone
Company was formed to develop smart phones, which does not contain any conflict materials,
which helps people to use their phones for a longer period. Bas van Abel as a social enterprise
company founded the company in the year 2013. This report will first analyze the core traits,
which are found within the entrepreneurs. Furthermore these traits will be discussed and
analyzed by examining the actions of Bas van Abel.
Section 1. Examples of entrepreneurial traits
The core entrepreneurship traits, which are often founded in the successful entrepreneurs,
which have made them successful, are analyzed below:
 Passion – This is one of the most significant characteristics, which every entrepreneur has
for various reasons. Most of the entrepreneurs are successful in their career because they

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love what they do. These entrepreneurs are dedicated in putting all the extra hours of
work they have in their business in order to make the firm in achieving success and
flourish. Entrepreneurs are passionate when they are direct an investor in making funding
decisions with the company or when hiring new customers. Passion boosts their
confidence in their evaluation of business plans, management of teams and departments
in an organization. These types of people are always involved in researching and reading
things in order to find out strategies in how they can make the business run better
(Milanes 2018).
 Strong Work Ethics – Successful entrepreneurs are the first one to come to the office and
the last one to leave. In order to meet their expectations these people also ensure that they
are also working in their off days (Vedula and Kim 2018). The successful entrepreneurs
are someone who always have their mind in work even if they are not in their workplace.
 Determination – Successful entrepreneurs have an excellent communication skill in
selling the product to their customers and in motivating employees. They are never
impacted by the defeats of the encounters. Failures are just an opening to their success
stories, they try continuously until they achieve success (Erol and Aksoy 2018).
 Creativity – It is one of the important characteristics of an entrepreneur is their power of
finding a relationship between two unrelated situation. Intelligent entrepreneurs always
come up with creative solution to the problems. Entrepreneurs creates exciting job
opportunities by using their creative ideas (Tang, Byrge and Zhou 2018). Hence with
creativity and innovation entrepreneurs have immense potential in creating jobs.
 Strong people skills – Most of the successful entrepreneurs are known to have the power
to motivate the employees of the organization and see the business is growing in no time.

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They have the ability in order to instruct the employees or members of the organization in
order to be successful and highlighting the advantage in following the directions
(Budiningsih, Ahmad, and Sukamto 2018).
 Competitiveness – The number of companies which are formed every year is increasing
as because entrepreneurs are feeling that they are well competitive than the other. They
are dedicated to win the sport of business in a long run that they have created or are
creating. It is only an entrepreneur who is responsible to highlight the track records of
success for the company (Weber et al. 2018).
 Self – Starter – Every successful entrepreneurs knows that if some changes are to be
made in the present scenario, they are only responsible to bring the change in order to
make the company smoothly run. They set parameters and ensure that the project follows
the changes, which are made in the process. They do not for any guidance or someone to
permit them in making any decision. As an entrepreneur, one should also be able to guide
the team as to what is to be when and how. A self-starter is always proactive. Being a self
oriented person provides the ability in making strong decision making power. These
types of people generally stick to their work after taking some decision. It is found that
they are often persistent; they always aspire people in completing their task before time
(Mattingly et al. 2018).
 Open Minded – The entrepreneurs who are successful or are following other
entrepreneurs who have been successful, understands that each and every situation is a
business opportunity for them. There are always new ideas which come figuring out new
potential businesses, skills of the members, workflow and efficiency of workers working
in the project. These types of people have the capability to grab the opportunities around

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them and direct the focus toward the achievement of business goals and objectives. Open
minded entrepreneurs can see their mistakes from every angle. While for other it might
be difficult to do so, for open minded entrepreneurs it easy to pick themselves up from
their failures and continue to pursue success (Kirk 2018). This makes it a gain instead of
making a loss. Gaining success with the change in the mindset, having an open minded
approach allows a person to grasp new ideas and ways of thinking.
 Confidence – A successful entrepreneur never asks questions or keep doubts in their
mind about if the way they are following will be able to lead them success or not. They
are normally always confident enough about their knowledge in the subject. They are
always confident enough that their knowledge and way of leading the company will be
bringing success to the company at a certain point of time. They emit out their confidence
in everything they d in their business. When an entrepreneur displays self confidence,
people tends to take it more seriously and knowledgeable. This can also often lead to
various job promotions or anything else which is related with the personal goals. This can
happen if also one does not know the subject well. Self-confidence also increases the
self-esteem. Confident entrepreneurs often stand up and provide positive affirmations
when speaking with others.
 Disciplined – Successful entrepreneurs are always focused with their energy in making
the business work, they eliminate the distractions which creates and obstacle to their. The
overarching strategies, which are implemented by them, help them in achieving their
goals. Besides entrepreneurs achieve success as because they are disciplined in making
new steps every day towards the accomplishment of their goals.

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Bas van Abel has all these entrepreneurial traits as because he is the only reason why his
company has gained much success n the present scenario. He is the self started of Fairphone
company. With strong work ethics, determination, confidence and creativity he has launched the
smart phones, which are quite in demand in the market. Without these entrepreneurial traits he
would not be able to a successful entrepreneur.
Section 2. Challenges faced
The challenges, which are related to the social entrepreneurship movement, are provided below.
 Human Resource – Employing a quality workforce along with the senior managers as
well as junior level executioners is one of the greatest challenge which is faced by the
social entrepreneurs. Large multinational organizations and social enterprises compensate
employees. The social entrepreneurs also face problems in getting passionate volunteers
in carrying out the operations of the business. Relying on the volunteers who are not
accountable to the organization may lead to a delay in the overall workforce of the
organization (Julien 2018).
 Measuring impacts – The results of the impacts are neither immediate, nor they are
objective. There can be an increase in the number of challenges, which will be faced by
the entrepreneur without a proper measurement of the outcomes. In any business
organization the financial investors weighs risks, returns to the company, and liquidity in
the investments made by the shareholders of the company (Rawhouser, Cummings and
Newber 2019). The role of the impact investors weigh all the above factors and
recommend the impacts.

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 Funding - One of the major challenge which is faced by the joint ventures, or the social
entrepreneurs is with the funding and investments. Even after crossing the early stage of
initial investment, procuring the capital in order to increase the growth of the company is
a major problem. However companies which aims to gain high profit after five years of
establishment do not attract modest amount investors.
Conclusion
In order to conclude the research paper it can be said that a person needs to have
entrepreneurial traits and good personal qualities in becoming a successful entrepreneurs.
Specifically the entrepreneurial traits are passion, strong work ethics, strong people skills,
determination, creativity, competitiveness, self-starter, open minded, confidence and discipline
which must be in an excellent entrepreneur. These entrepreneur traits are the main values which
they need to learn, follow and apply individually in order to determine success in their career.
References
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