Entrepreneurship and Small Business Report: Characteristics and Skills

This report delves into the world of entrepreneurship, examining the crucial characteristics, skills, and traits that contribute to success in the business realm. It highlights the importance of risk-taking, creativity, motivation, and confidence. The report presents case studies of two prominent entrepreneurs, Richard Branson and James Dyson, illustrating their backgrounds, experiences, and the factors that fueled their achievements. It further explores the OCEAN model, which reflects the entrepreneurial personality and mindset, encompassing traits like openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. The report emphasizes how experience fosters entrepreneurship by enabling problem identification and providing motivation. Finally, it concludes by summarizing the key takeaways and the importance of acquiring specific skills and traits to achieve entrepreneurial goals.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND
SMALL BUSINESS

Table of Content
 Introduction
 Characteristics, Skills and Traits of successful entrepreneurs
 Entrepreneurial personality reflect motivation and mindset
 Background and experience foster entrepreneurship
 Conclusion
 References

Introduction
Entrepreneurship is a process of earning profit at any cost. An individual who has capability of taking risk,
to create something innovative and most importantly contributing in the nation's economy is an
entrepreneurs. This PowerPoint report describes characteristics, skills and traits which can be attained by an
individual to become a successful entrepreneur. It also summarises the background and experience of two
successful entrepreneurs.

Skills and Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs
Entrepreneur is an individual who launch or create a new business with its creative idea, operate it and
acquire the whole world. In this report, two successful entrepreneurs are Richard Branson and James Dyson
are the UK's top entrepreneurs who runs their business successfully.

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Various characteristics, skills and traits are as follows:
Richard Branson
Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson is the founder of Virgin Group and controls more than 400
companies. Branson is a British magnate and established his first venture at the age of 16. In 1970s he
established his mail-order record business.
Characteristics:
 Risk taker: It is the basic characteristic of being an entrepreneur as successful entrepreneurs are the risk
taker.
 Creativity: This characteristic is present in an individual by born as it means to create something new.

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Traits:
Motivation: It is a primary trait which is necessary to have in an entrepreneur. Motivation is essential in
order to inspire and encourage the employees and to get success in the competitive environment.
Confident: Richard Branson is confident about his decisions and ideas in order to develop a good
reputation of the company in the competitive marketplace.

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Skills:
 Decision making: An entrepreneur must have great communication skills because growth and
success depends on the decisions of employees.
 Communication: This Skill is present in an individual by born as to become a great entrepreneur
communication skills are necessary.

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James Dyson
James Dyson is an industrial designer and founder of Dyson Ltd. He set up his manufacturing company in
1993 and opened a research centre in Malmesbury, Wiltshire.
Characteristics:
 Passionate: An entrepreneur is passionate about their objectives because these objectives helps them to
achieve success and growth in the dynamic environment.
 Planning: It involves plans and strategies about task or project which states how to plan, implement,
execute and monitoring.

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Traits:
 Determination: To become a successful entrepreneur determination is necessary in order to start a
successful story an entrepreneur firstly face failure and after their efforts they get success because
their failure does not affect them to achieve their goals.
 Ethics: Work ethics are necessary in order to inspire the subordinates because if entrepreneur follow
the ethics and code of conduct then others will also follow.

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Skills:
 Problem solving: This situation is present in entrepreneurs in order to solve complex situations.
James Dyson has good communication skills which helps in finding the best solution of the problem.
 Time management: It includes planning, implementation and execution of task and all these things
require management in order to optimum utilisation of resources.

Entrepreneurial personality reflect motivation and mindset
It is necessary for an entrepreneur to acquire the market segment and make its business more successful. In
order to describe the personality of entrepreneur OCEAN model is used which reflects their mindset.

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 Openness: This trait reflects that entrepreneur is very imaginative, creative and have more experience to
achieve growth and success.
 Conscientiousness: This trait includes directed behaviours, good control and various thoughts. These
entrepreneurs are aware about their actions and behaviour.
 Extraversion: These entrepreneurs are more talkative, emotional and social. They feel energetic when
they are surrounded with people.

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 Agreeableness: This trait reflects the coordination and cooperation which an entrepreneur shows and
includes kindness, affection and social behaviour.
 Neuroticism: This trait includes negative feelings like emotional instability, anger, sadness etc. and these
feelings impact the working activity of employees.

Background and experience foster entrepreneurship
Experience they can identify problems and needs and their experiences will also motivate new
entrepreneurs. Background and experience of Richard Branson and James Dyson are as follows:
Richard Branson
Background:
He was born in Blackheath, London in July, 1950. His grandfather was a judge of High Court of Justice.
Experience:
Branson launched his first business in 1966 which is a magazine business named “Student”.

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James Dyson
Background:
He was born in Cromer, Norfolk in May 1947. He studied at Gresham's School which is a boarding
school in Norfolk and his father died of Cancer.
Experience:
He designed the Sea Truck in 1970 while studying in the College of Arts.

Conclusion
From the above information it is concluded that in order to achieve their goals, they have some specific
skills, traits and characteristics which motivates and encourages them to become a successful entrepreneur.

References
 Siqueira, A.C.O., Webb, J.W. and Bruton, G.D., 2016. Informal entrepreneurship and industry
conditions. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice. 40(1). pp.177-200.
 Storey, D.J., 2016. Understanding the small business sector. Routledge.
Online
 leadership skills from Sir Richard Branson. 2019. [Online] Available through
<https://www.roberthalf.ae/advice/people-management/9-leadership-skills-sir-richard-branson>./
 James Dyson on Using Failure to Drive Success. 2019. [Online] Available through
<https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/224855>./

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