The Entrepreneurial Individual Part I

Entrepreneurship can be defined as a business philosophy that is concerned with growth, is proactive rather that reactive, customer-focused, accepts the risks involved in a venture and then takes risks that seem likely to bring sustained growth and market share, is prepared to tolerate failure, and lastly, has a large number of its employees who share the vision and believe in the same values and ideas as the entrepreneur him/her self.

The attributes are:

• Vision
  
• Commitment
  
• Self-belief
  
• Discipline
  
• Risk-taking
  
• Creativity
  

Whilst the skills on:

• Analysis
  
• Networking
  
• Building relationships
  
• Negotiation
  
• Selling ideas
  

It is well-known that skills can be learnt and developed but what of attributes? Are they innate or can they also be developed? It is fair to say that there are some who could never be entrepreneur, and those for whom it is a natural state of affairs. However, in between are a large number of people, perhaps the majority, who have latent attributes that need bringing out and developing for them to become entrepreneurs, perhaps in a small way but entrepreneurs nevertheless.

(Roger Cartwright)