What makes a good Entrepreneur?

People are intrigued by entrepreneurs. They are more fascinated by the lone-genius type entrepreneurs, such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or Jeff Bezos. These are the type of entrepreneurs who start with a simple idea and then go ahead to change the world with their business. Although the model is not all wrong, it is stereotyping entrepreneurs as lone warriors in a large organization. On the other hand, the general perception of employees or executives of a big company is quite negative. The stereotype in the past was that of a man in a grey flannel suit. Nowadays, the stereotype has shifted to a financial fraudster. This is not good since the economy is heavily dependent on innovations by large corporations. However, the public’s perception is not entirely incorrect when people stereotype company managers differently in comparison to entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship is a skill in itself and requires many different skill sets combined. Entrepreneurs also have a different philosophy than most people.

Following are some of the fundamental truths of corporate entrepreneurship:

• The rate of failure is quite high
• Success can actually be affected negatively by the prospect of windfall financial rewards.
• Even top managers can face a great level of difficulty trying to both manage an ongoing firm and starting a new business at the same time. Segregating these two tasks cause even more problems to rise.
• Having a portfolio with many small initiatives has more chance of achieving success than having a portfolio with only a few but big initiatives.
• Consistency matters a lot.
• Disciplined management plays a huge role in the process of starting a new business.

Consistency

Sustaining the emphasis on creating a new business over a long period of time is consistency. Consistency has great value because it gives different initiatives the time that they need to develop. Consistency is the key to develop any new skill. Although consistency is not that easy to achieve. It can be sometimes hard to generate because change, management turnover, and reorganizing things can create a turbulence.

Business Environment

Every business environment has an effect on the creation of new businesses. Some positive business environments can help in the creation, while others can hinder negatively. Effects can be both in the corporation’s internal environment as well as in the external environment. Here are some events that can have external impact on a new business creation:

• Innovation may not be accepted by the customers, which can hurt the prospects of success.
• Suppliers might, due to their failure to innovate, block the course.
• Prospects for new products can be dampened by product liability fears.
• New technology and the industry’s standards can encourage innovation.

Here’s how some internal factors may affect the success:

• Innovation can get discouraged due to the fear of cannibalizing current existing products.
• Innovation might not be required for growing, successful businesses.
• Depends on the management whether to invest or to deny the resources needed.
• Sales can spur when new businesses sell existing products.

Sources Of Opportunity

New ideas for a business can come from a lot of different sources. Maybe you can find an old, and discarded idea interesting and realize that it is actually gold. You can research by going through the market and having competitive knowledge which will provide you with the data required to find a new business opportunity. There are a lot of companies which try out different ideas with market research. These companies often forget how sometimes market research can be quite misleading. Most successful corporate innovations are recorded to be something that the market research showed it would fail.