Personal Reflection of Characteristics Key for an Entrepreneur

   Personal Reflection of Characteristics Key For an Entrepreneur

This Essay will cover personal reflection of characteristics key for becoming an entrepreneur.

Defining entrepreneur, according to Schumpeter, is a person who destroys the current period economics by introducing new products or creating new value and new forms of organisation. An Entrepreneur is someone who is most likely to start a new business or project, or continuing an existing business. An entrepreneur is an individual who spots an opportunity, from which he/she generates a new organisation. Entrepreneurs also inlcude small business owner. (Bygrave and Zacharakis, n.d.)In the perspective of ‘Differentiating Entrepreneurs from small business owners: A Conceptualization’ although there is overlap between the conceptions of small business owners and entrepreneurs, innovation is the key element that differentiates entrepreneurs from small business owners.  (Carland et al, 1984)  

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  One perspective of entrepreneurship is an entrepreneur’s ability and determination of starting and developing a new business venture. Often, entrepreneurs are willing to undertake the risk with an associated process to earn profits. (Foss, N.J. and Klein, P.G. 2012)  On the other hand, from an economical perspective, entrepreneurship is a process that generates resources such as lands, labour and capital to produce value. Entrepreneurs generate new combinations of resources leading to profits. (Carland et al, 1984) Schumpeter held the argument that, innovation and risk taking arethe key elements of entrepreneurship  (Bygrave and Zacharakis, n.d.)

To sum up, entrepreneurship is the process of an entrepreneur seizing an opportunity to generate new value from innovating and creating new organisations and activities. In addition, they are willing to take risk to generate profits.

In this essay, I will be discussing the importance of having characteristic traits of a successful entrepreneur. The characteristics that I will be focusing on are need for achievement, innovation, opportunistic, self-confidence, risk-taking and locus of control. I will provide personal accounts where I believe I have shown these traits and also examples of actual successful entrepreneurs displaying these characteristics.

Strong characteristics

1. higher need for independence and achievement

According to (McClelland, 1961)  people who are motivated by achievement seek the sense of accomplishment by finishing realistic but challenging goals and making progress in their jobs. They require feedback to provide the sense of accomplishment. Need for achievement make people tend to pick jobs and responsibilities that provide flexibilities and opportunities to attain goals. This characteristic makes it an entrepreneurial trait. Collins, Hanges and Locke, 2004) I have taken a part time job as a personal English tutor, teaching two Chinese students the material requires for a college entrance exam for middle school students. Following two-months of tutoring, their grades for English tests and final exams improved by just over 16% . The goal initially set was 5% steady improvement, after I reached this goal that gave me sense of accomplishment and motived me to study the best ways that suit each students as well as the exam system itself.