An entrepreneur is someone who launches a business venture, typically in the form of a company that manufactures and sells a product or provides a service. Entrepreneurs are often viewed as innovators who identify a problem or opportunity and then develop a solution no one else has recognized, says Parlay Patz.
Successful entrepreneurs don’t just charge ahead with their ideas. First, they seek to validate their demand.
One way they do so is through testing. Entrepreneurs “recruit people and invest money to determine if customers will indeed value the product and they can produce and deliver it at an acceptable cost. They often find different, even better ideas once in the marketplace.”
Do you have dreams of becoming an entrepreneur and launching your own company one day? In addition to a business idea, doing so will require you to possess certain skills and characteristics.
Key Entrepreneurship Qualities and Behaviors
Several researchers have tried to pinpoint a specific entrepreneurial personality or profile to quantify what makes some more successful than others.
It’s explained that no single personality profile leads someone to success as an entrepreneur. However, there are several characteristics shared by some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs.
Some behaviours that are distinct from personality traits and associated with entrepreneurship include curiosity, pattern recognition, team building, structured experimentation, adaptation, decisiveness, and persistence.
While it can be argued that some people are more inclined to exhibit these behaviours than others, each of these qualities can be acquired through proper training and development.
An Opportunity or Business Idea
The business plan must be centred around a solid opportunity for a new venture to succeed. An opportunity is a proposed venture to sell a product or service for which customers are willing to pay more than the required investments and operating costs.
An opportunity is more than a product idea, and it extends well beyond the initial act of getting into the business. According to Parlay Patz, “it’s a plan that shows how a venture will attract, retain, and reward all stakeholders, including customers, founders, employees, investors, distributors, and suppliers.”
That plan doesn’t end once you’ve identified an innovative business idea. Ideally, your concept should be validated before committing resources, time, and effort to bring it to life. Once validated and pursued, you must constantly reevaluate your business to determine whether you need to adapt to new opportunities or threats.
Countless aspiring entrepreneurs have an interesting, innovative, and compelling business idea but don’t have the skills or qualities to carry it through to fruition. Similarly, many others have the skills and qualities but lack an idea to pursue. Even those with a brilliant idea and the necessary skills can fail to get their project off the ground if they don’t have access to funding. Successful entrepreneurship requires a blend of all these components.
