Entrepreneur is the person who are generate and a catalyst for the nation economic. Such country will not reach the level of developed country if the country does not have successful and highly competitive entrepreneur. Moreover they are innovators, willing to take any risk and able to create any new idea in order to solve the current modern problem. The most significant form of entrepreneur is starting the new business. From this they can show the innovation and skill can developed the country and at the same time encourage to grow up of economic. Besides that can generate value to the customer.
Based on the study, the country that have higher community who are entrepreneur are considered the best community. This is because entrepreneur are the person that most dynamic and more willing to go ahead in any situation happen. Therefore entrepreneurship is necessary to be learned by all parties in the country in so that can bear a wide range of additional benefits.
However the entrepreneur activity is based on the type of organization and the creativity needed to complete such goal. If the entrepreneur involve the activity with large company, usually will include the corporate venturing, where the large entities will create spin-off organization. In a nut shell, entrepreneur was the person who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise.
- Networked
This trait is entitle for the person who become an entrepreneur. Networked is a technique practice by entrepreneur to create a contact or their business with the outsider for develop a position in the market and industry. The creative entrepreneur will use low cost to communicate with others associate with individually. Furthermore if have any event, entrepreneur will take a chance to interact with great people and try to share their idea that intend to develop business and attract people with his business. Networking trait will involve two main like value based relationship and trust.
The model for the networked entrepreneur is Dr. Azizan Osman. He is the founder and executive chairman to Richworks Internatinal Sdn. Bhd, the only company that was recognized by the Malaysian Guinness Book of Record on 2012 as the largest organizer in doing the seminar and courses in the field of business development, marketing and motivation.
Dr, Azizan also the leader in the field of coaching, become a speaker, author of his book, and entrepreneur who has become one of the founded for 24 companies in various industry. Such as, printing, advertising agencies, brand design, property investment and be the corporate services company. Dr. Azizan have technique how to approach with many industry in order to develop his own business.
Moreover, have a networking with several companies including small and medium industry like TM, Digi, Celcom, Maxis, HSBC, Standard Chartered and Majlis Kanser Nasional in managing their portfolio of marketing. This connection give Dr. Azizan chance to share and contribute his idea to various company. The good thing is he could have a networking involve value based on trust when he was invited to work with the post of prime minister in a series of development programs throughout the Malaysia.
Open Risk Taker
Henry Ford the founder of the Ford Motor Company is the best example to reflect the open risk taker traits that an entrepreneur should has to success in their area. Although the sales on the rise, Henry Ford stepping out from his comfort zone and dare to take action by steeply slashed the price of a Model T that will risked him for taking losses. From 1908 to 1913, Henry Ford reduced the price from $850 to $600 at the same time kept improving their products. As a result, their sales arose from 18,000 to 168,000. Henry Ford believes that for every time he reduce the price by one dollar, he get a thousand new buyers.
Apart from that, previously, when their sales only ten cars a day, Ford have a skilled mechanic that will complete most of the car from start to finish, but, as the sales surged to almost 1000 per day, that system became impossible to use. So that, one better way was by developing assembly-line production which by breaking down the making of the cars into small task which each worker will specialized in one of these tasks such attaching the engine or putting the steering wheel. By adopting assembly line production can reduced the time needed to complete each car from 12 ½ hours to 1 ½ hours. Again, Ford cut the price from $690 to $550, to make it affordable for middle-class of Americans.
However, there is argument against the assembly line. They thought that the work was monotonous because there is no personal contact, the worker come and do their work and go home. As a result, Ford faced high rates of turnover and absenteeism because the worker thought the work not challenging many of them just stayed for a month or two and then quit. To overcome this problem, Ford take a risk by doubled his minimum wages to five dollars a day and reduced the working hours from nine to eight. As the result, Ford’s experiment make the industrial world surprised, his competitors were shocked and his workers were energized. As a results, the production surged and the profit shot up. Ford happily paid high wages and cut the price of the model T. With each cut, later his workers could afford to buy the cars they were making.
Observant
Observant can be defined as quick to notice or perceive, in other word is alert to something. Besides, observant entrepreneur is always looking at, watching, or regarding attentively and watchful person. In order to be a great entrepreneur, they are always looking for the next great idea. The great entrepreneur will pay attention to what is going on, and not only right around them, but also around the world. They often recognize potential opportunities long before others. Observant people serve two purposes; it keeps their minds actively engaged with their surroundings, and it also offers creative inspiration.
Tony Fernandes also the founder of Tune Air Sdn. Bhd., who introduced the first budget no-frills airline which is AirAsia, to Malaysians with the tagline "Now everyone can fly". He managed in turning AirAsia, a failing government-linked commercial airline, into a highly successful budget airline public-listed company. Because of that, as of February 2014, Forbes Asia valued Fernandes' net worth at $650 million, ranking him at number 28 on the Forbes list of Malaysia's Richest. As the observant entrepreneur, Tony Fernandes have more keenly-developed comprehension and critical thinking skills that bring him into a success.
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Visionary
Visionary can be defined as one who can envision the future. A visionary entrepreneur has the ability to spot an opportunity and imagine something where others haven't. The visionary entrepreneurs imagine another world and have the ability to communicate that vision effectively to investors, customers and staff. Moreover, there are characteristics that can describe a visionary entrepreneurs. Firstly, the characteristic of a visionary entrepreneur is they want to change the world. Their goals is not to make money, to impress girls and so on, but, what they want to do is dramatically change the world. Secondly, a visionary entrepreneur willing to take big risks. They will take risks that other people won’t take in order to make their business work. Next, an entrepreneur with a visionary traits is a fast learners. Sometimes they look like someone that are lack experienced, however, they will quickly and gather the information from a lot of sources to drive their success.
The successful entrepreneur that best reflect visionary traits that a successful entrepreneur should has is Elon Musk. Elon Musk is the founder of Space X and the co-founder of Zip2, Paypal and Tesla Motor. Musk launching his first company Zip2 Corporation a web software company in 1995 after he dropped out from Stanford University. In 1999, Musk became the co-founder of X.com, an online financial services which have money transfer service named PayPal. Musk never satisfied with his achievement, in 2002, Musk founded his third company, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation or known as SpaceX. This company activity involve in building spacecraft for commercial space travel. SpaceX was well established and get award from NASA the contract to handle cargo transport for the International Space Station. Therefore, this show Elon Musk as a visionary entrepreneur as he willing to take risk, this is when he was being offered one rocket worth US$8million, he choose to start a company that could build affordable rockets as he needed rather than just buy the rocket that was offered. Besides that, Musk also founded the Musk Foundation, that be dedicated to space exploration and the discovery of renewable and clean energy sources. Furthermore, Elon Musk also ventures in Tesla Motors, a company involved in producing affordable mass-market electric cars. This show Elon Musk as visionary entrepreneur as he can see the opportunity while others haven’t.
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Failure
is an Option
Failure is an option means failure is something that we could not escape. Everyone need to undergo this process. However, for the entrepreneurs, this is very common; they experience this process more often than us. We are choosing Jack Ma as the example of entrepreneur for this trait. Jack Ma is an entrepreneur who comes from China mainland. He is the founder and current chairman of Alibaba Group. Alibaba Group is the world largest online marketplace .It provides a platform for the businessman and consumer to carry on online sales activity.
Jack Ma experienced several failure before he success. Jack Ma has his pioneer failure when he and his other 4 colleague set up Haibo translation agency. They set up Haibo translation agency because at that time the translation service is very popular in Hangzhou. The capital was only 3000 RMB and the turnover for every month is only 600 RMB. The agency’s employee do not believe that the agency will be able to survive .Jack Ma thought that the solution to fix this condition is more important than giving up. In order to sustain the business, Jack Ma started to do street business to earn money in order to sustain the translation agency’s business. He sold flowers, gifts, medicines, medical equipment and small crafts on the street side and shuttle. When this money are enough to pay for the agency’s expenses, a new problem shown up, his colleagues think that the translation agency should be closed and open a gift company .Jack Ma successfully fix the failure of the translation agency and began to earn profit after three years.
The next failure that Jack Ma experienced was during the China yellow pages case. Jack Ma start to become interested and search for business opportunity in internet at 1995 since he met with Bill at Seattle. Jack Ma developed a home page for Haibo translation agency at VBN. Jack Ma received mail from Japan, Germany and USA customers then he decided to do internet business.23 of his friends against his idea but only 1 support him. However, Jack Ma still believe in himself and want to carry on. In April 2015, Haibo Computer Services Limited was established. Haibo Computer Services Limited is the first China Internet Business Company. Jack Ma started to do online business when http://www.chinapages.com was created. In year 1996, when Jack Ma is promoting China yellow page, there are no people who believe him, and they think he is a liar. Later, Hangzhou Telekom bought most of Haibo Computer Services Limited’s shares and Jack Ma left China yellow pages.
The next failure happens in 1997 when Jack Ma and his team was invited by Ministry of foreign trade and economic cooperation to join a new company, China International Electronic Commerce Center (EDI). He came out with a B2B idea for e-commerce service for small and medium sized enterprise (Alibaba) but due to the restrictions and fetters in government enterprise, he and his team refuse and give up other opportunities from other enterprise. At 1999, he and his team quietly went back to the south.
All these failures made Jack Ma stronger and try harder. At year 1999, he started to work hard to establish an electronic Business Company, Alibaba. Jack Ma and his team manage to get through the internet bubble at year 2001 and become the largest online business market nowadays.
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Open
Culture
One of the many traits of an entrepreneur is exercising open culture within the organization. Open culture can be define as a concept where the knowledge and information should be spread freely without any restriction. The organization should aware that once they had engaging with open culture, they should appear transparent to the outsiders and be open to bad news. Not all the companies or any entrepreneurs could exercise this trait into their organization because of the discretion of their company’s information. However, Mark Zuckerburg the founder of Facebook showed the world that he is one of the successful entrepreneurs that engaging with open culture.
When Facebook was first established, it was built as a company that has its own mission which is to make the world more open and connected. Zuckerburg’s intention of setting up Facebook was to help people connect with other people disregard their differences and locations. Thus, this action could create a more open culture and help the users to understand their other perspective more. The founder believes that the users could gain huge benefits such as stronger relationship and could prevent any unintentionally doubtful thought if such action was taken.
Apart from that, recently Mark Zuckerburg had built a new office which is huge, spacious and open without any wall or cabin for each of his employees. This young entrepreneur stated that he intentionally built the office in such way because he want the company itself could represent the Facebook site which is transparent and open culture. The whole idea of this new office is that the employees could work close to each other and could monitor them closely. Moreover, it could encourage the people to sharing and communicating with each other which could be labeled as the act of being open among them.
Open culture is important nowadays since the community start to doubt information they received. Thus, companies all over the world should be exercising the open culture in order to ensure the customers and consumers that they could be trusted.
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Outcome
Oriented
To be a good entrepreneur, the person must have the traits of outcome oriented. This type of personality is more focus on to define the success and failure based on the winning and losing. Furthermore this trait also give a picture of entrepreneur that adhere to the principle of economy. For example, they are trying to use small capital but to get the better income to guarantee the success of their business. This entrepreneur most focus on the actual income or the result compare to the process. Moreover, the outcome oriented be the motivation to entrepreneur to improve their performance.
The best entrepreneur to prescribe this traits is Steve Job. He start being the video game designer with Atari, then he left the company to find more product can show the best outcome oriented. When he was 21 years old, Jobs and his partner Wozniak were make a revolution on computer industry by making machine smaller, cheaper and accessible to everyday consumers. They use the small capital that Job selling his Volkswagen bus while Wozniak selling his beloved scientific calculator. Their product Apple initially market for the computer for $666.66 each. Then this outcome was encourage the release of Apple’s second model, Apple II. The company sales drastically increase by 700% to $139 million. Then Apple computer become the traded company.
The outcome oriented from selling Apple computer motivate them to introduce more visionary product like Macbook Air, iPod and iPhone. All those products have dictated the evolution of modern technology. Although they had face significant design flaw that resulting the consumer disappointment. They still reinventing the Apple product with the latest technology. Apple’s quarterly report improved significantly in 2007.
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Team
Oriented
Among all of the traits that an entrepreneur should have, there was one that we had always been mentioned especially from the successful entrepreneurs around the world. Team oriented could be said that the entrepreneur himself had been focusing more toward the teamwork or building his team when working on the company. Teamwork is where a group of people consist of two or more with complementary background and skills working on the same thing in order to solve the problem arise. Team oriented is one of the important traits that an entrepreneur should have in order to be able to understand his employees and reaching the company’s goal.
Marissa Mayer the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Yahoo! had showed the best example of an entrepreneur who had been engaging in the team oriented trait when managing the company. We can see it when she had been built her own team and in fact many of them. She cared about what the team members’ opinion and accepted them with a generous mind. Aside from that, when it comes to her team, she always cautiously monitor them and give them the freedom to handle their project in their own way. However, when she felt that the team needs her support, then she will assist them with care.
Moreover, Marissa Mayer stated that she discouraged the flexibility of working place where allows the employees to be working in different place especially from home. Besides, Mayer stressing out that people is more productive and gave the best when they are working together. This is because by being one of the team players, the employee could communicate face to face and sort things out in order to solve one problem.
Businesses that pointed out the spirit of teamwork can enhance their employees’ strength and train them to be a better one. Therefore, by having a leader that had the team orientation trait in him, the company could produce an effective and the best employees. Thus, with great employees, the company could fly further and gain the fame from the world.
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Proactive
William Henry "Bill" Gates III have trait as proactive person. Proactive refers to anticipatory, change-oriented and self-initiated behaviors in situations, particularly in the workplace. Proactive behavior involves someone acting in advance of future situations, rather than just reacting. It means that they are taking control and making things happen rather than just adjusting to the situation or just waiting for something to happen. As a good proactive people, they generally do not need to be asked to act for certain situations, nor do they require detailed instructions.
Bill Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution and he is also co-founded of Microsoft. He is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and computer programmer. Next, he is an individual who has a proactive mindset. He actively seeks out opportunities to prepare himself, grow and sharpen the saw and he does not wait for life to happen to him but him proactively trying to make something useful for his life rather than doing nothing. Bill gates have a sense of productiveness in the work and actions.
Because of his proactive action toward his Microsoft business, Bill Gates was included in the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest people and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 till 2014 excluding a few years after the financial crisis of 2007 to 2008. As we can see, Bill Gates is probably one of the smartest person and most successful men of our time, maybe of all the time. Moreover, Bill Gates is a genius that is probably smarter than anyone we will ever know. Interesting combinations of unique personality characteristics that this man has is what has made him into success until now.
BIOGRAPHY OF ONE
SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEUR
There are so many successful
entrepreneur in this world but we chose Bill Gates as our successful
entrepreneur that we will briefly explain about his life and career. Bill Gates
or his full name, William Henry Gates, is an altruist, business leader, and
technologist. He was born on October 28th and grown up in Seattle, Washington.
Bill Gates is a very rich man and expected to have at least $56 billion of
wealth and property. His family actually wanted him to become a lawyer but he
dropped out from University of Harvard because of his huge interest in computer
software. He started the Microsoft with his best friend, Paul Allen whom share
the same interest with him. He is married to Melinda Gates, which is the
current co-chair of the company and they are gaining their wealth together.
There are a lot of special features of Bill Gates but now we will highlight 5 of it. The first one is, he takes failure as an option. Even now he is a very successful entrepreneur but there is a time back then when he failed in his life and that actually make him what he is now. A successful person. He also has his own quotes which he adapted from his own life experience. For him, success is a lousy teacher, it makes smart people think that they cannot lose. Every person must remain humble no matter how successful they are, they must not get too ahead of themselves. Success is not going to stay with you forever it can suddenly gone without our realization. So be grateful because nothing is permanent in this world. So it brought the meaning of, our best teacher is not success, but, a failure. Secondly, be yourself, don’t try to imitate someone else and compare yourself with other people in this world because if you did it, means that you are downgrading yourself. Thirdly, your greatest source of learning is your dissatisfied customers. When your customers complaint and criticized, be patient and listen to it and improvise and adapt it so that it will become flawless. By the way, as an entrepreneur, you know that life is not always fair and u must face and accept it. Remember that in order to be in the right path of success, you will be facing a lot of troubles and obstacles.
The second one is, his visionary. He knows that he can be a successful entrepreneur since he found out his interest in computer work because he is a very passionate person. He even drop out of studying in Harvard University, the university which every student’s dream to be part of it just because of to fulfill his own vision which is to set up his own empire. He knows the potential of the computer and did not hesitate to take the first step in starting to build his hobby and makes it as a dream come true.
The third one is, for entrepreneur manage a business, having a proactive personality is a bonus point because it is one of the important element. This kind of personality that he have really helps him a lot in his management. Bill Gates stated that, “In this business, by the time you realize that you are in trouble, it is already too late to save yourself. Unless you’re scared all the time, you are gone.” Therefore, entrepreneur must keep innovating or create new things so that you won’t left behind by the technology and don’t stop gaining your knowledge and be sensitive to your surroundings to avoid threats. Everyone know that Bill Gates is one of the listed billionaires but still he thinks that he need improvisation in his communication skills so that he learned it from a famous investor and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett. “Brilliant way of looking at the world” is what Bill Gates refers to the Buffett.
The forth one is, Bill Gates also have an open risk taker attitude. It’s proven when he took a big step of dropping out from Harvard University just to pursue his dream in creating the Microsoft. He also plans a foresight to start his business mission without any certainty of success. Someone questioned Bill Gates about these risks, and he replied that he will only take a risk when he as a bold plan, and there is already a backup in case if he fails, he still got enough money to insure, protect and secure is business. But, at the time he took the risk, he only have a few hundred dollars in his pocket. Then he had an issue with IBM, he brought them to court and he won the case and that really saved him from a colossal economy loss before Microsoft become famous, popular and prominent in this globalization era.
Last but not least, the special feature of Bill Gates is, team oriented entrepreneur. During his school time, he was closed with one of his senior, which is two years older, named, Paul Allen. Even though they are not from the same batch, but they can cooperate with each other very well since they share the same interest and enthusiasm of computer programs. When they were in high school, both of them, created a program named Traf-O-Data and they earned twenty thousand dollars from it. Bill Gates and Paul Allen were computer geniuses which have that ability, skill and potential to blast the computer industry. Apart from that, the first computer virus that ruined other programs and data were actually culpable of Bill Gates and he has been punished to the extent that he cannot get near of any computers for a year. Then Paul Allen and Bill Gates became business partner when Bill established Microsoft.
CONCLUSION
To be a successful entrepreneur and be
known and recognize by the world, theoretically there are nine traits that an
entrepreneur should possess. The traits are consist of the open risk taker,
observant, visionary, failure is an option, open culture, outcome oriented,
team oriented, proactive and networked. All of these traits would be best if
solely an entrepreneur could possess it. It could lead to a successful business
and also a well groomed company’s working atmosphere. Aside from that, these
traits also indirectly affected the other company’s player such as the
employees, creditors and also the bankers.
These nine traits were explained in detail each one of it with a renowned entrepreneur as prove that the traits did help them to be successful. The mentioned entrepreneurs were Jack Ma, Henry Ford, Tony Fernandes, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Azizan Osman, Mark Zuckerburg, Marissa Mayer and Steve Jobs. By doing so, we could see that each of the successful entrepreneurs will eventually have one of these traits and gradually leading the company by benefiting from it. However, this does not necessarily mean that only one trait could be possessed by an entrepreneur. As stated before, we could see that Bill Gates could possess five traits all at once.
Thus, all these nine traits were important to an entrepreneur in order to be successful and gain what they want in the business world. They could change their business situation even from the rock bottom to the sky high if they could possess all the nine traits.
