Reflective Essay- Entrepreneurship
Introduction
In the today’s business world, the entrepreneurial skills have become essential in every organization or business setting. This is because of the dynamics of the business which require new ideas, innovations, and skills to adapt to the business patterns. While some entrepreneurial skills may be learned in the school, some are naturally bound in a person’s ambitions, characters, and behaviors. Such may include creativity and motivation while the hindrances to a successful entrepreneur include lack of resources and fear to venture into new business ideas (Parker 2018, p. 150). Personally, I have been innovating business data analysis software to assist me succeed in my entrepreneurial idea of starting up a data analytic enterprise for SMEs. This reflective essay features some of my personal characters which place as a potential entrepreneur and the aspects that may hinder me from succeeding as an entrepreneur.
My Entrepreneurial Characteristics
Motivation
I am personally motivated to succeed in a business operation. As a fact, success does not really come by sitting back and waiting for it to come but one has to work hard to attain it. I like invoking change through my actions and I find myself enjoying encountering with new challenges that make me work tirelessly to overcome them. Finding solutions to most of the daily challenges make me proud. I also have the ability to adapt to new situations that come along with the changing business world. While most people fear changes, I find it as an opportunity to grow my business and motivate my team towards achieving current and upcoming goals. It also gives me a chance to unveil new opportunities for business growth. My passion for success drives me into working hard. Despite the fact that most of the businesses normally experience a low-profit-margin, I am still motivated to work towards achieving the goals even when losses seem to overwhelm the profits. I normally take the initiative to facilitate the needed efforts to achieve success and a positive progress. This places me a better person to conquer the challenges I encounter in the business operations hence becoming competitive.
Creativity
I am a person who is passionate in thinking out of the box to gather new entrepreneurial ideas. Alongside completing my assignments, I normally like coming up with new innovative ideas on how a business can move more miles higher. My aim is mostly to make the business grow in terms of productivity, workflows, and profit maximization. To succeed in creating new innovations, I use the current ideas to develop a concept with better terms and goals. I like associating with other team members and also the experts in the field to help me gather different ideas and link them up to create a stable one. I also analyze situations and discuss various ideas with team members by looking at a situation from a different perspective. While other team members also air out their views, I speculate them keenly and think in different terms to come up with a strong idea (Rooks, Sserwanga & Frese 2016, p. 168). I also identify contexts which need an entrepreneurial creativity. Such contexts may include a situation whereby initiating a start-up is necessary. This is through constantly refining the main idea based on the occurrence of the situations. Also, a situation whereby the team may want to initiate or accelerate the growth of the business and retain the strategic advantages that are associated with the new venture. Another situation that may require innovative ideas is when a crisis occurs affecting the business operations. This calls for creativity to discover new ways to curb the crisis without causing further problems. The creativity will also help to apply new ideas that will ensure that such crisis is not repeated in the future. When a business reaches its maturity stage, creativity is also necessary to ensure that the culture of the business is maintained and the operations are not altered which may initiate unnecessary problems. A Student Sample: Click here to ORDER YOUR PAPER NOW
Persuasive
I have developed a deeper knowledge in business whereby I have learned how to get people to listen to my ideas. This enables me to make them agree to invest their money since it is not easy to persuade people to invest their money especially when it is a new idea which is out of the box. This gets me better into selling my ideas and getting them accepted. My ability to sell ideas and make people develop an interest in them makes be gathered more business information from the potential investors. Being able to persuade them that my ideas are worth investing into and that they are right helping me to acquire the relevant investors and also the customers are made to believe that my solution will serve them right (Shirokova Osiyevskyy & Bogatyreva 2016, p. 98). It is through this skill that I ensure that my ideas are unique to the potential investors and customers. I normally identify a familiar problem which is in neutral terms known to the audience. As I apply my ideas and solutions to the problem, I avoid sounding as if my efforts are the best than those of the audience which may switch them off. This character trait places me better in the beauty products business which requires much advertising in order to win the customers.
Hindrances to Entrepreneurship
Fear
My creativity skills are at times faced with various challenges such as the resistance to change by the fellow team members. Most of them find adapting to a change being hectic and may not buy the idea of the creativity. Some like working the way they have been used to and hence initiating a change as a result of creativity may yield no fruits. This instills my fear because of the possible frustrations I may encounter as my teammates look down upon my idea. At times I also fail to believe in my creativity for fear of failure. While my creativity may be fruitful if implemented, I may not have the strength or courage to air it out for implementation fearing that it may cause failures and other problems instead of the intended positive results (Wang et al, 2016, p. 170). Again, the new ideas may concern some areas of business which I have no proper experience in hence ignore them. Nonetheless, I try overcoming such fears by encouraging my fellow team members to love creativity as it is a good way to grow a business and explore new opportunities. My past successes resulting from creativity also give me a motivation to continue embracing the idea and implementing them whenever necessary.
Lack of Resources
The entrepreneurial skills and potential are sometimes faced with challenges which lead to unhealthy business. Some challenges I face include the lack of resources. For instance, it is possible to have a bright idea on how to venture into a business which when well-established, may appear lucrative. However, the funds needed to start the business may become a challenge hence the idea may end up being unutilized. This also contributes to the lack of human resources causing a major problem due to the financial constraints required to hire the experts in a certain field of business hence it necessitates hiring lowly-skilled personnel who may not contribute much to the success of the business (Cacciotti & Hayton 2015, p. 102). Again, it becomes difficult to associate with the experts when I do not have the necessary tools to exploit my ideas.
Impatience
I am normally anxious to get my ideas implemented with immediate effect and have my products in the market as soon as I invent them. This makes me miss the correct timing of the business launch. It results that the business lacks sufficient time to develop giving room for careless mistakes hence unproductivity. I am also reluctant to listen to other business associates as I think my ideas are the best.
Conclusion
In essence, a healthy business is a key to success in the modern world. This requires that the entrepreneurs develop some character traits in order to survive the competitive business environment. I possess creativity, motivation, and persuasiveness character traits which have placed me in a better position to compete in the business arena. While most entrepreneurs are profit-oriented, I am always prepared to embrace the profits as well as the losses as they are prone to come (Failla, Melillo & Reichstein 2017, p. 213). This ensures that I do not get challenged in times of business crisis. However, I have some weaknesses such as impatience and fear which pose as hindrances to business success. Having such traits are good to venture into the production of beauty products in future due to the advertisement demands they have. A Student Sample: Click here to ORDER YOUR PAPER NOW
Bibliography
Cacciotti, G. and Hayton, J.C., 2015. Fear and entrepreneurship: A review and research agenda. International Journal of Management Reviews, 17(2), pp.165-190.
Failla, V., Melillo, F. and Reichstein, T., 2017. Entrepreneurship and employment stability—Job matching, labour market value, and personal commitment. Journal of business venturing, 32(2), pp.162-177.
Parker, S.C., 2018. The economics of entrepreneurship. Cambridge University Press. Rooks, G., Sserwanga, A. and Frese, M., 2016. Unpacking the personal initiative–performance relationship: A multi‐group analysis of innovation by Ugandan rural and urban entrepreneurs. Applied Psychology, 65(1), pp.99-131.
Shirokova, G., Osiyevskyy, O. and Bogatyreva, K., 2016. Exploring the intention–behavior link student entrepreneurship: Moderating effects of individual and environmental characteristics. European Management Journal, 34(4), pp.386-399.
Wang, J.H., Chang, C.C., Yao, S.N. and Liang, C., 2016. The contribution of self-efficacy to the relationship between personality traits and entrepreneurial intention. Higher Education, 72(2), pp.209-224.