Stanford University economist Edward Lazear found in a 2005 study that variety in education and work experience was the most important trait that distinguished entrepreneurs from non-entrepreneurs…….
A 2013 study by Uschi Backes-Gellner of the University of Zurich and Petra Moog of the University of Siegen in Germany found that a diverse social network was also important in distinguishing students that would go on to become entrepreneurs.
Studies show that the psychological propensities for male and female entrepreneurs are more similar than different. Empirical studies suggest that female entrepreneurs possess strong negotiating skills and consensus-forming abilities. Asa Hansson, who looked at empirical evidence from Sweden, found that the probability of becoming self-employed decreases with age for women, but increases with age for men. She also found that marriage increased the probability of a person becoming an entrepreneur.
Jesper Sørensen wrote that significant influences on the decision to become an entrepreneur are workplace peers and social composition. Sørensen discovered a correlation between working with former entrepreneurs and how often these individuals become entrepreneurs themselves, compared to those who did not work with entrepreneurs. Social composition can influence entrepreneurialism in peers by demonstrating the possibility for success, stimulating a “He can do it, why can’t I?” attitude. As Sørensen stated: “When you meet others who have gone out on their own, it doesn’t seem that crazy”.
Entrepreneurs may also be driven to entrepreneurship by past experiences. If they have faced multiple work stoppages or have been unemployed in the past, the probability of them becoming an entrepreneur increases Per Cattell’s personality framework, both personality traits and attitudes are thoroughly investigated by psychologists. However, in case of entrepreneurship research these notions are employed by academics too, but vaguely.
According to Cattell, personality is a system that is related to the environment and further adds that the system seeks explanation to the complex transactions conducted by both—traits and attitudes. This is because both of them bring about change and growth in a person. Personality is that which informs what an individual will do when faced with a given situation. A person’s response is triggered by his/her personality and the situation that is faced.
Innovative entrepreneurs may be more likely to experience what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow”. “Flow” occurs when an individual forgets about the outside world due to being thoroughly engaged in a process or activity. Csikszentmihalyi suggested that breakthrough innovations tend to occur at the hands of individuals in that state.
Other research has concluded that a strong internal motivation is a vital ingredient for breakthrough innovation. Flow can be compared to Maria Montessori’s concept of normalization, a state that includes a child’s capacity for joyful and lengthy periods of intense concentration. Csikszentmihalyi acknowledged that Montessori’s prepared environment offers children opportunities to achieve flow. Thus quality and type of early education may influence entrepreneurial capability.
Research on high-risk settings such as oil platforms, investment banking, medical surgery, aircraft piloting and nuclear power plants has related distrust to failure avoidance. When non-routine strategies are needed, distrusting persons perform better while when routine strategies are needed trusting persons perform better.
This research was extended to entrepreneurial firms by Gudmundsson and Lechner.
They argued that in entrepreneurial firms the threat of failure is ever present resembling non-routine situations in high-risk settings. They found that the firms of distrusting entrepreneurs were more likely to survive than the firms of optimistic or overconfident entrepreneurs.
The reasons were that distrusting entrepreneurs would emphasize failure avoidance through sensible task selection and more analysis. Kets de Vries has pointed out that distrusting entrepreneurs are more alert about their external environment. He concluded that distrusting entrepreneurs are less likely to discount negative events and are more likely to engage control mechanisms. Similarly, Gudmundsson and Lechner found that distrust leads to higher precaution and therefore increases chances of entrepreneurial firm survival.
Researchers Schoon and Duckworth completed a study in 2012 that could potentially help identify who may become an entrepreneur at an early age. They determined that the best measures to identify a young entrepreneur are family and social status, parental role modeling, entrepreneurial competencies at age 10, academic attainment at age 10, generalized self-efficacy, social skills, entrepreneurial intention and experience of unemployment.
Strategic
Some scholars have constructed an operational definition of a more specific subcategory called “Strategic Entrepreneurship”. Closely tied with principles of strategic management, this form of entrepreneurship is “concerned about growth, creating value for customers and subsequently creating wealth for owners”. A 2011 article for the Academy of Management provided a three-step, “Input-Process-Output” model of strategic entrepreneurship.
The model’s three steps entail the collection of different resources, the process of orchestrating them in the necessary manner and the subsequent creation of competitive advantage, value for customers, wealth and other benefits. Through the proper use of strategic management/leadership techniques and the implementation of risk-bearing entrepreneurial thinking, the strategic entrepreneur is therefore able to align resources to create value and wealth.
Leadership
Leadership in entrepreneurship can be defined as “process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task” in “one who undertakes innovations, finance and business acumen in an effort to transform innovations into economic goods”. This refers to not only the act of entrepreneurship as managing or starting a business, but how one manages to do so by these social processes, or leadership skills.
Entrepreneurship in itself can be defined as “the process by which individuals, teams, or organizations identify and pursue entrepreneurial opportunities without being immediately constrained by the resources they currently control”. An entrepreneur typically has a mindset that seeks out potential opportunities during uncertain times. An entrepreneur must have leadership skills or qualities to see potential opportunities and act upon them. At the core, an entrepreneur is a decision maker. Such decisions often affect an organization as a whole, which is representative of their leadership amongst the organization.
With the growing global market and increasing technology use throughout all industries, the core of entrepreneurship and the decision-making has become an ongoing process rather than isolated incidents. This becomes knowledge management which is “identifying and harnessing intellectual assets” for organizations to “build on past experiences and create new mechanisms for exchanging and creating knowledge”.
This belief draws upon a leader’s past experiences that may prove useful. It is a common mantra for one to learn from their past mistakes, so leaders should take advantage of their failures for their benefit. This is how one may take their experiences as a leader for the use in the core of entrepreneurship-decision making.
Global leadership
The majority of scholarly research done on these topics have been from North America. Words like “leadership” and “entrepreneurship” do not always translate well into other cultures and languages. For example, in North America a leader is often thought to be charismatic, but German culture frowns on such charisma due to the charisma of Nazi leader Adolph Hitler.
Other cultures, like some European countries, view the term “leader” negatively, like the French. The participative leadership style that is encouraged in the United States is considered disrespectful in many other parts of the world due to the differences in power distance. Many Asian and Middle Eastern countries do not have “open door” policies for subordinates and would never informally approach their managers/bosses. For countries like that, an authoritarian approach to management and leadership is more customary.
Despite cultural differences, the successes and failures of entrepreneurs can be traced to how leaders adapt to local conditions. With the increasingly global business environment a successful leader must be able to adapt and have insight into other cultures. To respond to the environment, corporate visions are becoming transnational in nature, to enable the organization to operate in or provide services/goods for other cultures.
Globe Chamber Business Times 