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Entrepreneurship Development: Concept and Context

Many developing countries including India are in a state of transition. They are
striving to move from a subsistence-oriented, tightly integrated, inward looking
local economy to a surplus seeking, market led, outward looking economy.
Such a move is possible only with the emergences of a multitude of a small-
scale and rural enterprise in all works of life. This requires building up of a
wider base of population capable of entrepreneurial behaviour. If we take India
as an example in the context of development, we find that the initial build up
of entrepreneurial activity took place in urban center. This was followed by a
trickle down effect in rural communities over time. Development strategy
today, however, seeks a more proactive and immediate change in India. While
much of policy making in this regard treats enterprise creation as a function of
appropriate economic conditions(made possible through institutional and
economic interventions), others have emphasized training and attitude change
as vital elements in the process. But it needs systematic observations and
research into the process through which entrepreneurship emerges and
sustains itself.

Enterprises and entrepreneurs have been in the center stage of modernization

since the days of Industrial Revolution. Economists, sociologists, psychologists
and anthropologists have studied this concept, usually within the frontiers of
their respective disciplines.

Models of entrepreneurship and research associated with them have identified

several major issues such vagueness in definition, conceptualizing
entrepreneurship as a trait, significance of innovation in entrepreneurship,
meaning of activities in the post-enterprise creation stage, validity of measures
of entrepreneurial propensity and significance of demographic factors.

Scope of Entrepreneurship development in India

Introduction
We are a very young nation – just over 55 years since independence – setting
out on a path of sustained economic growth, for decades to come.

We already have over a billion fellow Indians. Within the next 20 years, we will
have 400 million people below the age of 35 years – more than the entire
population of the United States! Each person, in this bold new generation, will
be in the prime of his or her life, striving for a better tomorrow – creating, in
the process, new growth opportunities, for budding entrepreneurs!

On the most conservative basis, our domestic consumption, in virtually any

sector, has the potential to at least double, or treble, from current levels –
perhaps, just to catch up with a country like China!
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Then, there is the entire global opportunity, across diverse sectors

internationally, the "Made in India" tag is now an increasingly respected brand,
valued for quality, reliability, and competitiveness.

Truly, with economic reforms in the country, and with the virtual removal of all
trade barriers, the world is now our market – and our opportunity!

The pursuit of these opportunities requires an indomitable spirit of

entrepreneurship!

Evolution, Frontiers, divergence & Stagnation

For a long time there was no equivalent for the term ‘entrepreneur’ in the
English language. Three words were commonly used to connote the sense the
French term carried: adventurer, undertaker and projector; these were used
interchangeably and lacked the precision and characteristics of a scientific
expression (Gopakumar, 1995).

Richard Cantillon (1680-1734), gave the concept some analytical treatment

and assigned the entrepreneur an economic role by emphasizing on ‘risk’ as a
prominent entrepreneurial function (Gopakumar, 1995).

J.B say and J.H. von Thunen. Jean Baptiste say (1767-1832), the French
political economist assigned the entrepreneur with a crucial role-‘coordination’
and made a distinction between the entrepreneur and capitalist (Say,1967).

A dynamic theory of entrepreneurship was first advocated by Schumpeter

(1949) who considered entrepreneurship as the catalyst that disrupts the
stationary circular flow of the economy and thereby initiates and sustains the
process of development. Embarking upon ‘new combinations’ of the factors of
production-which he succinctly terms innovation-the entrepreneur activates the
economy to a new level of development. The concept of innovation and its
corollary development embraces five functions: 1) introduction of a new good,
2) introduction of a new method of production, 3) opening of a new market, 4)
conquest of a new source of supply of raw materials and 5) carrying out of a
new organization of any industry. Schumpeter represents a synthesis of
different notions of entrepreneurship. His concept of innovation included the
elements of risk taking, superintendence and coordination. However,
Schumpeter stressed the fact that these attributes unaccompanied by the
ability to innovate would not be sufficient to account for entrepreneurship
(Gopakumar, 1995).

According to the Havard School (Cole,1949) entrepreneurship comprises any

purposeful activity that initiate, maintain or develop a profit-oriented business
in interaction with internal situation of the business or with the economic,
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political and social circumstances surrounding the business. This approach

emphasized two types of activities: the organization or coordination activity,
and the sensitivity to the environmental characteristics that effect decision
making.

Despite its stress on the human factor in the production system, the Havard
tradition never explicitly challenged the equilibrium – obsessed orthodox
economic theory. This was challenged by the neo-Austrian School who argued
that disequilibrium, rather than equilibrium, was the likely scenario and as
such, entrepreneurs operate under fairly uncertain circumstances. The essence
of entrepreneurship consists in the alertness of market participants to profit
opportunities. A typical entrepreneur, according to Kirzner (1979) is the
arbitrageur, the person who discovers opportunity at low prices and sells the
same items at high prices because of intertemporal and interspatial demands.

To sum up, major theories and expositions from Cantillon to Kirzner view the
entrepreneur as performing various functional roles as risk taker, decision
maker, organizer or coordinator, innovator, employer of factors of production,
gap seeker and input completer, arbitrageur, etc. The most appropriate
definition of entrepreneurship that would fit into the rural development
context, argued here, is the broader one, the one which defines
entrepreneurship as: “a force that mobilizes other resources to meet unmet
market demands”, “the ability to create and build something from practically
nothing”, “the process of creating value by pulling together a unique package
of resources to exploit an opportunity”.

Alternative Approaches

Socio-Cultural Approaches

Some scholars have stressed the importance of socio-cultural milieu in

entrepreneurship development. They suggested that the socio-cultural history
accounts for the performance of entrepreneurial functions by a considerable
number of individuals.

Several writers have used a comparative framework to highlight the ways in

which different societies, with differing interests, attitudes, systems of
stratification and the like, operate to produce different kinds of businessmen
and different patterns of entrepreneurial behaviour (Swayer,1952).

Psychological Approaches

The focus in entrepreneurship shifted from the act to the actors (Shacer &
Scott,1991) in the work of McClelland(1961). According to McClelland and
Winter(1969) need for achievement (n-Ach) is responsible for economic

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development. Greater the development of n-Ach, during early socialization of

people, the more likely the economic development will be achieved. A society
with a generally high level of n-Ach will produce more rapid economic growth.
Achievement motivation could be included through training in self reliance,
rewarding hard work and persistence in goal achievement, and creating
interest in excellence. In spite of being criticized (Schatz,1971; Smelser,1976),
McClelland’s(1987) analysis has triggered off the ‘traits approach’ to
comprehended entrepreneurial behaviour.
In another psycho-social theory Hagen(1962) relegates economic variables to
a relatively minor role and has put an emphasis on certain aspects of the
personality. More recently, several other psychological approaches to
entrepreneurship have been suggested. Hisrich(1990) identifies several
characteristics of entrepreneurs in terms of (a) conditions that make
entrepreneurship desirable and possible,(b) the childhood family background,
(c) the education level, personal values and motivations and (d) role modeling
effects and other support systems. Bird(1989) has also examined
entrepreneurial behaviour by focusing on work and the family background,
personal values and motivations.
Contemporary Focus

The two most common approaches used in researching the characteristics of

entrepreneurs have been the trait approach and the demographic approach
(Robinson et al.,1991). In the trait approach, the entrepreneur is assumed to
be a particular personality type whose characteristics are key to explaining
entrepreneurship as a phenomenon (Gartner,1988;1989). Following
McClelland(1961,1987), many other researchers have explored areas such as
achievement motive, locus of control, risk taking, innovation etc.

In demographic approach, demographic information is used to arrive at a

profile of a typical entrepreneur assuming that people with similar background
posses similar underlying stable characteristics. The approach presumes that
by identifying demographic characteristics of known entrepreneurs it will be
possible to predict entrepreneurship in unknown populations (Robinson et
al.,1991). The demographic variables found most examined are family
background, birth order, role model, marital status, age, education level of
parents and self, socio-economic status, previous work experience and work
habits.
First, the approach assumes that human behaviour is strongly influenced by
demographic characteristics such as sex, race, or birth order.

Second, the practice of using demographic characteristics as surrogates for

personality characteristics is not appropriate. There is also a lack of adequate
empirical evidence in this regard.

Third, the approach does not help predict who will or will not be an

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entrepreneur on the basis of knowledge of one’s birth order, level of education

or parental heritage. Besides, demographic characteristics being static in
nature cannot explain a dynamic multifaceted phenomenon like
entrepreneurship.

Hannan and Freeman(1977) have used the population-ecology model (PEM), to

analyze the concept of entrepreneurship. The PEM seeks to predict the
probability of births and deaths within a population of firms within a given
industry niche, conferring the environment rather than the person with the
status of the key entity in determining organizational survival. Recent research
following this approach are focused on the presence, characteristics and
change in a population or organization in an ecological context provided by the
host society (Reynolds, 1991). Deficiencies of this model have been pointed
out by Bygrave and Hoffer(1991). These models, while making statistical
predictions at the population level, fail to predict the fate of specific firms.

Entrepreneurship: An Integrative Behavioural Framework

The key elements identified are Personal Resourcefulness, Achievement

Orientation, Strategic Vision, Opportunity Seeking and Innovativeness.
Personal Resourcefulness
The root of the entrepreneurial process can be traced to the initiative taken by
some individuals to go beyond the existing way of life. The emphasis is on
initiative rather than reaction, although events in the environment may have
provided the trigger for the person to express initiative. This aspect seems to
have been subsumed within ‘innovation’ which has been studied more as the
‘change’ or ‘newness’ associated with the term rather ‘proactiveness’.

‘Personal resourcefulness’ in the belief in one’s own capability for initiating

actions directed towards creation and growth of enterprises. Such initiating
process requires cognitively mediated self regulations of internal feelings and
emotions, thoughts and actions as suggested by Kanungo and Misra(1992).

Achievement-Orientation
While personal initiative and purposeful behaviour can be view as a good
starting point of an entrepreneurial effort, many such initiatives fail. The
archetype successful entrepreneur is supposed to epitomize achievement
motivation (McClelland,1961) which facilitates the creation and development of
enterprises in competitive environments. While critics have raised serious
questions regarding the unique or overarching significance of n-Ach in the
emergence of entrepreneurship (Smelser,1976), this element of personality
has continued in the mainstream of entrepreneurship theory (Shaver &
Scott,1991). People with high n-Ach are known to seek and assume high
degree of personal responsibility, set challenging but realistic goals, work with
concrete feedback, research their environment and choose partners with

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expertise in their work (Kanungo & Bhatnagar, 1978). Such characteristics of

high n-Ach people contribute to successful completion of tasks that they
venture to take up. Hence, we see achievement orientation as a set of
cognitive and behavioural tendencies that are oriented towards ensuring that
outcomes such as enterprise creation, survival and growth are realized.

Opportunity-Seeking
The context in which an individual brings to bear his/her initiative,
achievement orientation and visioning have a strong bearing on what it
produces; when these forces are directed towards realizing surplus or value in
a market environment, over a period of time, we see the creation of
enterprises. This perspective of the entrepreneur as a merchant adventurer,
who in Cantillon’s view balances out imperfections in the market
(Gopakumar,1995) in pursuit of what Bentham terms wealth, provided the
historical basis for the development of entrepreneurship. The wealth is seen as
the reward the entrepreneurial individual gains for the risk taken or exercise of
judgment where there is greater possibility for error; this distinguishes
between certain return from wage labour, and return from risk-oriented
production for the market. Hence ‘opportunity seeking’ would include one’s
ability to see situations in terms of unmet needs, identifying markets or gaps
for which product concepts are to be evolved, and the search for creating and
maintaining a competitive advantage to derive benefits on a sustained basis.

Innovativeness
Schumpeter(1949) went on to conceptualize entrepreneurs as persons who are
not necessarily capitalists or those having command over resources, but as
ones who create new combinations of the factors of production and the market
to derive profit. Innovativeness refers to creation of new products, markets,
product-market combinations, methods of production and organization, and
the like that enable the enterprise to gain competitive advantage in the
market.

It is evident that each of the dispositions referred to may be found in all types
of individuals (entrepreneurs and non- entrepreneurs). Then how can we relate
these dispositions to entrepreneurship? We propose that when these five
elements converge at high intensities, in non-restrictive environments, it is
likely to give rise to enterprise formation. Therefore, one may find individuals
who had created enterprises in the past now turning weak because they may
no longer be proactive enterprise creators; instead they may be content to
play the role of managers in their stable business, or turn to community
leadership, and the like. Hence, this perspective lends to a process view of
entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneur
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An entrepreneur is a person who has possession of a new enterprise, venture or idea and is
accountable for the inherent risks and the outcome. The term was originally a loanword from
French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in
English is a term applied to a person who is willing to launch a new venture or enterprise and accept
full responsibility for the outcome. Jean-Baptiste Say, a French economist, is believed to have
coined the word "entrepreneur" in the 19th century - he defined an entrepreneur as "one who
undertakes an enterprise, especially a contractor, acting as intermediatory between capital and
labour".
An entrepreneur is a person who develops a new idea and takes the risk of setting up an enterprise
to produce a product or service which satisfies customer needs. All entrepreneurs are business
persons, but not all business persons are entrepreneurs. Let us now think of why all business
persons are not entrepreneurs. Think of a woman who sits by the roadside leading to your home and
who has been selling the same type of food, from the same size of saucepan or pot, from the same
table top, and may not have been able to change her standard of living to any appreciable extent.
Such a woman may be a business person but not an entrepreneur. The entrepreneur, on the other
hand is the business person who is not satisfied with his/her performance and therefore always finds
ways to improve and grow.
Leadership attributes
The entrepreneur leads the firm or organisation and also demonstrates leadership qualities by
selecting managerial staff. Management skill and strong team building abilities are essential
leadership attributes for successful entrepreneurs. Scholar Robert. B. Reich considers leadership,
management ability, and team-building as essential qualities of an entrepreneur. This concept has its
origins in the work of Richard Cantillon in his Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en (1755) and
Jean-Baptiste Say (1803 or 1834) in his Treatise on Political Economy.
Entrepreneurs emerge from the population on demand, and become leaders because they perceive
opportunities available and are well-positioned to take advantage of them. An entrepreneur may
perceive that they are among the few to recognize or be able to solve a problem. Joseph Schumpeter
saw the entrepreneur as innovators and popularized the uses of the phrase creative destruction to
describe his view of the role of entrepreneurs in changing business norms. Creative destruction
encompasses changes entrepreneurial activity makes every time a new process, product or company
enters the market.
Influences, personality traits, and characteristics
The most significant influence on an individual's decision to become an entrepreneur is workplace
peers and the social composition of the workplace. Entrepreneurs also often possess innate traits
such as extroversion and a propensity for risk-taking. According to Schumpeter, an entrepreneur
characteristically innovates, introduces new technologies, increases efficiency, productivity, or
generates new products or services. An entrepreneur acts as a catalyst for economic change and
research indicates that entrepreneurs are highly creative individuals who imagine new solutions by
generating opportunities for profit or reward.
There is a complexity and lack of cohesion between research studies that explore the characteristics
and personality traits of, and influences on, the entrepreneur. Most studies, however, agree that
there are certain entrepreneurial traits and environmental influences that tend to be consistent.
Although certain entrepreneurial traits are required, entrepreneurial behaviours are dynamic and
influenced by environmental factors. Shane and VenKataraman (2000) argue the entrepreneur is
solely concerned with opportunity recognition and exploitation; however, the opportunity that is
recognised depends on the type of entrepreneur which Ucbasaran et al. (2001) argue there are many
different types dependent on their business and personal circumstances.
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Psychological studies show that the psychological propensities for male and female entrepreneurs
are more similar than different. Perceived gender differences may be due more to gender
stereotyping. There is a growing body of work that shows that entrepreneurial behavior is dependent
on social and economic factors. For example, countries which have healthy and diversified labor
markets or stronger safety nets show a more favorable ratio of opportunity driven rather than
necessity-driven women entrepreneurs. Empirical studies suggest that women entrepreneurs possess
strong negotiating skills and consensus-forming abilities.
New research regarding the qualities required for successful entrepreneurship is ongoing, with work
from the Kauffman Institute forming the statistical basis for much of it.
Types of entrepreneurs
Social entrepreneur
A Social entrepreneur is motivated by a desire to help, improve and transform social,
environmental, educational and economic conditions. Key traits and characteristics of highly
effective social entrepreneurs include ambition and a lack of acceptance of the status quo or
accepting the world "as it is". The social entrepreneur is driven by an emotional desire to address
some of the big social and economic conditions in the world, for example, poverty and educational
deprivation, rather than by the desire for profit. Social entrepreneurs seek to develop innovative
solutions to global problems that can be copied by others to enact change.
Social entrepreneurs act within a market aiming to create social value through the improvement of
goods and services offered to the community. Their main aim is to help offer a better service
improving the community as a whole and are predominately run as non profit schemes. Zahra et al.
(2009: 519) said that “social entrepreneurs make significant and diverse contributions to their
communities and societies, adopting business models to offer creative solutions to complex and
persistent social problems”.
Serial entrepreneur
A serial entrepreneur is one who continuously comes up with new ideas and starts new businesses.
In the media, the serial entrepreneur is represented as possessing a higher propensity for risk,
innovation and achievement. Serial entrepreneurs are more likely to experience repeated
entrepreneurial success. They are more likely to take risks and recover from business failure.
Lifestyle entrepreneur
A lifestyle entrepreneur places passion before profit when launching a business in order to combine
personal interests and talent with the ability to earn a living. Many entrepreneurs may be primarily
motivated by the intention to make their business profitable in order to sell to shareholders. In
contrast, a lifestyle entrepreneur intentially chooses a business model intended to develop and grow
their business in order to make a long-term, sustainable and viable living working in a field where
they have a particular interest, passion, talent, knowledge or high degree of expertise. A lifestyle
entrepreneur may decide to become self-employed in order to achieve greater personal freedom,
more family time and more time working on projects or business goals that inspire them. A lifestyle
entrepreneur may combine a hobby with a profession or they may specifically decide not to expand
their business in order to remain in control of their venture. Common goals held by the lifestyle
entrepreneur include earning a living doing something that they love, earning a living in a way that
facilitates self-employment, achieving a good work/life balance and owning a business without
shareholders. Many lifestyle entrepreneurs are very dedicated to their business and may work within
the creative industries or tourism industry, where a passion before profit approach to
entrepreneurship often prevails. While many entrepreneurs may launch their business with a clear
exit strategy, a lifestyle entrepreneur may deliberately and consciously choose to keep their venture

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fully within their own control. Lifestyle entrepreneurship is becoming increasing popular as
technology provides small business owners with the digital platforms needed to reach a large global
market

Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship is the act of being an entrepreneur, which can be defined as "one who undertakes
innovations, finance and business acumen in an effort to transform innovations into economic
goods". This may result in new organizations or may be part of revitalizing mature organizations in
response to a perceived opportunity. The most obvious form of entrepreneurship is that of starting
new businesses (referred as Startup Company); however, in recent years, the term has been
extended to include social and political forms of entrepreneurial activity. When entrepreneurship is
describing activities within a firm or large organization it is referred to as intra-preneurship and may
include corporate venturing, when large entities spin-off organizations.
According to Paul Reynolds, entrepreneurship scholar and creator of the Global Entrepreneurship
Monitor, "by the time they reach their retirement years, half of all working men in the United States
probably have a period of self-employment of one or more years; one in four may have engaged in
self-employment for six or more years. Participating in a new business creation is a common
activity among U.S. workers over the course of their careers." And in recent years has been
documented by scholars such as David Audretsch to be a major driver of economic growth in both
the United States and Western Europe.

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Entrepreneurial activities are substantially different depending on the type of organization that is
being started. Entrepreneurship ranges in scale from solo projects (even involving the entrepreneur
only part-time) to major undertakings creating many job opportunities. Many "high value"
entrepreneurial ventures seek venture capital or angel funding (seed money) in order to raise capital
to build the business. Angel investors generally seek annualized returns of 20-30% and more, as
well as extensive involvement in the business. Many kinds of organizations now exist to support
would-be entrepreneurs, including specialized government agencies, business incubators, science
parks, and some NGOs. In more recent times, the term entrepreneurship has been extended to
include elements not related necessarily to business formation activity such as conceptualizations of
entrepreneurship as a specific mindset (see also entrepreneurial mindset) resulting in entrepreneurial
initiatives e.g. in the form of social entrepreneurship, political entrepreneurship, or knowledge
entrepreneurship have emerged.
History
The entrepreneur is a factor in microeconomics, and the study of entrepreneurship reaches back to
the work of Richard Cantillon and Adam Smith in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, but was
largely ignored theoretically until the late 19th and early 20th centuries and empirically until a
profound resurgence in business and economics in the last 40 years. Donald Trump is the best
example.
In the 20th century, the understanding of entrepreneurship owes much to the work of economist
Joseph Schumpeter in the 1930s and other Austrian economists such as Carl Menger, Ludwig von
Mises and Friedrich von Hayek. In Schumpeter, an entrepreneur is a person who is willing and able
to convert a new idea or invention into a successful innovation. Entrepreneurship employs what
Schumpeter called "the gale of creative destruction" to replace in whole or in part inferior
innovations across markets and industries, simultaneously creating new products including new
business models. In this way, creative destruction is largely responsible for the dynamism of
industries and long-run economic growth. The supposition that entrepreneurship leads to economic
growth is an interpretation of the residual in endogenous growth theory and as such is hotly debated
in academic economics. An alternate, description posited by Israel Kirzner suggests that the
majority of innovations may be much more incremental improvements such as the replacement of
paper with plastic in the construction of a drinking straw.
For Schumpeter, entrepreneurship resulted in new industries but also in new combinations of
currently existing inputs. Schumpeter's initial example of this was the combination of a steam
engine and then current wagon making technologies to produce the horseless carriage. In this case
the innovation, the car, was transformational but did not require the development of a new
technology, merely the application of existing technologies in a novel manner. It did not
immediately replace the horsedrawn carriage, but in time, incremental improvements which reduced
the cost and improved the technology led to the complete practical replacement of beast drawn
vehicles in modern transportation. Despite Schumpeter's early 20th-century contributions,
traditional microeconomic theory did not formally consider the entrepreneur in its theoretical
frameworks (instead assuming that resources would find each other through a price system). In this
treatment the entrepreneur was an implied but unspecified actor, but it is consistent with the concept
of the entrepreneur being the agent of x-efficiency. Different scholars have described entrepreneurs
as, among other things, bearing risk. For Schumpeter, the entrepreneur did not bear risk: the
capitalist did.For Frank H. Knight (1921) and Peter Drucker (1970) entrepreneurship is about
taking risk. The behavior of the entrepreneur reflects a kind of person willing to put his or her career
and financial security on the line and take risks in the name of an idea, spending much time as well
as capital on an uncertain venture. Knight classified three types of uncertainty.

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• Risk, which is measurable statistically (such as the probability of drawing a red color ball
from a jar containing 5 red balls and 5 white balls).
• Ambiguity, which is hard to measure statistically (such as the probability of drawing a red
ball from a jar containing 5 red balls but with an unknown number of white balls).
• True Uncertainty or Knightian Uncertainty, which is impossible to estimate or predict
statistically (such as the probability of drawing a red ball from a jar whose number of red
balls is unknown as well as the number of other colored balls).
The acts of entrepreneurship are often associated with true uncertainty, particularly when it involves
bringing something really novel to the world, whose market never exists. However, even if a market
already exists, there is no guarantee that a market exists for a particular new player in the cola
category.
The place of the disharmony-creating and idiosyncratic entrepreneur in traditional economic theory
(which describes many efficiency-based ratios assuming uniform outputs) presents theoretic
quandaries. William Baumol has added greatly to this area of economic theory and was recently
honored for it at the 2006 annual meeting of the American Economic Association.
The entrepreneur is widely regarded as an integral player in the business culture of American life,
and particularly as an engine for job creation and economic growth. Robert Sobel published The
Entrepreneurs: Explorations Within the American Business Tradition in 1974. Zoltan Acs and
David Audretsch have produced an edited volume surveying

ENTREPRENEURSHIP SKILLS
Who is an entrepreneur?
Now let us consider the characteristics or some special qualities and strengths which make an
entrepreneur different from a business person. It is important for us to note that a successful
entrepreneur possesses the following characteristics.
Initiative
An entrepreneur takes actions that goes beyond job requirements or the demand of the situation
Opportunity seeking
An entrepreneur is quick to see and seize opportunities. He/she does things before he/she is asked to
work by people or forced by situation.
Persistence
An entrepreneur is not discouraged by difficulties and problems that come up in the business or
his/her personal life. Once she sets a goal she is committed to the goal and will become completely
absorbed in it.
Information seeking
An entrepreneur undertakes personal research on how to satisfy customers and solve problems.
He/she knows that different people have different capabilities that can be of help to them. He/she
seeks relevant information from his/her clients, suppliers, competitors and others. He/she always
wants to learn things which will help the business to grow.
Demand for quality and efficiency
An entrepreneur is always competing with others to do things better, faster, and at less cost he/she
strives to achieve excellence.
Risk taking
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Are you afraid of uncertainties? Then you cannot be an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs are not high
risk takers. They are also not gamblers; they calculate their risks before taking action. They place
themselves in situations involving moderate risk so they are moderate risk takers.
Goal setting
An entrepreneur sets meaningful and challenging goals for him/herself. An entrepreneur does not
just dream. Him/she thinks and plans what he/she does. He/she is certain or has hope about the
future.
Commitment to work
An entrepreneur will work long hours after into the night just to be able to keep his/her promise to
his/her client. He/she does the work together with his/her workers to get a job done. He/she knows
how to make people happy to work for him/her due his/her dynamic leadership.
Systematic planning and monitoring
An entrepreneur plans for whatever he/she expects in the business. He/she does not leave things to
luck. He/she plans by breaking large tasks down into small once and puts time limits against them.
Since and entrepreneur knows what to expect at anytime he/she is able to change plans and
strategies to achieve what he/she aims at.
Persuasion and networking
An entrepreneur acts to develop and maintain business contacts by establishing good working
relationship. Uses deliberate strategies to influence others.
Independence and self confidence
Most entrepreneurs start business because they like to be their own boss. They are responsible for
their own decisions.

Intrapreneurship
Intrapreneurship is the act of behaving like an entrepreneur, except within a larger organization.
Definition
In 1992, The American Heritage Dictionary acknowledged the popular use of a new word,
intrapreneur, to mean "A person within a large corporation who takes direct responsibility for
turning an idea into a profitable finished product through assertive risk-taking and innovation".
Intrapreneurship is now known as the practice of a corporate management style that integrates risk-
taking and innovation approaches, as well as the reward and motivational techniques, that are more
traditionally thought of as being the province of entrepreneurship.
History
The first written use of the terms ‘intrapreneur,’ ‘intrapreneuring,’ and ‘intrapreneurship’ date from
a paper written in 1978 by Gifford & Elizabeth Pinchot. Later the term was credited to Gifford
Pinchot III by Norman Macrae in the April 17, 1982 issue of The Economist. The first formal
academic case study of corporate entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship was published in June 1982,
as a Master's in Management Thesis, by Howard Edward Haller, on the intrapreneurial creation of
PR1ME Leasing within PR1ME Computer Inc. (from 1977 to 1981). [This academic research was
later published as a real world case study by VDM Verlag as Intrapreneurship Success:A PR1ME
Example by Howard Edward Haller, Ph.D. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English
Language included the term 'intrapreneur' in its 3rd 1992 Edition, and also credited[ Gifford Pinchot
III as the originator of the concept. The term "intrapreneurship" was used in the popular media first
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in February 1985 by TIME magazine article "Here come the Intrapreneurs" and then the same year
in another major popular publication was in a quote by Steve Jobs, Apple Computer’s Chairman, in
an interview in the September 1985 Newsweek article, where he shared, “The Macintosh team was
what is commonly known as intrapreneurship;only a few years before the term was coined—a
group of people going, in essence, back to the garage, but in a large company."
Employee Intrapreneur
"Intrapreneurship refers to employee initiatives in organizations to undertake something new,
without being asked to do so." Hence, the intrapreneur focuses on innovation and creativity, and
transforms an idea into a profitable venture, while operating within the organizational environment.
Thus, intrapreneurs are Inside entrepreneurs who follow the goal of the organization.
Intrapreneurship is an example of motivation through job design, either formally or informally. (See
also Corporate Social Entrepreneurship: intrapreneurship within the firm which is driven to produce
social capital in addition to economic capital.)
Employees, such as marketing executives or perhaps those engaged in a special project within a
larger firm, are encouraged to behave as entrepreneurs, even though they have the resources,
capabilities and security of the larger firm to draw upon. Capturing a little of the dynamic nature of
entrepreneurial management (trying things until successful, learning from failures, attempting to
conserve resources, etc.) adds to the potential of an otherwise static organization, without exposing
those employees to the risks or accountability normally associated with entrepreneurial failure.
Examples
Many companies are famous for setting up internal organizations whose purpose is to promote
innovation within their ranks. One of the most well-known is the "Skunk Works" group at Lockheed
Martin. The group was originally named after a reference in a cartoon, and was first brought
together in 1943 to build the P-80 fighter jet. Because the project was to eventually become a part of
the war effort, the project was internally protected and secretive. Kelly Johnson, later famous for
Kelly's 14 rules of intrapreneurship, was the director of this group.
Another example could be 3M, who encourage many projects within the company. They give
certain freedom to employees to create their own projects, and they even give them funds to use for
these projects. (In the days of its founders, HP used to have similar policies and just such an
innovation-friendly atmosphere and intrapreneurial reputation.) Besides 3M, Intel also has a
tradition of implementing intrapreneurship.

Secrets of successful ‘intrapreneurship’

To answer this, Ernst & Young conducted a series of global surveys and interviews with
industry authorities and business leaders from corporations such as Ford Motor
Company, Dell and SAP. The results are being released today in a new report that
examines the secrets of successful “intrapreneurship,” or entrepreneurial thinking
within a company, and its vital role in the economic recovery.

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Ernst & Young’s ‘Igniting innovation: How hot companies fuel growth from within,’
explains that the best way for a company to foster creative thinking is to tap resources
it already has: its own employees.

Encouraging people to explore high-risk, high-reward ideas within the safety and
support of a larger, well-established corporate structure is at the heart of being
intrapreneurial. The report also explores the concrete ways corporate giants keep their
market leadership, and the role that governments play to encourage innovation in
both new and established companies.

‘Igniting innovation,’ which is being released during the 2010 Ernst & Young Strategic
Growth Forum in Palm Springs, can be downloaded at http://www.ey.com/innovation.

Ability to innovate critical to growth

A 2010 Ernst & Young survey underscores the importance of creating an environment
that fuels creativity but deals effectively with failure. The global survey, which polled
263 of the world’s leading entrepreneurs (all winners of Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur
of the Year awards), found that 82% of the respondents agreed strongly that the
ability to innovate was critical to the growth of their organisations. Nearly half of the
respondents surveyed said that generating innovative ideas became more difficult as
their organisations grew in size and complexity.

“Large, established companies are often comprised of rigid structures that can stifle
the entrepreneurial spirit. In the face of fierce global competition, companies need to
be increasingly agile in order drive growth and lasting success,” said Maria Pinelli,
Americas Director, Strategic Growth Markets, Ernst & Young LLP.

“Intrapreneurship is not a feel-good gesture – it is a sound business strategy that is

vital to business success and essential for economic recovery. Successful
intrapreneurship helps companies sustain their growth trajectory, maintain a
competitive edge and ensure the company’s future.”

Six strategies of effective intrapreneurship

Based on insights gleaned from the 2010 global survey, interviews with senior
business leaders, and Ernst & Young’s own extensive experience working with
entrepreneurial-minded companies, the white paper offers strategies on how to
cultivate effective intrapreneurship within an organisation. These six key strategies
include:

1. Set up a formal structure for intrapreneurship

It is critical to give people enough time away from their day jobs to work on creative
ideas, while setting up formal processes to make sure those ideas go somewhere.
Google, for example, has set up a formal process for encouraging intrapreneurship
through its Innovation Time Off project, which enables employees to spend about 20%

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of their time on company-related work that is of personal interest. Almost half of

Google’s product launches are said to have originated from this program.

2. Ask for ideas from your employees

Encourage everyone from all ranks and functions to contribute to the innovative
process. IBM, for example, uses “jams” – massive online brainstorming conferences –
to generate ideas and solve problems. Its famous 2006 Innovation Jam involved
150,000 participants and resulted in US$100 million being appropriated to start 10
new businesses.

3. Assemble and unleash a diverse workforce.

Statistical research has established that diverse viewpoints result in better ideas and
better products. PepsiCo, for example, attributes about US$ 250 million to new
products inspired by diversity efforts.

4. Design a career path for your intrapreneurs

Intrapreneurs tend to dislike conventional administrative jobs, so look for non-

traditional ways to advance their careers. Recognising that rewards can be an
effective way to foster professional growth, 3M offers intrapreneurs awards for
marketing excellence and technical innovation.

5. Explore government programs and incentives

Don’t ignore the growing number of state-sponsored programs that support

entrepreneurial ventures. Step up your efforts to obtain government funds for
innovation.

6. Prepare for the pitfalls of intrapreneurship

Backing bold ideas can backfire. Be prepared to deal with failed ventures, internal
conflicts, financial risks and intellectual property battles. Set risk limits up-front.

Furthermore, the white paper explores changes that need to be set in motion if the
strategies are to be successful in the long run – from creating a culture of flexibility to
encouraging the happy accident.

Institutionalising intrapreneurship

According to the report, these guidelines can help companies free up organisation
gridlock and set up a supportive environment that fosters the creative process. The
paper cautions, however, that they will succeed only if there is support from senior
management and a framework that views intrapreneurship as an end-to-end process.

“Intrapreneurs need encouragement, support and resources from senior management,

as well as the freedom to fail without punishment,” continued Pinelli.

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“By following these six key strategies, and providing a supportive and nurturing
environment, companies can institutionalise intrapreneurship so that it becomes an
inseparable part of a company’s operations. Only then can the process of continuous
innovation take place – allowing the company to stay a market leader.

Intrapreneur vs Entrepreneur

Let´s face it, when under pressure to grow, organizations of all kinds look to their roots and
their previous successes for answers. Rekindling business growth inside an organization often
represents the toughest challenge to a maturing organization. Can it regain its entrepreneurial
spirit and continue to thrive despite its mature culture? By turning to Intrapreneurs, the
company hopes it can have the best of both worlds. It can work if owners follow the above
steps.
Intrapreneurs, by definition, embody the same characteristics as the Entrepreneur, conviction,
passion, and drive. The more the Intrapreneur expresses himself, the more the company is
forced to confront its own effectiveness. If the company is supportive, the Intrapreneur
succeeds. When the organization is not, the Intrapreneur usually fails or leaves to start a new
company.
In closing, every effective worker has Intrapreneurial traits that may or may not culminate in
an Entrepreneurial life. Ask yourself how close are you to becoming an Entrepreneur? Your
answer will help you to decide whether you should stay or go!
Entrepreneur Vs Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is the practice of starting new organizations, particularly new

businesses generally in response to identified opportunities. Entrepreneurship
is often a difficult undertaking, as a majority of new businesses fail.
Entrepreneurial activities are substantially different depending on the type of
organization that is being started. Entrepreneurship ranges in scale from solo
projects (even involving the entrepreneur only part-time) to major undertakings
creating many job opportunities.

An entrepreneur (a loanword from French introduced and first defined by an

Irish economist named Richard Cantillon) is a person who undertakes and
operates a new enterprise or venture and assumes some accountability for the
inherent risks. Entrepreneurship is often difficult, as many new ventures fail. In
the context of the creation of for-profit enterprises, entrepreneur is often
synonymous with founder.
Most commonly, the term entrepreneur applies to someone who establishes a
new entity to offer a new or existing product or service into a new or existing
market, whether a for profit or not-for-profit outcome.
Business entrepreneurs often have strong beliefs about a market opportunity
and are willing to accept a high level of personal, professional or financial risk
to pursue that opportunity. Business entrepreneurs are viewed as
fundamentally important in U.S. culture as critical components of its capitalistic

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society.

Entrepreneur vs manager of a large organization

Large organization and entrepreneurial ventures are two totally different horses. Both have
their own unique strengths and weaknesses. While large organizations can change things
because of their sheer size, they fall short when it comes to experimentation and fast
adaptation of technology. Here is where entrepreneurs and start ups fare well.

Normally, it is not an easy idea to compare the people who are called as ‘entrepreneurs’
because they are working in new, un-explored areas with the managers of large organizations,
who are working inside organizational boundaries. A comparison is to be done, is when
someone makes a career change for example he is moving from a big company to a small
start-up or vice versa. There are some advantages and disadvantages to each side.
Manager of a large scale enterprise:
Pros:

 has enormous company resources at disposal

 Certain career path

 Receives salary at the end of every month

 Certainty of employment ( not much these days though)

 Has huge learning opportunities from mentors and seniors

 Manages large sized teams

 Handles complex and multinational spread projects

Cons:

 gets only time based promotion

 Predetermined increase in salary and bonuses

 Confinement to one or two areas of expertise

 Needs to handle large bureaucracy of organization

 Cannot experiment too much with processes and products

 faces restrictive corporate environment that subdues creativity and risk taking
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 Mostly repetitive, non challenging work

Entrepreneur :
Pros:

 Absolute king of his world

 Opportunity to learn new skills almost everyday

 Answers to no one(boss)

 Can design and modify products and processes at will

 Thrives on challenges and problem solving

 Goes out of the way to win customers

Cons:

 Most of the time, his money is on the line

 Too many challenges can cause burnouts

 Financial losses in case of failed business

 Need to handle all issues by himself

 High levels of uncertainty

 Spends lesser time spent with family initially

Some circumstances call for role-reversal as the cleaning services manager is challenged to be
more entrepreneurial… and the entrepreneur to become a better manager.
If you’re an in-house cleaning manager, the entrepreneurial spirit can help you thrive in your
position.
If you’re a cleaning contractor, solid management skills and planning can help you make the
most of your abilities in any economy.
Today’s Tom Sawyer: The evolution of manager into entrepreneur – and vice versa
Most readers are probably familiar with Mark Twain’s tale of Tom Sawyer and the picket fence
– in which Tom convinces his friends not only to whitewash the fence for him, but also to pay
him for the privilege.
Tom did not undertake to paint the fence for profit – it was a job thrust upon him. In this
respect, he became a manager, not an entrepreneur.
However, in the course of doing the actual work, Tom’s entrepreneurial spirit emerged. He
created a business distinct from the task itself – the business of selling (and defining, albeit
loosely) recreation.

This is pure entrepreneurship, although you could argue that there was little risk involved –
other than the risk that his young friends might think him a little daffy.
More info-

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When you compare managers and entrepreneurs you need to first look at the
definitions of both titles. A manager is someone who directs a team and an
entrepreneur is someone who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a
business or enterprise. With these definitions you can surmise that an
entrepreneur can be a manager but a manager cannot be an entrepreneur. The
reasons for this are plentiful, but it basically comes down to the type of person
you are. If you like to control all aspects of a situation then you are generally a
manager, but if you are someone who works through problems with people
then you are more likely an entrepreneur.
A manager is someone who is what is known as a micro-manager. They like to
control all aspects of their workplace. Each person is given their assigned tasks
and a manager will look over your shoulder until you finish it. They do not like
to give up control enough to find out if you could do it on your own because
they think if you make a mistake that it will come down on them.
Unfortunately, with this attitude the people who work for a manager are less
likely to grow in their career and will either stagnate or leave the company or
position quickly. This will help to perpetuate the feelings of the manager that
no one can measure of to him in their skill levels. This type of demeanor works
well when you have a person that needs to be consistently supervised.
Someone who can't take a task and see if through on their own, they need to
have it explained to them step by step.
An entrepreneur is generally considered a leader versus a manager. They will
give people tasks and a deadline and generally leave them alone until it is
completed. They will trust people to get the job done without having to
constantly look over their shoulder. When they hire someone they believe that
they have hired someone who is qualified to handle the tasks before them, so
they don't think they should have to ask for status reports on an hourly basis.
The people who work for them are normally intelligent individuals who will
move up quickly in the company, because their boss has helped to build their
confidence and it will be noticed by not only their boss but other people within
the company. This type of manager believes that it is important to have people
with varied skill sets because it will only enhance his own skills and abilities.
Of the two different types of managers mentioned, it is normally more
productive to work for a leader versus a manager. You will be able to improve
your skill set and to move up within the company because you have learned
good managerial skills from a true leader. Learning how this type of person
manages an office will help you to be able to become a leader within the
company and it will help you in all facets of your life.
Attributes and Characteristics of a successful Entrepreneur
Many people believe they have the attributes to be successful entrepreneurs.
However, most of them are driven primarily by disenchantment with their
present jobs. They long for the independence and freedom that owning a
business represents. They forget that the rewards of owning a business are
accompanied by the risks and uncertainty their present employer is assuming
for them. They want the glory, but they may not have what it takes to tough it
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out on their own. If you think you've got what it takes to run your own show,
read on and see if you can identify with some common characteristics of
successful entrepreneurs.

• They are highly self-confident individuals with extremely high

standards. They are hard-driving, emotionally charged, overly energetic
people, who will judge both themselves and their employees harshly
when even minor mistakes are made.

• They strive to maintain absolute control over their destinies. Most have
little, if any, management experience but have worked in a large
organization where they were frustrated by the slow pace, politics and
inefficiency.
• They are goal-oriented to a fault, and they cannot tolerate mediocrity
or failure. Success is the only result acceptable to them, and they are
workaholics in their quest.
• While they are willing to make great sacrifices to achieve success, they
are also impatient and bored by the planning and administrative aspects
of their companies, often ignoring these tasks.
• They have large egos needing to be nurtured. They tend to believe
they are always right, and it is difficult for them to heed the advice of
others (no matter how sound the advice) when it differs from their own
beliefs.
• They are calculated risk takers. They tend to have a gut feeling to
guide them, and they are willing to "bet the store" on their choices.
• They are good communicators who can generate enthusiasm within
others because they believe so deeply in their cause. However, they
sometimes have trouble accepting the fact that their employees are not
driven by the same inner motivation to succeed. Therefore, they often
fail to properly motivate their own employees.
• They are weak in money matters, seeing cash only as a means to an
end, rather than as an essential commodity needing to be constantly and
carefully monitored. Either they are so positive they will succeed that
financial planning seems irrelevant to them, or they are so
uncomfortable in dealing with finances that they avoid money matters as
much as possible, hoping they will go away.
• They are totally focused on their own super-widget. Left to their own
devices, they may manufacture enough super-widgets to fill an entire
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warehouse before they realize they should have worried about marketing
long before they began the production process.
• Because they are so self-confident, energetic and driven to succeed,
they often perceive themselves as infallible. If they read about
something, they believe they can accomplish it. They fail to realize, often
until it's too late, that no amount of drive or raw talent can substitute for
experience.
• Above all, they are visionaries. They see a vision of the future, and they
strive against all odds to make their vision a reality.

25 Common Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs

Regardless of your definition of success, there are, oddly enough, a great number of common characteristics that
are shared by successful businesspeople. You can place a check beside each characteristic that you feel that you
possess. This way, you can see how you stack up. Even if you don't have all of these characteristics, don't fret.
Most can be learned with practice and by developing a winning attitude, especially if you set goals and apply
yourself, through strategic planning, to reach those goals in incremental and measurable stages.

The Home Business Musts

Like any activity you pursue, there are certain musts that are required to be successful in a chosen activity. To
legally operate a vehicle on public roadways, one must have a driver's license; to excel in sports, one must train
and practice; to retire comfortably, one must become an informed investor and actively invest for retirement. If
your goal is success in business, then the formula is no different. There are certain musts that have to be fully
developed, implemented and managed for your business to succeed. There are many business musts, but this
article contains I believe to be some of the more important musts that are required to start, operate and grow a
profitable home business.

1. Do what you enjoy.

What you get out of your business in the form of personal satisfaction, financial gain, stability and enjoyment will
be the sum of what you put into your business. So if you don't enjoy what you're doing, in all likelihood it's safe to
assume that will be reflected in the success of your business--or subsequent lack of success. In fact, if you don't
enjoy what you're doing, chances are you won't succeed.

2. Take what you do seriously.

You cannot expect to be effective and successful in business unless you truly believe in your business and in the
goods and services that you sell. Far too many home business owners fail to take their own businesses seriously
enough, getting easily sidetracked and not staying motivated and keeping their noses to the grindstone. They also
fall prey to naysayers who don't take them seriously because they don't work from an office building, office park,
storefront, or factory. Little do these skeptics, who rain on the home business owner's parade, know is that the
number of people working from home, and making very good annual incomes, has grown by leaps and bounds in
recent years.

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3. Plan everything.
Planning every aspect of your home business is not only a must, but also builds habits that every home business
owner should develop, implement, and maintain. The act of business planning is so important because it
requires you to analyze each business situation, research and compile data, and make conclusions based mainly on
the facts as revealed through the research. Business planning also serves a second function, which is having your
goals and how you will achieve them, on paper. You can use the plan that you create both as map to take you from
point A to Z and as a yardstick to measure the success of each individual plan or segment within the plan.

4. Manage money wisely.

The lifeblood of any business enterprise is cash flow. You need it to buy inventory, pay for services, promote and
market your business, repair and replace tools and equipment, and pay yourself so that you can continue to work.
Therefore, all home business owners must become wise money managers to ensure that the cash keeps flowing
and the bills get paid. There are two aspects to wise money management.

1. The money you receive from clients in exchange for your goods and services you provide (income)

2. The money you spend on inventory, supplies, wages and other items required to keep your business operating.
(expenses)

5. Ask for the sale.

A home business entrepreneur must always remember that marketing, advertising, or promotional activities are
completely worthless, regardless of how clever, expensive, or perfectly targeted they are, unless one simple thing
is accomplished--ask for the sale. This is not to say that being a great salesperson, advertising copywriting whiz or
a public relations specialist isn't a tremendous asset to your business. However, all of these skills will be for
naught if you do not actively ask people to buy what you are selling.

6. Remember it's all about the customer.

Your home business is not about the products or services that you sell. Your home business is not about the prices
that you charge for your goods and services. Your home business is not about your competition and how to beat
them. Your business is all about your customers, or clients, period. After all, your customers are the people that
will ultimately decide if your business goes boom or bust. Everything you do in business must be customer
focused, including your policies, warranties, payment options, operating hours, presentations, advertising and
promotional campaigns and website. In addition, you must know who your customers are inside out and upside
down.

7. Become a shameless self-promoter (without becoming obnoxious).

One of the greatest myths about personal or business success is that eventually your business, personal abilities,
products or services will get discovered and be embraced by the masses that will beat a path to your door to buy
what you are selling. But how can this happen if no one knows who you are, what you sell and why they should be
buying?

Self-promotion is one of the most beneficial, yet most underutilized, marketing tools that the majority of home
business owners have at their immediate disposal.

8. Project a positive business image.

You have but a passing moment to make a positive and memorable impression on people with whom you intend
to do business. Home business owners must go out of their way and make a conscious effort to always project the
most professional business image possible. The majority of home business owners do not have the advantage of
elaborate offices or elegant storefronts and showrooms to wow prospects and impress customers. Instead, they
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must rely on imagination, creativity and attention to the smallest detail when creating and maintaining a
professional image for their home business.

9. Get to know your customers.

One of the biggest features and often the most significant competitive edge the home based entrepreneur has
over the larger competitors is the he can offer personalized attention. Call it high-tech backlash if you will, but
customers are sick and tired of hearing that their information is somewhere in the computer and must be retrieved,
or told to push a dozen digits to finally get to the right department only to end up with voice mail--from which
they never receive a return phone call.

The home business owner can actually answer phone calls, get to know customers, provide personal attention and
win over repeat business by doing so. It's a researched fact that most business (80 percent) will come from repeat
customers rather than new customers. Therefore, along with trying to draw newcomers, the more you can do to
woo your regular customers, the better off you will be in the long run and personalized attention is very much
appreciated and remembered in the modern high tech world.

10. Level the playing field with technology.

You should avoid getting overly caught up in the high-tech world, but you should also know how to take
advantage of using it. One of the most amazing aspects of the internet is that a one or two person business
operating from a basement can have a superior website to a $50 million company, and nobody knows the
difference. Make sure you're keeping up with the high-tech world as it suits your needs.. The best technology is
that which helps you, not that which impresses your neighbors.

11. Build a top-notch business team.

No one person can build a successful business alone. It's a task that requires a team that is as committed as you to
the business and its success. Your business team may include family members, friends, suppliers, business
alliances, employees, sub-contractors, industry and business associations, local government and the
community. Of course the most important team members will be your customers or clients. Any or all may have a
say in how your business will function and a stake in your business future.

12. Become known as an expert.

When you have a problem that needs to be solved, do you seek just anyone's advice or do you seek an expert in
the field to help solve your particular problem? Obviously, you want the most accurate information and assistance
that you can get. You naturally seek an expert to help solve your problem. You call a plumber when the hot water
tank leaks, a real estate agent when it's time to sell your home or a dentist when you have a toothache. Therefore,
it only stands to reason that the more you become known for your expertise in your business, the more people will
seek you out to tap into your expertise, creating more selling and referral opportunities. In effect, becoming known
as an expert is another style of prospecting for new business, just in reverse. Instead of finding new and qualified
people to sell to, these people seek you out for your expertise.

13. Create a competitive advantage.

A home business must have a clearly defined unique selling proposition. This is nothing more than a fancy way of
asking the vital question, "Why will people choose to do business with you or purchase your product or service
instead of doing business with a competitor and buying his product or service?" In other words, what one aspect or
combination of aspects is going to separate your business from your competition? Will it be better service, a
longer warranty, better selection, longer business hours, more flexible payment options, lowest price, personalized
service, better customer service, better return and exchange policies or a combination of several of these?

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14. Invest in yourself.

Top entrepreneurs buy and read business and marketing books, magazines, reports, journals, newsletters, websites
and industry publications, knowing that these resources will improve their understanding of business and
marketing functions and skills. They join business associations and clubs, and they network with other skilled
business people to learn their secrets of success and help define their own goals and objectives. Top entrepreneurs
attend business and marketing seminars, workshops and training courses, even if they have already mastered the
subject matter of the event. They do this because they know that education is an ongoing process. There are
usually ways to do things better, in less time, with less effort. In short, top entrepreneurs never stop investing in
the most powerful, effective and best business and marketing tool at their immediate disposal--themselves.

15. Be accessible.
We're living in a time when we all expect our fast food lunch at the drive-thru window to be ready in mere
minutes, our dry cleaning to be ready for pick-up on the same day, our money to be available at the cash machine
and our pizza delivered in 30 minutes or it's free. You see the pattern developing--you must make it as easy as you
can for people to do business with you, regardless of the home business you operate.

You must remain cognizant of the fact that few people will work hard, go out of their way, or be inconvenienced
just for the privilege of giving you their hard-earned money. The shoe is always on the other foot. Making it easy
for people to do business with you means that you must be accessible and knowledgeable about your products and
services. You must be able to provide customers with what they want, when they want it.

16. Build a rock-solid reputation.

A good reputation is unquestionably one of the home business owner's most tangible and marketable assets. You
can't simply buy a good reputation; it's something that you earn by honoring your promises. If you promise to
have the merchandise in the customer's hands by Wednesday, you have no excuse not to have it there. If you offer
to repair something, you need to make good on your offer. Consistency in what you offer is the other key factor. If
you cannot come through with the same level of service (and products) for clients on a regular basis, they have no
reason to trust you . . . and without trust, you won't have a good reputation.

17. Sell benefits.

Pushing product features is for inexperienced or wannabe entrepreneurs. Selling the benefits associated with
owning and using the products and services you carry is what sales professionals worldwide focus on to create
buying excitement and to sell, sell more, and sell more frequently to their customers. Your advertising, sales
presentations, printed marketing materials, product packaging, website, newsletters, trade show exhibit and
signage are vital. Every time and every medium used to communicate with your target audience must always be
selling the benefits associated with owning your product or using your service.

18. Get involved.

Always go out of your way to get involved in the community that supports your business. You can do this in many
ways, such as pitching in to help local charities or the food bank, becoming involved in organizing community
events, and getting involved in local politics. You can join associations and clubs that concentrate on programs
and policies designed to improve the local community. It's a fact that people like to do business with people they
know, like and respect, and with people who do things to help them as members of the community.

19. Grab attention.

Small-business owners cannot waste time, money and energy on promotional activities aimed at building
awareness solely through long-term, repeated exposure. If you do, chances are you will go broke long before this
goal is accomplished. Instead, every promotional activity you engage in, must put money back in your pocket so

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that you can continue to grab more attention and grow your business.

20. Master the art of negotiations.

The ability to negotiate effectively is unquestionably a skill that every home business owner must make every
effort to master. It's perhaps second in importance only to asking for the sale in terms of home business musts. In
business, negotiation skills are used daily. Always remember that mastering the art of negotiation means that your
skills are so finely tuned that you can always orchestrate a win-win situation. These win-win arrangements mean
that everyone involved feels they have won, which is really the basis for building long-term and profitable
business relationships.

21. Design Your workspace for success.

Carefully plan and design your home office workspace to ensure maximum personal performance and productivity
and, if necessary, to project professionalism for visiting clients. If at all possible, resist the temptation to turn a
corner of the living room or your bedroom into your office. Ideally, you'll want a separate room with a door that
closes to keep business activities in and family members out, at least during prime business and revenue
generating hours of the day. A den, spare bedroom, basement or converted garage are all ideal candidates for your
new home office. If this is not possible, you'll have to find a means of converting a room with a partition or simply
find hours to do the bulk of your work when nobody else is home.

22. Get and stay organized.

The key to staying organized is not about which type of file you have or whether you keep a stack or two of
papers on your desk, but it's about managing your business. It's about having systems in place to do things.
Therefore, you wan to establish a routine by which you can accomplish as much as possible in a given workday,
whether that's three hours for a part-time business or seven or nine hours as a full-timer. In fact, you should
develop systems and routines for just about every single business activity. Small things such as creating a to-do
list at the end of each business day, or for the week, will help keep you on top of important tasks to tackle.
Creating a single calendar to work from, not multiple sets for individual tasks or jobs, will also ensure that jobs are
completed on schedule and appointments kept. Incorporating family and personal activities into your work
calendar is also critical so that you work and plan from a single calendar.

23. Take time off.

The temptation to work around the clock is very real for some home business owners. After all, you don't have a
manager telling you it's time to go home because they can't afford the overtime pay. Every person working from
home must take time to establish a regular work schedule that includes time to stretch your legs and take lunch
breaks, plus some days off and scheduled vacations. Create the schedule as soon as you have made the
commitment to start a home business. Of course, your schedule will have to be flexible. You should, therefore, not
fill every possible hour in the day. Give yourself a backup hour or two. All work and no play makes you burn out
very fast and grumpy customer service is not what people want.

24. Limit the number of hats you wear.

It's difficult for most business owners not to take a hands-on approach. They try to do as much as possible and
tackle as many tasks as possible in their business. The ability to multitask, in fact, is a common trait shared by
successful entrepreneurs. However, once in a while you have to stand back and look beyond today to determine
what's in the best interest of your business and yourself over the long run. Most highly successful entrepreneurs
will tell you that from the time they started out, they knew what they were good at and what tasks to delegate to
others.

25
 26

25. Follow-up constantly.

Constant contact, follow-up, and follow-through with customers, prospects, and business alliances should be the
mantra of every home business owner, new or established. Constant and consistent follow-up enables you to turn
prospects into customers, increase the value of each sale and buying frequency from existing customers, and build
stronger business relationships with suppliers and your core business team. Follow-up is especially important with
your existing customer base, as the real work begins after the sale. It's easy to sell one product or service, but it
takes work to retain customers and keep them coming back.

10 Qualities Of A Successful Entrepreneur

As humans we were all created with different personalities and skills. In addition, we all learn and
experience a different life that is unique to us, allowing us to form the characteristics and qualities
of who we are. For those that decide that they have what it takes to become an entrepreneur, it is
these qualities that can lead them to their road of success or failure. Although some would argue
that the successful ones are just lucky, it does comes without saying that you must be more than just
lucky to actually succeed. Luck is what can help you get there. Your ideas, knowledge, efforts and
actions are the actual driving forces to becoming a successful entrepreneur.
Be Practical

Being practical is the first quality any entrepreneur must be able to master if they want to be
successful. Practicality would give that successful entrepreneur the ability to make decisions on
business matters with a clear frame of mind and common sense. This results in them seeing things
that others may not. We must remember that not all products sell. A successful entrepreneur would
be able to see this and make decisions based on unbiased information, current knowledge and past
experience. They must not let external factors affect their judgement and understand that the rise or
fall of a business will highly depend on the decision that they make..

Imagination and creativity

A successful entrepreneur must also be imaginative and creative. They must be able to look outside
the square and see things others do not. They must be able to offer solutions to difficult problems as
well as being able to brainstorm ideas for their products. They must be able to create a business that
will set them apart from others.

An achiever

Another key quality of a successful entrepreneur is that they are achievers. Getting things done is
important. Remember you need to keep driving your business vehicle until you are satisfied with
the result and achieved your goal. Those that stop halfway will never see what they can really
achieve. Successful entrepreneurs are the ones that are persistent, motivated, independent and

26
 27

hardworking. They have a clear vision of what they want to achieve and set out to form a plan,
followed by an action in order to reach their goals. They are proactive and get things done.

Self Discipline

Those who are self disciplined are one step closer to becoming a successful entrepreneur. We all
would love to have fun instead of work, or watch TV instead of doing our tax but remember it is
this self control that distinguishes those that are successful to those that are not. When you want to
succeed in anything, not just business, you must teach yourself time management, stress
management and also be able to separate work from play.

Independence

Not only do successful entrepreneurs have to possess self discipline but they must also show
independence. Being independent means that they are aware of the decisions needed to be made and
can make them on their own. They are not afraid of being alone and being different. They
understand what is required of the business and are the decision makers.

Take Action

Remember business means business and if you keep sitting on the fence you will always be the
watcher. To be a successful entrepreneur you must chose which side of the fence you want to jump
over to and make the most of it. Do not ponder on all the pros and cons of a problem too much and
delay important projects. You must be a quick thinker and act fast. When necessary make a choice,
take action and deal with all the obstacles as they come. Be productive. Sitting around and waiting
for things to happen is not going to make you a successful entrepreneur.

Patience

Patience is the key to success. We all know that a business needs time to build up. Success does not
happen overnight (unless extremely lucky). Entrepreneurs understand this and often like to put ideas
into actions and wait to see the results. Whatever the results may be they often go back and tweak
their ideas to produce better results. This is what differentiates a successful entrepreneur from one
that is not so successful.

Determination

Another quality that entrepreneur must have in order to succeed is determination. In the business
world it comes without saying that competition is everywhere and this can lead people to lack the
confidence e and motivation required to succeed. A successful entrepreneur can take failure as it is
and then tries again, maybe using a different approach. Point is they believe in their ability to
become successful and it is this belief that allows them to stand up again after they fall.

Motivation

Motivation is a skill that entrepreneurs cannot lack. In any business venture there is bound to be
both success and failure. A successful entrepreneur must not let failure block their view of what
could be a successful business. If they can put aside the disappointment and motivate themselves to
try again, they are one step closer to reaching their goal. When all enthusiasm and motivation is lost
then this is when the business is also lost.
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 28

Know your stuff, love your work

Knowledge is the source of your success and is a number one requirement in becoming a successful
entrepreneur. It is much easier to excel in an area that is familiar to you instead of one that you have
to learn about from the beginning. Most people fail in business because they lack the knowledge.
They either do not know how to run a business or they do not offer the right support and service that
their customers would like. In addition to this, you must not only have knowledge for your niche but
also a passion for your business in order to succeed. If you like what you do you will inevitably be
more willing to research and learn about it. Overall, everyone has the ability to become an
entrepreneur but not everyone can succeed. Knowing your niche allows you to portray the other
qualities in this article better.

What Role for Entrepreneurship in India?

This memo discusses three issues on the optimum role for entrepreneurship in the Indian
economy. First, how and why the optimal role for individual entrepreneurs is likely to be
different in India (and other countries at a similar state of economic development) than in
an advanced economy? Second, are Indian entrepreneurs playing their optimal role?
Third, if they are not, what obstacles stand in their way?
These ideas are based on a research project that I’ve been working on since about May
2003, in collaboration with a team from the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.
Our team has thus far interviewed nearly a hundred entrepreneurs in Bangalore.* We’ve
also collected data on five percent of all registered shops, commercial establishments and
factories and on more than 90% the software and software related companies located in
Bangalore.

1. OPTIMAL ROLE

A system of entrepreneurship has evolved in the U. S. that has been quite successful and
that may have considerable applicability to some other technologically advanced
countries, such as Germany and Japan, which appear to need more economic dynamism.
The system needs modification however, for underdeveloped economies like India’s. In
particular, I believe that the optimal role for individual entrepreneurs – and the public
policies necessary to support this role – are somewhat different in India than in an
advanced economy.
In advanced countries, most resources are already in or near their highest-valued use.
Any increase in their productivity requires new technologies (broadly defined). Without
new technologies, economic growth winds down and business life stagnates.
In the U.S., small businesses started by individual entrepreneurs and the initiative of
large established companies play complementary roles in developing new technologies.
Startups have advantages in conducting low budget experiments on novel ideas.
Although the results achieved by any single startup are not dramatic, their collective
efforts transform novel yet primitive ideas into technologies of demonstrable commercial
* Funding was provided by the Wadhwani Foundation. Prof. K. Kumar, from the Indian Institute of
Management served co-leader of the team. Prof. Edmund Phelps suggested I prepare this memo for use in
his course “World Economic Problems” and provided considerable help in its revision.

28
 29

viability. And as these technologies appear ready for prime time, large established
companies (or transitional companies seeking to become large) mobilize the resources
required for these technologies’ mass use. It’s pointless to argue about whether the
contributions of the small or the large companies are more important. Technological
progress in advanced economies requires both types of contributions.*
In an under-developed economy, however, increases in living standards do not require
U.S.-style technological innovation. Almost by definition, the actual productivity of its
resources is below that in developed economies since the technologies in wide use in it
are inferior to the technologies already introduced and in extensive use in developed
economies. Rapid growth can be achieved merely through the introduction into and
diffusion through the economy of such superior technologies. (A contrary view is that
poor countries need to evolve “appropriate” technologies of their own to raise their
productivity.) Moreover, the returns from investing in new technologies are generally
lower than the returns from acquiring and implementing existing technologies from the
developed countries. This is because existing technologies can be acquired at lower costs
since the outlays required for their development have already been incurred. And
although there is some uncertainty about the fit of transplanted technologies with the
local environment, the basic technical and market risks are long gone. Therefore
resources devoted to innovation would actually impair growth by diverting resources
from the more valuable tasks of adopting known-to-be superior technologies.
This has implications for the role of wealth-constrained individual entrepreneurs in an
underdeveloped economy and their relationship to large organizations.
An ample supply of applicable, unexploited technologies from the developed world will,
barring perverse policy interventions, supplant most of the demand that would otherwise
have existed for innovations from indigenous entrepreneurs. Therefore, one of the
important roles that entrepreneurs play in the U.S., namely, their role in early-stage
innovation, has relatively little value in India.
Moreover, individual entrepreneurs do not have the capital and personnel required to
acquire technologies from abroad.† Proven technologies usually require large-scale
operation. New technologies often start-out in niche markets; their subsequent
application to mass use turns on the realization of significant economies of scale, through
mass production techniques, for instance. So by the time many technologies become
proven they are no longer suited for entrepreneurs’ small startup businesses. In addition,
the acquisition of proven technologies, even when it is just a matter of copying or reverse
engineering, involves fixed costs. These costs are more easily amortized by a large
enterprise. And, large, established organizations (including wealthy family groups) have
natural advantages in mobilizing the resources required to operate a large-scale
enterprise. So, much of the low-hanging fruit offered by proven overseas technologies
lies outside the reach of wealth-constrained individual entrepreneurs.
* Amar Bhidé, The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
† Hereand below I include in “acquire” not only the transfer of the know-how but also the evaluation,
modification, and learning necessary to make the new technology profitable.

This does not mean, though, that small entrepreneurs cannot contribute to
underdeveloped countries’ progress in catching up. Even in the U.S., experimenting with
completely new technologies is only one of the contributions that individual
entrepreneurs make to economic growth. The entrepreneurs’ capacity to try out highly
novel ideas has value not just in the very early stages of a new technology; even after the
basic elements of a new technology have been proven, considerable trial and error is
necessary for its widespread diffusion. Thus, low budget entrepreneurs played the
29
 30

preeminent role in the development of the personal computer between 1975 and 1980.
Yet, their contribution didn’t end after IBM entered the market in 1981. In the decades
that followed, entrepreneurs helped develop a host of complementary products and
services that made the PC a ubiquitous artifact.
Similarly, the successful implementation of technologies that are ‘new’ to India will
almost certainly require a host of new complementary goods and services to make them
suitable for local use. Individual entrepreneurs who have a comparative advantage is
conducting low budget experiments can play a critical role in developing such small-scale
complements, many of them unique to the less developed economy. For instance, large
companies may have an advantage in acquiring and implementing modern technologies
to build automobiles; however the widespread diffusion of the new automobiles requires
a host of new distribution and servicing outlets. Individual entrepreneurs may enjoy
advantages in starting these outlets.

Role of entrepreneur in economic development

Why is the country that has such a strong knowledge advantage lagging behind others in overall
economic development? While Indians the world over are recognized for the central role they are
playing in the IT revolution, they themselves do not even have uninterrupted power supply. It
seems our economic progress is more drived by it's endorsement by the stock market than by real
and distributed value it has created. The lack of entrepreneurial initiatives, the large debt burden
and the bureaucratic red tapism can be accorded as obstacles to the growth and development of
India. We understand reforms, we all understand liberalization –but what we need here is
discipline, considering the licensing and regulatory nightmares faced by potential Indian
Entrepreneurs. The challenges faced by an entrepreneur in the 21st century emphasize the need
for a spirit of risk taking and Initiative.
Entrepreneurship is not all about opportunism, the potential start up dreamers need to pick up an important
business problem right from the outset. The Millennium Indian Entrepreneur faces a challenge to create a
spirit in the form of continuous, careful but rapid experimentation and capturing opportunities that emerge. In
an economy as big as India there is always money to encourage an Entrepreneur.
Media Tycoon Ted Turner's jocular one liner," My son Is an Entrepreneur " That's what you are
called when you don't have a job, couldn't ring truer, in contrast, if you take the prevalent Indian
business scenario into perspective. consider any domain of business operation creating ripples
from airlines to organized retail to telecom to software, I would venture safely to state that the
big poppa pop on the block today is none other in most cases but a virtual unknown, someone
who would most likely have been pooh poohed before he or she swept the rug of complacence
from beneath the traditional players unsuspecting feet. The names are ubiquitous and the success
stories scripted are legends in their own right and by every right that could exist.
Take the undisputable king of calls, Sunil bharti mittal, whose company Bharti enterprises boasts
of a humongous market capitalization of Rs.727 Billion. He was an entrepreneur then and
remains now. Take the ingenious examples of Subhas Chandra, Exemplary kiran Mazumdar
Shaw, News channel czars, Pronoy Roy and Raghav Behl to the world icons of software Azim
30
 31

Premji and Narayan Murthy the galaxy of India's Entrepreneurial superstars is as drawn out as it
is illustrious. Not surprisingly that this years Forbes listing of the wealthiest has more billionaires
additions from India than any other nation, apart from the U.S. This spoke loudly of the role of
entrepreneurs in the economic Development of India. on an Economic tangent, if we were to
come remotely close to that very-Elusive 'Developed' nation status then poverty has to
necessarily bid adieu. Ten million jobs need to be in order by the year 2020 as estimated by CII
and NASSCOM. So, Entrepreneurial contribution towards this cause assumes critical importance.

Entrepreneurship was previously considered to be unknown quality of an

individual and hence it
was believed that entrepreneurs are born and not made. But recent studies
have proved that
Entrepreneurial activities can be planned and developed in an individual
through creation of
opportunities, extended Facilities, Allowing Incentives, Developing Competence
and group
sensitiveness in an individual for all those factors.

In the end According to Czarniawska Georges and wolft who chose the
language of theoretical
performance rather than Economics to distinguish among Management,
Leadership and
Entrepreneurship offers a very illuminating characterization of
entrepreneurship. According to
him management is the activity of introducing order by coordinating flows of
things and people
through collective action, Leadership is symbolic performance, expressing the
hope of control
over destiny and entrepreneurship is quite simple: "The making of Entire new
world".

WOMEN IN ECONOMIC LEADERSHIP:

Women economic empowerment is the policy level priority to bring the

previously neglected half
of Indian population in to the mainstream of economy. The Financial Express
was face to face
with a few women who are empowered and work for the development of other
women
entrepreneurs. The evident fact is that women are half of the total; their
contribution to the
economy is unrecognized in most cases. They are underrepresented in many
economic sectors.

31
 32

These discouraging figures turn momentarily pale when it is seen that, among
women a good
number are successful and have scaled to the peak where many men find it
hard to reach. They
are mentors for hundreds of thousands of women particularly in business
having the qualities like
hard work, devotion, sincerity, professionalism and significant managerial
capacity.

According to Laila Kabir a noted Entrepreneur:

"If women get the opportunity to develop as entrepreneurs, I think they can do
very well because

they very early in life learns to manage available resources and time
successfully"

And it is very true because women are far more better Managers as compared
to their Male
counterparts because they learn Management not in Schools but through real
life Experiences.
The biggest challenge that many literate and illiterate women in rural and
urban areas faces in
entering into small industry as entrepreneurs is due to the lack of knowledge
on product, Market
and Quality and its to be seen that some committee should be constituted and
the
recommendations which are placed should be implemented in phases to root
out the problems
mentioned above.

According to Noted women Entrepreneur Anu Aga C.E.O Thermax Industries

Ltd., Every

woman has the potential to be an Entrepreneur and it can be developed

through nurturing skills
and ideas. According to her women in business attain success for their
intelligence, efficiency,
commitment and Honesty. But she said that women in our country have to earn
an extra quality
to consider the society and it's norms and values for the sake of business and
added that although
it is an added burden on them but this consideration helps them to stand

32
 33

beside the men as

equals, however she feels that the big thirst for finance and knowing the
Markets created among
women need to be satisfied through taking necessary steps by all stakeholders
including Banks
and the Government.

In the end there is an urgent need for establishing a Women Development

Bank (WDB), a
separate and independent bank for women, in the rural and remote areas after
observing that a
large number of women fail to compete with the male entrepreneurs in
receiving bank loans and
assistance.

The government of India should acknowledge the importance of Entrepreneurs

and provide
assistance to groom entrepreneurs especially in the wake of liberalization
policy. At the same
time, the education system should be revamped so as to groom female
Entrepreneurs. Every
economy has recognized the need of having entrepreneurs. In fact in the U.S.
and most of the
developed countries, as much as 36% of the total working class are
entrepreneurs. Our future
rests squarely upon the entrepreneurial ventures founded by creative,
adventurous individuals.
People who seize opportunities, who harness and use resources in usual ways
to emerge into the
new era with a flourish.

CONCLUSION

Certainly in relation to enhancing entitlements of women through micro

enterprise development,
the government's say nothing, do nothing approach is indefensible in the light
of the feminization
of poverty. Fortunately, increasing recognition that the development of micro
enterprises can
make a significant difference in poverty alleviation augurs well for this."Micro
Enterprise is a
good social policy. It costs the government little or nothing. The enterprise
provides income that
33
 34

sustains families and helps finance investment and business growth.

Furthermore; support for the
development of enterprises will be a double positive. It will not only reduce the
need for
dependence on safety nets but also strengthen the entitlements and
capabilities of women.

As India gets closer to stepping into "Demographic Window" projected 2010

onwards-when it's human capital will comprise of an age mix favoring
economic growth –our vision of emerging as a superpower by 2020 will pivot
momentously on Entrepreneurial shoulders.

Knowledge capital reigns supreme, and the future is here and no… and how! If
the cutting edge
of business is about marketing new ideas and creating dramatic super Brands,
then make no
mistake his time, the enterprising will surely form the fuel of tomorrows
business and economy.

Role of Entrepreneur in Indian economy and developing economies

A system of entrepreneurship has evolved in the U. S. that has been quite
successful and
that may have considerable applicability to some other technologically
advanced
countries, such as Germany and Japan, which appear to need more economic
dynamism.
The system needs modification however, for underdeveloped economies like
India's. In
particular, I believe that the optimal role for individual entrepreneurs - and the
public
policies necessary to support this role - are somewhat different in India than in
an
advanced economy.
In advanced countries, most resources are already in or near their highest-
valued use.
Any increase in their productivity requires new technologies (broadly defined).
Without
new technologies, economic growth winds down and business life stagnates.
In the U.S., small businesses started by individual entrepreneurs and the
initiative of
large established companies play complementary roles in developing new
technologies.

34
 35

Startups have advantages in conducting low budget experiments on novel

ideas.
Although the results achieved by any single startup are not dramatic, their
collective
efforts transform novel yet primitive ideas into technologies of demonstrable
commercial
viability. And as these technologies appear ready for prime time, large
established
companies (or transitional companies seeking to become large) mobilize the
resources
required for these technologies' mass use. It's pointless to argue about whether
the
contributions of the small or the large companies are more important.
Technological
progress in advanced economies requires both types of contributions.*
In an under-developed economy, however, increases in living standards do not
require
U.S.-style technological innovation. Almost by definition, the actual productivity
of its
resources is below that in developed economies since the technologies in wide
use in it
are inferior to the technologies already introduced and in extensive use in
developed
economies. Rapid growth can be achieved merely through the introduction into
and
diffusion through the economy of such superior technologies. (A contrary view
is that
poor countries need to evolve "appropriate" technologies of their own to raise
their
productivity.) Moreover, the returns from investing in new technologies are
generally
lower than the returns from acquiring and implementing existing technologies
from the
developed countries. This is because existing technologies can be acquired at
lower costs
since the outlays required for their development have already been incurred.
And
although there is some uncertainty about the fit of transplanted technologies
with the
local environment, the basic technical and market risks are long gone.
Therefore
35
 36

resources devoted to innovation would actually impair growth by diverting

resources
from the more valuable tasks of adopting known-to-be superior technologies.
This has implications for the role of wealth-constrained individual
entrepreneurs in an
underdeveloped economy and their relationship to large organizations.
An ample supply of applicable, unexploited technologies from the developed
world will,
barring perverse policy interventions, supplant most of the demand that would
otherwise
have existed for innovations from indigenous entrepreneurs. Therefore, one of
the
important roles that entrepreneurs play in the U.S., namely, their role in early-
stage
innovation, has relatively little value in India.
Moreover, individual entrepreneurs do not have the capital and personnel
required to
acquire technologies from abroad.† Proven technologies usually require large-
scale
operation. New technologies often start-out in niche markets; their subsequent
application to mass use turns on the realization of significant economies of
scale, through
mass production techniques, for instance. So by the time many technologies
become
proven they are no longer suited for entrepreneurs' small startup businesses. In
addition,
the acquisition of proven technologies, even when it is just a matter of copying
or reverse
engineering, involves fixed costs. These costs are more easily amortized by a
large
enterprise. And, large, established organizations (including wealthy family
groups) have
natural advantages in mobilizing the resources required to operate a large-
scale
enterprise. So, much of the low-hanging fruit offered by proven overseas
technologies
lies outside the reach of wealth-constrained individual entrepreneurs.
This does not mean, though, that small entrepreneurs cannot contribute to
underdeveloped countries' progress in catching up. Even in the U.S.,
experimenting with
completely new technologies is only one of the contributions that individual
36
 37

entrepreneurs make to economic growth. The entrepreneurs' capacity to try

out highly
novel ideas has value not just in the very early stages of a new technology;
even after the
basic elements of a new technology have been proven, considerable trial and
error is
necessary for its widespread diffusion. Thus, low budget entrepreneurs played
the
preeminent role in the development of the personal computer between 1975
and 1980.
Yet, their contribution didn't end after IBM entered the market in 1981. In the
decades
that followed, entrepreneurs helped develop a host of complementary products
and
services that made the PC a ubiquitous artifact.
Similarly, the successful implementation of technologies that are 'new' to India
will
almost certainly require a host of new complementary goods and services to
make them
suitable for local use. Individual entrepreneurs who have a comparative
advantage is
conducting low budget experiments can play a critical role in developing such
small-scale
complements, many of them unique to the less developed economy. For
instance, large
companies may have an advantage in acquiring and implementing modern
technologies
to build automobiles; however the widespread diffusion of the new automobiles
requires
a host of new distribution and servicing outlets. Individual entrepreneurs may
enjoy
advantages in starting these outlets.

Creating Entrepreneurial Culture-

37
 38

Culture is a hot buzzword among corporate and entrepreneurial companies alike. It's what everyone
is striving for, what brings on the loyalty, what attracts and keeps the really awesome employees.
If done right, it seems so simple. Good corporate culture, in its purest sense, and at its most
successful, has the look and feel of something organic and uncontrived, something that just exists.
But alas, there's the rub, and at once the wonderful twist: Corporate culture cannot, does not and
never will exist "just because." Culture is a balancing act between many elements of a company and
requires careful execution at each level.
This is especially true for entrepreneurial companies, where what's going on is the building of a
business as well as a culture. Corporate culture must be led, nurtured, constantly monitored and
adjusted. Much like a "culture" in a petri dish, it requires that you combine the right ingredients, in
the right way, to ensure that what you grow is not an aberration of your intentions.
Laying the Groundwork
When I founded Net Daemons, my computer consulting company, I had very definite ideas of what
I wanted to provide for our future employees, a safe and comfortable environment, which enabled
people to learn, grow and, at the same time, focus on their day-to-day work.
From early on, I felt it was important to treat every employee with trust and respect. That meant
assuming automatically that each was an honest, hard-working, reliable and dependable individual.
Rather than requiring all employees show up at nine and leave at five, for example, I expected each
person to do the job assigned, and to apply the right amount of time and quality of skills toward the
accomplishment of each task.
While I wasn't aware, back then, that I was creating what is now considered "corporate culture," I
knew I was looking to create a place of employment where employees were at once valued for who
they were and what they brought to the table. This was critical for our business, which sold
knowledge and a system of collaboration between some 45 engineers providing network-
administration and internet-development solutions. If a team isn't in sync, you can't sell a team
approach, and you're no better than the single consultant.
What Makes a Culture Entrepreneurial?
As one of our engineers once put it, in an entrepreneurial culture, work is more than a job, it's a
lifestyle. Employees are more like a team than in most companies, and in some cases, we're even
like a family.
What also evolved was a set of rules for creating and maintaining NDA's petri dish. In creating your
own, consider these rules:
• Treat people with respect. This is a very simple premise, which threads through each and
every complicated issue that can arise within a company. Respect and trust provide the
necessary base for a vibrant and sustainable corporate culture.
• Help employees stay healthy. When employees get sick, they miss work, so it makes sense
to offer health insurance as a benefit. We covered 100% of employee health plans. I never
want an employee to experience a catastrophic illness and not be covered by insurance. We
also offered unlimited sick time. While I had seen this type of policy backfire elsewhere, it
nonetheless allowed people to be sick when they really were sick, and not feel obligated to
gobble up each "allotted" sick day. You may also want to add a wellness allowance for
health-club membership.
• Open doors to communication. Create an environment where people can interact with each
other, support each other and recognize each other's efforts and achievements. Provide
positive rewards for positive behavior. Share information, so that employees are aware of
38
 39

the direction of the company and are involved in it. Use all-hands meetings for financial and
operational information, team-building and social events. Offer incentive programs to
reward effort and improve quality of life.
• Build camaraderie. Make time for people to get to know each other and the company. We
held an annual off-site meeting to build team spirit and discuss where the company was
going. At such events you can also distribute and share your business plan and discuss issues
and ideas raised by your strategies.
Maintaining Entrepreneurial Culture
Once you have healthy, trusted and informed employees, don't let the culture that's evolving just be.
It needs to be watched so that it grows as you intended. The trick is standing back, but not too far
back. In maintaining your culture, consider these rules.
• Let the team build itself. Within that safe, comfortable, open environment, let employees
grow together without being made to.
• Participate without controlling. Let the culture thrive, without your either meddling with it
or ignoring it.
• Don't forget the little things. Culture is made up of many small actions that, when put
together, create something larger than the sum of the parts. There are many things a CEO
can do to make employees feel a part of the company. Some are just common courtesies:
hallway conversations, saying "hello" in the morning, opening doors, asking after people's
families and partners. Others are little extras, such as flowers to say thank you and happy-
birthday e-mail messages. Eating lunch with employees, helping spouses find jobs and
participating in team events show that you, the CEO, are involved with your employees.
Treating employees with respect helps enable them to do their jobs to the best of their abilities. If
you challenge people to raise their bars, provide fun activities, keep people informed and humanize
your management, you get culture. From these basics, you will grow in your petri dish a strong,
healthy culture that will allow you, your company and your employees to flourish.

Entrepreneurial Culture - Six Constituents of an Entrepreneurial

Culture:
1. The most effective way to change an existing organizational culture is by
creating individual entrepreneurial units on the edge of organizational
structures.
2. In order to transform existing cultures, we must first begin with the mindset
of its people. By identifying their individual meanings, beliefs and values and
combining these with their interests, strengths and talents, we can begin to
align the person's individual purpose with the leader's compelling vision.
3. The entrepreneurial vision must be powerful enough not only to sustain this
transformation, but must also inspire confidence and trust by allowing each of
these units enough freedom and flexibility in order to develop, grow and
compete in today's complex, chaotic and rapidly-changing global environment.
4. As individual profit centres, each unit provides opportunities for more
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effective resource allocation and a stronger customer focus.

5. Employees think and act as entrepreneurs, leading to a greater degree of
involvement and freedom to create their individualized networks.
6. As the number of these entrepreneurial units increases, more leaders are
needed to drive these enterprises. A strong entrepreneurial culture creates
leaders from within.
Culture is a hot buzzword among corporate and entrepreneurial companies
alike. It's what everyone is striving for, what brings on the loyalty, what attracts
and keeps the really awesome employees.
If done right, it seems so simple. Good corporate culture, in its purest sense,
and at its most successful, has the look and feel of something organic and
uncontrived, something that just exists. But alas, there's the rub, and at once
the wonderful twist: Corporate culture cannot, does not and never will exist
"just because." Culture is a balancing act between many elements of a
company and requires careful execution at each level.
This is especially true for entrepreneurial companies, where what's going on is
the building of a business as well as a culture. Corporate culture must be led,
nurtured, constantly monitored and adjusted. Much like a "culture" in a petri
dish, it requires that you combine the right ingredients, in the right way, to
ensure that what you grow is not an aberration of your intentions.
Laying the Groundwork
When I founded Net Daemons, my computer consulting company, I had very
definite ideas of what I wanted to provide for our future employees, a safe and
comfortable environment, which enabled people to learn, grow and, at the
same time, focus on their day-to-day work.
From early on, I felt it was important to treat every employee with trust and
respect. That meant assuming automatically that each was an honest, hard-
working, reliable and dependable individual. Rather than requiring all
employees show up at nine and leave at five, for example, I expected each
person to do the job assigned, and to apply the right amount of time and
quality of skills toward the accomplishment of each task.

What Makes a Culture Entrepreneurial -

As one of our engineers once put it, in an entrepreneurial culture, work is more
than a job, it's a lifestyle. Employees are more like a team than in most
companies, and in some cases, we're even like a family.
What also evolved was a set of rules for creating and maintaining NDA's petri
dish. In creating your own, consider these rules:
• Treat people with respect. This is a very simple premise, which threads
through each and every complicated issue that can arise within a company.
Respect and trust provide the necessary base for a vibrant and sustainable

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corporate culture.
• Help employees stay healthy. When employees get sick, they miss work, so it
makes sense to offer health insurance as a benefit. We covered 100% of
employee health plans. I never want an employee to experience a catastrophic
illness and not be covered by insurance. We also offered unlimited sick time.
While I had seen this type of policy backfire elsewhere, it nonetheless allowed
people to be sick when they really were sick, and not feel obligated to gobble
up each "allotted" sick day. You may also want to add a wellness allowance for
health-club membership.
• Open doors to communication. Create an environment where people can
interact with each other, support each other and recognize each other's efforts
and achievements. Provide positive rewards for positive behavior. Share
information, so that employees are aware of the direction of the company and
are involved in it. Use all-hands meetings for financial and operational
information, team-building and social events. Offer incentive programs to
reward effort and improve quality of life.
• Build camaraderie. Make time for people to get to know each other and the
company. We held an annual off-site meeting to build team spirit and discuss
where the company was going. At such events you can also distribute and
share your business plan and discuss issues and ideas raised by your
strategies.
Maintaining Entrepreneurial Culture
Once you have healthy, trusted and informed employees, don't let the culture
that's evolving just be. It needs to be watched so that it grows as you intended.
The trick is standing back, but not too far back. In maintaining your culture,
consider these rules.
• Let the team build itself. Within that safe, comfortable, open environment, let
employees grow together without being made to.
• Participate without controlling. Let the culture thrive, without your either
meddling with it or ignoring it.
• Don't forget the little things. Culture is made up of many small actions that,
when put together, create something larger than the sum of the parts. There
are many things a CEO can do to make employees feel a part of the company.
Some are just common courtesies: hallway conversations, saying "hello" in the
morning, opening doors, asking after people's families and partners. Others are
little extras, such as flowers to say thank you and happy-birthday e-mail
messages

Entrepreneurial attitudes and culture

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Increase awareness of entrepreneurial opportunities.

Special promotion activities and promotional material should be developed with the aim of
increasing awareness of the opportunities for new business start-ups amongst all segments of
the population. Regions and localities should be innovative in initiating their own promotion
activities.
Improve the image of places. Changing the entrepreneurial culture means changing the image
of a place with both internal and external populations. If people do not believe that a place is
attractive to live in, and that it allows for being entrepreneurial and innovative, then they will
not set up businesses, or will set up or operate their businesses in more attractive places.
Campaigns should therefore be created to generate trust in the endogenous strengths and in
the future of places. In strengthening their entrepreneurial image places should promote key
specific strengths as ‘magnets of attraction’.
Intensify enterprise education and awareness campaigns.
It is important that entrepreneurship is not seen as a cure for unemployment but rather as a
means to dynamic economic development. In the long run, promoting enterprise education
throughout the education system up to university level increases entrepreneurial aspirations,
attitudes and behaviour in the long run. Education from an early age should promote creativity
and empowerment as well as provide children and youth with a realistic picture of
entrepreneurship as a viable, also temporary, alternative to paid employment that in the future
will be more a blend of dependent and self-employment.
Create identifiable role models and champions.
Regional success stories should be identified and promoted in different media (TV, radio,
newspapers, magazines, internet), in different forms (e.g. awards, success stories), at
different occasions (e.g. conferences, fairs, events) and by different public and private actors
(e.g. local government, chambers, business associations, community organisations, etc.). It is
important to demonstrate that entrepreneurship is about taking manageable risks and
sometimes even about failing, but however it is worth trying and taking the risk. Practical real
life stories and happenings provide people with better understanding of what it is like to be an
entrepreneur.
Establish mentor and patron panels.
The availability of a panel of retired business people to counsel new and expanding companies
has been an important feature of working with, and supporting SMEs, in other OECD countries.
This type of mentoring service is relevant to both micro and larger SMEs, and at start-up and
later stages of development in the life cycles of companies.
Incentives and support for business succession.
In light of the still limited interest in business succession, compared to start-up activities, more
incentives and support structures should be developed.The inclusion of highly-skilled
employees, with great potential for entrepreneurial activities, should be considered as a target
group for training programmes in business succession.
Create incentives for SMEs to take apprentices.
Apprenticeships assist young people to gain work experience and provide SMEs with
possibilities to test young workers and their capabilities and train them according to company
needs. Entrepreneurship is not simply about business start-up, but, increasingly employability
and entrepreneurship have become an indivisible pair. It is important to continue initiatives
that can raise awareness of skills development needs and can create incentives for SME to take
apprenticeships.
Enhance intrapreneurship.
The generation of intrapreneurial attitudes amongst company managers and staff is an
important ingredient in the process of raising a SME's innovation potential and readiness.
Increasing responsibility, engagement and the recognition of staff is linked to processes of
cultural and organisational changes with companies.

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ENTREPRENEURIAL CULTURE-
Entrepreneurship is not an inborn skill, it is a product of the environment. It involves a complex of
economic and social behaviour. To be successful, an entrepreneur has to remain dynamic and
responsible to the whole environment. Entrepreneurship can hardly survive under any given
circumstances. It can flourish only under the right environment. It is a part of the total system. The
social values, culture, government policies, political system, technology, economic conditions,
customs, laws, etc. influence the growth of entrepreneurship.
In fact, the entrepreneurship cannot be kept aloof from the changing social values, ideologies, new
emerging aspirations, environmental pressures, religious beliefs, consumer wants and society needs
etc. Business is a system made up of certain environmental factors which require the entrepreneur to
adopt a dynamic attitude and a new strategy of their own.
Entrepreneurial culture implies a set of values, norms and traits that are conducive to the growth of
entrepreneurship.
Cultural values deeply affect entrepreneurship and the level of economic development – Structural
conditions make development possible – cultural factors determine whether the possibility becomes
an actuality.
Culture has everything to do with the entrepreneurial process and focuses on the discovery and
interpretation of opportunities, neglected by others. No entrepreneur can overlook the country’s
cultural heritage and values if he wants to survive and progress. He needs to function on the basis of
social expectations, desires and goals. The entrepreneur has to respect the human society, its
cultural values and traditions.
Awareness and understanding of the cultural environment of business maybe useful to the
entrepreneur in several ways:
i) To better understand the behaviour and conduct of people with regard to entrepreneurship.
ii) To predict behaviour and determine how people will act in a certain situation as regards to
entrepreneurship.
iii) It develops the sensitivity of the entrepreneur.
iv) It facilitates change of the entrepreneur.
Understanding entrepreneurial culture is important, not only to the theoretical understanding of
entrepreneurship, but also to entrepreneurship as a practical enterprise, which can provide new and
fresh ideas of entrepreneurship, by looking at innovative business behaviour in other times, in other
societies and in other cultures – and also by looking at entrepreneurship from novel angles and
much wider perspective.
Culture is of great importance to entrepreneurship, because it determines the ethos of people. It
trains people along particular lines. It creates distinctions. It conveys a sense of identity. It enhances
social system stability. It creates people, enterprising men and risk bearers. It determines goods and
services. The understanding of culture enables the entrepreneur to skillfully manipulate the cultural
codes of his society, balancing between the permissible and the profane, tugging moral codes into a
new conformation.
The entrepreneur’s ability to “read” opportunities cannot be due to isolation or separateness, but is
rather due to a higher degree of sensitivity to what others are looking for. And it is culture that gives
pre-direction to the entrepreneur’s vision, enabling him to read certain things. They can pick up the
sense of where their fellows in the culture stand, what values they adhere to, what purposes they
pursue, what they consider beautiful and what they deem profane.

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The entrepreneur’s ability to move ahead with confidence, his struggle to turn setbacks into
opportunities, to advance and survive in the business world is the knowledge and instinct that comes
from experience gathered in a particular cultural milieu.
Sociologists like Max Weber argue that entrepreneurship is most likely to emerge under a specific
social culture. According to them, social sanctions, cultural values and role expectations are
responsible for the emergence of entrepreneurship. For many researchers, modern entrepreneurship
is a distinctly new variant of a timeless species created and sustained by culture and creative of it at
the same time.
Some cultures are enormously supportive of entrepreneurship – indeed to the point where
entrepreneurship develops its own culture, such as in Hong Kong. Others (such as Communist
Countries) regard the entrepreneurial way of life with suspicion. The differences go a long way
towards explaining why some societies are vibrant and progressive, while others stagnate.
Religion/ caste and family influences greatly determine entrepreneurial culture. Some religions are
found to be conducive to entrepreneurship, while others inhibit entrepreneurship. Religious beliefs
produce intensive exertion in occupational pursuits, the systematic ordering of means to an end and
the accumulation of assets. It is these beliefs and the caste system that are found to influence the
propensity to become an entrepreneur.
Religion often determines what business one stays out of. In India, it is religiosity that keeps many
people in business and often determines what business one stays out of. The mighty Birlas chose to
stay out of the hotel business because of the necessity to consider serving non-vegetarian food.
Religion based norms become easy and convenient reference points for designing one’s course of
actions.
Family too plays an important role in shaping entrepreneurial instincts. Family background, simply
familiarity with a business environment, growing from “table talk” at home is the key to increasing
the probability that an offspring will later become an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs are very much in
terms with the ‘conversations’ going on around him. Brought up in a family, where commercial
activity is part of the daily household routine, it becomes a conscious battle for the entrepreneur to
create viable business.
The characteristics of the family enterprises – commitment, continuity, putting a face to the
company and close interaction between the family and the business – may have a strong impact on
the strategic choices in the business.
Family background of business-family values, business conversations as a part of the daily
household routine, family support and encouragement, has given these young entrepreneurs, the
drive, the desire, and the motivation to create their own viable business unit. On the other hand,
successful family business that have been forced on in heritage, has curbed the development of
independent, innovative ventures.
Family enterprises also play a major role in regional and local economics – often act as the engines
of their economic development as they have a positive attitude towards growth, and their growth is
usually more cost efficient than of other firms. The owners that put a face to their family enterprises
are committed to developing their firms as well as to their continuity.
To conclude, the influence of human institutions such as norms, values, morals, family ties and
support – in other words – culture- form the framework within which individuals can pursue
entrepreneurial opportunities.

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