Entrepreneur

What we see around is the result of perspiration and determination of countless entrepreneurs. Possibly we would have still been in the Ice-age if entrepreneurship would not have been around.

Entrepreneur can be defined as a person who decides to convert his / her dreams into reality. Unless there is precedence, dreams exist only in his / her mind or thoughts and have vivid shapes. Person can only describe about them.

Before start of an organisation journey, it’s only the belief of an Entrepreneur that milestones will be achieved someday and that too with certainty, which makes him / her take a single step on regular basis. Sometimes, surroundings term him / her as lunatic depending upon how big / vague the dream is. Let’s accept that we want to see the things in distance, time and form to believe that they exist.

They are mad about their dreams. They see nothing except their dreams, they breath their dreams, they sleep with their dreams. In nutshell, they have their lives dependent on their dreams.

They have marvellous conviction & belief. Irrespective of results not being achieved, they remain positive; they refuse to accept the beliefs given by others that they are failures. They consider every failure as new learnings / experience to avoid the same in future.

Thomas Edison was both hearing impaired and fidgety. He only lasted three months in school where his teachers said he was “too stupid to learn anything.” He eventually was home schooled by his mom. In talking about his invention of the light bulb, he said:

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that do not work.” – Thomas Edison

Read the article “Failing Forward: 7 Stories of Success Through Failure” by Nick Horton and “How Failure Taught Edison to Repeatedly Innovate” by Nathan Furr

He / she becomes hero of the society when things become visible, which change the way we have been looking for years till now.

Unless the entrepreneur is determined, the chances are that he / she is termed as a failure. It’s a tough call for any entrepreneur not to follow a set path and create his / her new untraveled path.

Entrepreneurship in any form requires Full Salute for the spirit, risks, beliefs, etc.

Single-person entrepreneur

• Wrong perception that entrepreneur is only that person who comes in large car with well-fitted suit; living in large bungalow; handling large organisations with large manpower; large customer-base; earning handsome profits, etc. →  Entrepreneur can be a single person running organisation
• Anybody who takes risk; markets his / her products or services; builds the organisation; self-motivates on regular basis; learns new skills is an entrepreneur
• Plumber or electrician is also an entrepreneur
• Even salaried-person is an entrepreneur in limited way (unless new skills learnt → his / her services may not be valued by the employer)

Deliverables (i.e. expectations from the Entrepreneur or his / her roles)

• Torch-bearer
  • He moves the entire team → can be visualised as captain of the ship guiding sailors and direction of the ship → he guides how to sail through storms
  • He takes the entire team along

• Motivator
  • Motivates the entire organisation to deliver the best
  • Motivates to keep the entire team together in times of crisis.

• Believer in Excellence
  • He / she is a perfectionist
  • Explores new ways to be better

• Positivity
  • He looks the positive in negative situations
  • He believes in God strongly and believes that negative situations are only learning times

• Maximum customer-value
  • He / she knows that customer is God and King
  • Customer only gives the money which results into profit
  • Customer needs to be pampered to get repeat purchase and referrals
  • Maximum value to be given to customers some-how

• Quick organiser
  • Organises the resources quickly
  • Knows that resource constraint can lead to organisation failure

• Result-oriented
  • Believer in results and not issues / problems
  • Tasks to be given logical conclusion in an ethical way without using unfair means

• Ethics
  • Demonstrates ethical way of realising the mission of the organisation
  • Unethical way can give only short-term gains; long-term → failure only
  • Team practises ethics when the leader practises the same

• Fair dealing
  • Fair dealing not only with customers but with manpower also
  • Fair dealing in job promotions, incentives, dispute resolutions, etc. → results in stronger manpower

• Feedback system / transparency
  • Responsibility of entrepreneur to institutionalise the system of transparency, accepting feedbacks, complaints and suggestions
  • Ensuring time-bound resolution of feedbacks, complaints and suggestions → results in stronger organisation

• Social Responsibility
  • Organisation exists in the society from where it earns the profit
  • Entrepreneur to ensure to give back to society by owning responsibility

Important developments in the Entrepreneurship

• Development of internet providing innumerable information about the best practices followed by Leaders in the industry → following them
• Development of video contents (youtube, etc.) giving enormous visual contents of “how to do?”→ product development faster
• Market research information availability alongwith comparative analysis to venture into new markets or to launch new products
• Availability of webinars (i.e. web seminars), web tutorials, etc. to learn new skills
• Private equity (PE) investors involving actively alongwith entrepreneur and teaching them best practices

Traditional / Normal ways of Entrepreneurship

• Business family passing entrepreneur skills to next generations
• Entrepreneur graduating from premium management colleges and learning the skills
• Senior management learning from entrepreneurs and taking plunge in independent entrepreneurship

Challenges with Entrepreneurship

• Keep floating the organisation with sufficient cash-inflows to take care of cash-outflows
• Motivating the entire manpower to practise Excellence (each person has personal goals of growth, which need to be aligned with Organisation goals)
• Managing the entire functions / departments working efficiently
• Nurturing enough leaders to manage growth / expansion
• Retaining good manpower and weeding out inefficiencies

Some of the Process Implementation for effective Entrepreneurship

• Process checklist to build-up which consist of periodical checking / review of various functions / departments for:
  • Communicating / reiterating organisation’s mission statement
  • Ensuring maximum customer’s value
  • Identifying process blocks / silos in the organisation and removing them.
  • Analysing exceptions in all functions / departments of what’s not working in the organisation
  • Gemba-walks (i.e. visiting the workplace with a purpose to locate what’s not working, what requires improvement, etc.)
  • Processes with surprise elements in all the functions to bring accountability
• Control on receivables since receivables are liquid cash and long outstanding receivable could be result of poor quality
• Monitor complaints, feedbacks and suggestions and time-bound solutions
• Control on Inventory [input-output ratio of raw material & finished products; just-in-time inventory (JIT); physical verification reports for variance]
• Reducing raw material conversion time into inventory
• Updating the latest product evolutions in the industry to cut down product pricing and introducing new products