Entrepreneurship Issues - Case Study Example

Entrepreneurship Name: Tutor: Course: Date: Introduction Entrepreneurs are people considered to be having certain quality such as risk taking, money management skills, and self-confidence and flexible. While people develop entrepreneurial abilities at different stages in life, some are gained through experience such as perseverance, obsession and passion. Some qualities are developed from parents, business leaders, politicians and friends. In this essay, I mention two people with entrepreneurship qualities that resemble my own. Specifically, I develop a brief profile of my father and my high school English teacher and how their attributes and qualities seen as entrepreneurial mirror my own. I also undertook Entrepreneurial Aptitude Test (TAI) and compared the results with the mentioned persons above. The factors considered in the TAI test were drawn from the analysis done by Cubico et al. (2010) and were used to determine the score of entrepreneurial qualities. I explained the rationale behind this selection and discussed why the two people are worth being recognized as entrepreneurs. Finally, I critically reflected on the learning modules and outlined some of the achievements of undertaking this assignment on entrepreneurship. Brief profile of entrepreneurs I resemble Two people with entrepreneurial qualities and spirit that resembles me are my father and my high school English teacher. To start with, my father is encouraging and positive in many occasions. He likes demonstrating his ideas and numerical skills to his children and neighbors confidently. When I could not perform well at school, he kept pushing me to achieve my goals despite the difficulties I had in grasping some subjects. I liked his attitude of staying on course to his activities and was not swayed easily. Just like my father, I am confident in seeing that I deliver a project through to the end. I am not easily discouraged and feel comfortable doing something that can allow me to share skills and ideas with others. I also take up projects with great enthusiasm and optimism and no matter the challenges I face during implementation, I ensure that I remain committed to its cause. On the other hand, my high school English teacher was very understanding, embraced teamwork, thought of several alternatives to a problem, stimulated his students to see things differently and respect others. For example, when there were changes in the school timetable, he took time to explain to us and helped us to have a different dimension of issues affecting our learning. He was also a great team player who involved all of us into a conversation and debate to issues affecting our bonding during class work. I too, like my teacher am receptive to other people’s ideas, motivated to see things differently, disciplined in accomplishing tasks and express my opinions openly during group work. I also get energized by listening and watching stories of success from books and other motivational materials. Choice of persons classed as entrepreneurs Entrepreneurship is the process and mindset of developing and creating economic activities through a blend innovation, creativity and risk-taking within an existing or new organization (European Commission, 2003, p.6). Entrepreneurs have certain attitudes and qualities that help them see and undertake a given enterprise to completion (Carsrud & Brännback, 2009). Some of these qualities include solidarity and perseverance, responsibility, assiduity, team spirit, independence, self-confidence, initiative, leadership and creativity. According to Cubico et al. (2010), the entrepreneurial aptitude test (TAI) is an instrument that measures and detects psychological characteristics that differentiate entrepreneurs from non-entrepreneurs such as values, motivations, attitudes, personality traits and aptitudes. The authors describe entrepreneurial potential of individuals based on eight factors; autonomy, flexibility, innovation, need for self-empowerment, need for achievement, adaptability, leadership and goal orientation. Favretto et al. (2003) observes that TAI now describes eight factors regarding the entrepreneurial potential of individuals. These factors were collapsed from an earlier ‘paper and pencil test’ of 75 items that comprised of multiple choice responses (Sartori & Passioni, 2007). To understand my entrepreneurial potential, I undertook the TAI test based on the eight factors suggested by Cubico et al. (2010). The score for each factor were as follows; goal orientation (75), leadership (70), adaptability (66), need for achievement (73), need for empowerment (63), innovation (69), flexibility (73) and autonomy (75). The mean score for the TAI test I took was 70.5. I scored highly on autonomy, flexibility, need for achievement and goal orientation. Generally, the average score was high implying that I had most of the qualities required of an entrepreneur. Favretto et al. (2003) created TAI test in 1990s as an instrument to measure entrepreneurial aptitude. TAI tests allow me to reflect on work and life and help me to understand my personality. Cubico et al. (2008) showed that there was no difference in aptitude test score between entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs. The authors then decided to differentiate the two by looking at the frequency of use of private financing and ease of receiving permits. For example, entrepreneurs are motivated to realize new ideas than non-entrepreneurs and have little enthusiasm to conciliate work and family. Conversely, they both see the importance of personal achievement, and desire to escape monotony, and the desire to take up tasks. The results show that I not only desire for own independent space to make choices and decisions but also harbor a tendency to reorient my goals depending on the external situation. I yearn for social affirmation, success, fame and respect from others but most importantly, I am geared towards goal orientation. This means that I have the tendency to be innovative or creative, highly determined to achieve set goals and positively perceive myself as capable of handling work situations. I resemble him in various ways such as setting goals at work and ensuring that I realize them at all costs. I am also flexible towards issues that come midway and attempt as much as possible to stay on course. For example, I create some time for family vacations where I feel that my siblings require my attention and company. I can say that my father is a leader, goal oriented, determined and flexible in his engagements which qualifies him to be called an entrepreneur. My father can be termed as an entrepreneur because he has the aptitudes toward leadership and management. According to Cubico et al. (2010), people with higher score in leadership and the need for achievement are suitable candidates to be termed as entrepreneurs. For example, my father preferred talking to each one of us individually to understand our weaknesses and not resorting to blanket condemnation. He has set goals in which he desired each one of us to attain such as passing examinations and he stayed with this goal for a long time until we got to the university. Alternatively, my English teacher preferred teamwork, flexibility, respect, understanding and commitment to achieve results. I can say that my teacher is an entrepreneur based on some of the eight factors of Cubico et al. (2010). The qualities mentioned above aligned with the factors such as need for achievement, flexibility, adaptability and innovation. I resemble my teacher in various ways. First, he likes teamwork which I also envy at work. He likes revising goals based on challenges that arose and whether the same goals can be achieved. At the workplace, I like revise work targets at the end of the year and try as much to understand why the objectives were not met as stated at the beginning of the year. Second, my teacher respected all of us as his students at did not look down upon weak students. Now working as a sales manager at an IT company, I have learned to respect my junior staff and treat them equally with respect. Third, my teacher used to encourage us to be creative and device new ways of learning grammar, comprehension and verbal speeches. Just like my teacher, I stimulate my staff to be innovative or devise new ways of increasing sales performance and widening the market reach for software products. Finally, my teacher had a solid commitment towards our achievement. I remember he could go out of his way to tutor us in the evening where there was time to ensure that all of us were on an equal footing when it comes to taking examinations. Just like my teacher, I am committed to work and achievement of results. Indeed, higher entrepreneurial aptitude is a recipe for success (Cubico et al., 2010). For example, in the previous year, our company sold 1200 software products to various companies and individuals and was awarded with the best selling company award. I think my teacher has entrepreneurship qualities that resemble my own. Critique for selection and the need to recognize entrepreneurs I selected my father and my English teacher for recognition as entrepreneurs because I believe they are my role models in the journey to entrepreneurship. Based on the aptitude test results and my current position in employment, I can affirm that the two individuals are crucial in my career development and growth. They have made me to avoid errors and disappointments and helped me to make mature choices on employment. Although I am not self-employed to actualize most of the traits of the entrepreneurs, think I have fewer difficulties in building relationships with the environment and creating enterprises. However, I think the entrepreneurial aptitude test seem to concentrate on qualities of people who want to excel in independent enterprises and less on public institutions. Aspiring entrepreneurs have a strong motivation to escape monotony but are less able to manage bureaucratic relationships (Cubico et al., 2008). Fritsch and Mueller (2004) argue that entrepreneurs follow a path towards economic and personal development by not only contributing to job growth and creation but also triggering personal potential. This personal potential in terms of innovativeness, risk-taking tendencies, aptitude and motivations have has a relationship with contextual elements such as institutional support, family characteristics and expectations (Baum et al., 2007). I can term my selection of the two persons as a bit biased because they were selected on account of past experience and not current learning. I too did not consider new knowledge and documented stories of famous entrepreneurs in business that have steered their enterprises to success. Entrepreneurial potential as described by Cubico et al. (2010) is more about entrepreneurial aptitude test' expanded into eight factors. The test shows acceptable metric characteristics with high levels of internal consistency reliability and validity such as criterion-related, construct, content and face. Having sufficient criteria reliability and acceptable metric characteristics, the entrepreneurial aptitude test is sufficient enough to explain my entrepreneurial platform and career development (Messick, 2008). I believe that TAI and its specific items are sufficient to be used in any analysis that highlights discriminants for both non-entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs. Fortunately, I wish that my father and teacher be recognized as entrepreneurs because they acted as ‘experts’ and ‘counselors’ in career guidance to my professional career choices. I feel that they demonstrated qualities that mirror those of entrepreneurship and were often seen as ‘hard people to work with’. They honed my experiences towards entrepreneurial culture and harnessed my growth into entrepreneurial competencies. I feel that the spawned entrepreneurial ideas such as self-confidence, initiative, and team spirit, resourcefulness and determination. My father demonstrated constancy in what he undertook until completion while my teacher preferred acting with others to achieve objectives. Both individuals shared qualities such as self-confidence, motivation and effort to ensure that those in their ‘flock’ had positive perception of themselves and got committed to their goals. I think my teacher and my father understood our strengths and weaknesses and made it possible for use to develop skills and competencies, learn from past experiences and improve the effectiveness and quality of our actions. On the contrary, I think the two individuals, to some extent, may not have fitted the list of entrepreneurs because they lacked entrepreneurial experience that needed to be awakened. I believe they did not give much thought to me as a child and a student to fulfill many dreams of my own. They did not start up or completed a business project that can now be claimed to be a successful enterprise. Currently, they are not stimulated by success in a business venture but are happy that the dreams of those they helped mold has come true. However, they did not possess the entrepreneurial qualities sufficient to create start ups but had the qualities and attributes to develop entrepreneurs in others. They were not daring enough to take calculated risks as I do but they demonstrated persistence to ensure that I remained optimistic, flexible and independent. I feel that they showed leadership, energy and long-term commitment to my goals. They deserve to be recognized as entrepreneurs because they were passionate, devoted and full of energy in guiding and growing us towards being future leaders in the business world. Although they had less entrepreneurial experience, they helped me to take action and succeed. Critical reflection I think that this learning module on entrepreneurship has been helpful in various ways. First, I found it interesting and motivating as I found out the true meaning of being an entrepreneur. This learning activity demonstrated to me that I possess some attributes and qualities of an entrepreneur that I never knew I had. I enjoyed this activity since it was a confirmation to me that I have an entrepreneurial side which was partly shaped by my father and my English teacher. I learned a lot about my entrepreneurial qualities and myself which means that this activity was interesting and useful. Though I never thought I did, I discovered a number of entrepreneurial qualities in me. I learned that there are people who devote countless hours to work, accomplish great things, show passion and have boundless energy to their work. Although they may not have made it as entrepreneurs, they are enterprising. I found out that such people are within us in the neighborhoods, schools, municipalities, communities and families. I learned that people with strong entrepreneurial profile have the capacity to influence others and become role models to stronger entrepreneurs. I believe that entrepreneurship is a topic that requires in-depth studies since it helps each one of us to take action and succeed. My teacher taught me to succeed in school but my father helped me to discover and harness the best in me. I have discovered the dynamics and the essential nature of the entrepreneurship spirit. I have learned though this module that one person may not possess all the qualities required of an entrepreneur. Yet, the onus remains that one needs to be innovative and creative to survive in a competitive world. Entrepreneurs risk their capital to make the most out of their investment and will do everything in their power to take action and succeed (Cuervo, 2005). This implies that personal risk dictate the amount of energy we expend on a project. I feel that this learning activity has given me an opportunity to take stock of my strengths and weaknesses and evaluate whether my dreams or goals are being achieved. I believe one needs that drive and passion to succeed despite the obstacles. These require repeated and prolonged efforts and more intense self-determination to accomplish a given task. I believe that no matter the goal, I possess the ability to work with a specific intention. At work, I can now complete more arduous tasks and complex problems because of career guidance and role modeling from people I know at a personal level. I think that one needs to mobilize resources to meet challenges and overcome obstacles. I have learned that entrepreneurs possess most of these eight factors; autonomy, flexibility, innovation, need for self-empowerment, need for achievement, adaptability, leadership and goal orientation. I learned that an entrepreneur does not need to have all the qualities but should posses as significant number of them to be termed as entrepreneurs. I believe that I achieved the learning outcomes by providing a brief profile of the two people I resemble in terms of entrepreneurship attributes and qualities; my father and my English teacher. I think that they qualify to called entrepreneurs since they posses more than half of the factors mentioned by Cubico et al. (2010). I now need to work on my solidarity and team spirit since these qualities will enable me to carry out projects at my workplace more efficiently. I see the benefit of teamwork and I need to trust others to do the tasks assigned. I think that I have been freely sharing ideas with others and listening to what others also have to give. I believe that listening is one aspect of knowing what others have to offer in terms of skills, knowledge and expertise. I think team work will reward me very greatly even if it may mean extra work. Conclusion This essay identified two people whom their qualities are entrepreneurial and resemble my own. Based on TAI test on eight factors as suggested by Cubico et al. (2010), I chose my father and my high school English teacher as potential to be regarded as entrepreneurs. The qualities mentioned by these authors are; autonomy, flexibility, innovation, need for self-empowerment, need for achievement, adaptability, leadership and goal orientation First, my father is determined, motivated and self-confident. He is also a leader, goal oriented, determined and flexible in his engagements which qualifies him to be called an entrepreneur. On the other hand, my school teacher is understanding, embraces teamwork, thinks of several alternatives to a problem, and motivated. Just like my father and teacher, I am motivated, determined, disciplined, creative, and likes working in a team. I believe that my father and teacher can be classed as entrepreneurs because they embody most of the traits and qualities mentioned by the authors. Although the selection were not based on money management and business success, they should be recognized as entrepreneurs because they have the determination to achieve set goals, are motivated, prefers teamwork and looks into the long-term achievement. I believe that by writing this essay on entrepreneurship, I have achieved a lot in fulfilling the module learning outcomes in discovering what qualities and attributes entrepreneurs have. Reference list Baum, JR Frese, M & Baron, R 2007, The Psychology of Entrepreneurship, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: Mahawah, NJ. Carsrud, AL & Brännback, M 2009, Understanding the Entrepreneurial Mind. Opening the Black Box, Springer, New York. Cubico, S Bortolani, E Cubico, A & Favretto, G 2008, Entrepreneurial choice: aptitudes, motivations and behavior’, Proceeding of the World Meeting 2008 of IAREP -The International Association for Research in Economic Psychology and SABE - The Society for Advancement of Behavioral Economics, 3-6 September, Luiss University Press, Roma, Italy. Cubico, S Bortolani, E Favretto, G & Sartori, R 2010, Describing the entrepreneurial profile: The entrepreneurial aptitude test (TAI), International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small business, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 424-432. Cuervo, A 2005, Individual and Environmental Determinants of Entrepreneurship, International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 293-311. European Commission, 2003, Green Paper: Entrepreneurship in Europe, COM (2003) 27 Final, Brussels, 21st January, 2003. Fritsch, M & Mueller, P 2004, Effects of new business formation on regional development over time, Regional Studies, Vol. 38, No. 8, pp.961-975. Messick, S 2008, Test validity and the ethics of assessment, In Bersoff, D.N. (Ed.): Ethical Conflicts in Psychology, pp.273-275, American Psychological Association, Washington DC. Sartori, R & Pasini, M 2007, Quality and quantity in test validity: how can we be sure that psychological tests measure what they have to?, Quality and Quantity, International Journal of Methodology, Vol. 41, No. 3, pp.359-374. Read More