The Definition of Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurial Skills
Entrepreneurship is known as independent, related to risk activity that aims to systematically gain profit from property utilization, goods realization, rendering services, and order completion. Costin et al. (2018) define entrepreneurship as the ability of an individual to turn ideas into action; it is a key competence that helps people improve their creativity and self-confidence in diverse spheres. The capability to effectively perform such functions is related to the presence of entrepreneurship skills in the person in charge. Hence, one of the integral questions discussed by scientists and psychologists is whether such skills, characteristics, and virtues are inborn or can be gained and developed over time. Entrepreneurial skill is the quality that helps a person develop, create new services or goods valuable for customers and generate monetary profit by selling the produced goods (Costin et al., 2018). Inborn skills would mean that only a certain number of people is predisposed to business creation, effective management, being in charge, and fulfilling entrepreneurship. In case such qualities can be developed, diverse people will get the opportunity to increase the effectiveness of their regulating policies and create profitable business structures.
Leadership Skills and Self-Confidence
From one side, the first and the most significant quality in any successful entrepreneur is self-confidence and leadership skills. It is obvious that self-confidence is brought up and developed throughout childhood and fully depends on the individual situation, including parents’ attitudes towards the child’s development or the society. Therefore, self-confidence is built in the offspring from their birth by the social environment surrounding the individual. However, adults or teens with low confidence levels can overcome this traverse by visiting a psychologist, analyzing their fears, and practicing self-love. Additionally, such a notion as an entrepreneurial mindset can define and provide success and failure among businessmen (Wardana et al., 2020). Kuratko et al. (2020) divide the entrepreneurial mindset into such key perspectives as the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral aspects. Therefore, inner qualities, in other words, the cognitive aspect, related to the individual’s psychological health can be changed in different ways and hence do not fully define a successful businessman.
Although leadership skills can be developed, this factor is one of those that cannot be easily changed. In this case, the virtue depends on some constant showings such as temperament, type of personality, and the individual’s social integration. What is meant is that people generally cannot change their introvert or extrovert attitudes toward diverse situations, people, and outside triggers. According to Wang and Chen (2020), the CEO personality can be analyzed with the help of the Big Five model as the framework for personality traits estimation. For example, Lopez-Nunez et al. (2020) suggest that entrepreneurship is generally associated with openness, extraversion, conscientiousness, lower agreeableness, and neuroticism. Although such inborn characteristics cannot be changed to the opposite, they can be developed and slowly change over time. A person may be an introvert, but by growing older and gaining more social connections, being integrated into small communities, this virtue might change to a little more socially open one.
Analytical Skills
Other more rational skills are included in the portrait of an ideal entrepreneur as well. Castin et al. (2018) believe that the most crucial attributes required for establishing a successful business are risk and innovation aptitude, long sight, rapid decision-making, the ability to tolerate and understand others. Additionally, the ability to read reality factors, deal with complexity, compete, and bear high amounts of stress would be quite beneficial. Presenza et al. (2019) underline that risk-taking is significant for any business and start-up; that is why entrepreneurs should possess a strong, self-confident personality. Based on the conducted research, Kerr et al. (2019) state that entrepreneurs show the highest tolerance to risk in comparison with the inventor and non-inventor employees. Therefore, a good and successful entrepreneur is required to possess rational, analytical skills along with personal and psychological qualities supporting their mental abilities.
Entrepreneurship Education
Additionally, such feature as business or entrepreneurship education is a common thing in the modern world. Students who chose this degree as their major mostly learn such subjects as accountancy, business studies, marketing, economics, and the like. Hence, these studies aim to develop in young adults their personal skills along with professional knowledge to make them able to implement both in their future business activities. Several studies were conducted on the topic of the correlation between entrepreneurship education and future success and skills development. For example, Hahn et al. (2020) argue that as a result of both elective and compulsory courses, a higher increase in their entrepreneurial skills experiences those students who have stronger and more intensive entrepreneurial intentions. Lindberg et al. (2017) highlight that favorable attitudes towards entrepreneurship should be created among students in EE courses or training. Therefore, the same courses in business education taken by diverse students produce various effects on their personal abilities related to business, as well as entrepreneurial thinking and qualities.
It is well-known that schools provide children with basic knowledge of business and economics, and this opportunity puts most students in the same situation regarding economic education. Hahn et al. (2020) conclude that entrepreneurship education generally plays a supportive role for individuals’ education in other subjects and majors. Additionally, entrepreneurial education is especially important for transition economies as creating good specialists is a core factor of all countries’ development (Voda & Florea, 2019). Hence, in some cases, elective courses in business-related subjects are more efficient than compulsory ones.
Motivation
Motivation is one of the core factors defining the success and necessity of entrepreneurship studies. Based on their conducted research, Galvao et al. (2020) concluded that motivation and the entrepreneurship program under study show a positive relationship existing between them. This means that the individual’s intention and motivation to succeed in business in many cases defines the courses’ or training’ effectiveness. Seun and Bilkis (2017) claim that students developed through giving rewards are more likely to create a business in the future as such studying process enhances their motivation. In addition, great achievements in business usually contribute to those who show strong interest in a product or activity, identification with it, the goal of continuity of a family business, motivation to higher income, and attraction to risk-taking.
Are Entrepreneurs Born or Made?
Although entrepreneurial skills can be developed through diverse training, education, courses, and seminars, some people are more predisposed to being businessmen, and others are less. Personal characteristics, people’s traits, their background, educational level, and psychological problems or aspects define their solid skills that generally cannot be changed, only developed. However, some additional skills can be trained in order to enhance chances for being a successful entrepreneur. Any person can be a great businessman; the only difference is in the inborn characteristics that make it easier or more difficult for particular individuals to establish profitable businesses.
References
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Wang, S., & Chen, X. (2020). Recognizing CEO personality and its impact on business performance: Mining linguistic cues from social media. Information & Management, 57(5), 1-11. Web.
Wardana, L. W., Narmaditya, B. S., Wibowo, A., Mahendra, A. M., Wibowo, N. A., Harwida, G., & Rohman, A. N. (2020). The impact of entrepreneurship education and students’ entrepreneurial mindset: The mediating role of attitude and self-efficacy. Heliyon, 6(9), 1-7. Web.