A successful entrepreneur contains of many
entrepreneur traits such as willing risk taker, very innovation, very
opportunistic, willing risk taker, very self-reliance, strong perseverance, high
motivation, high self-confidence, very discipline and so on. It cannot be
denied that Tony Fernandes, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Richard Branson are
successful entrepreneur.
1.
Willing Risk Taker
Tony Fernandes is a successful
entrepreneur, because he is a risk taker. To prove this, he make a decision to
buy the then loss-making Air Asia and then transformed it from a small and
struggling airline. Then, he become one of the fastest growing and most
successful low fare airline in the world. Actually, he meet Tun Dr. Mahathir
Mohamad in October 2001 and Mahathir advised him to buy the airline. After
that, Tony Fernandes initially bought over Air Asia from DRB-Hicom in 2001 for
a token of RM1, but with that RM1 came with a whopping of RM40 million debt and
two ageing Boeing planes. No one willing to take risk, but Tony even went as
far as to mortgage his house and use up most of his personal savings to sustain
and grow Air Asia. At that time, nobody understand what he thinking by doing
all these things and most of the people simply think that he was hysterical.
After a year, Air Asia had broken even and cleared all its debts. Tony then
continued to expand and grow AirAsia into what it is today.
Follow by Steve Jobs, he also don’t
be afraid to take risks. To prove this, Jobs was willing to cannibalize his
company’s products in the name of progress. Many CEOs would have been hesitant
to develop the iPhone, knowing full well that it would help to make the iPod
obsolete, but Jobs did it anyway and took a big bite out of the lucrative mobile
market. Effects of taking risk are he making new things that suit to people and
get good return.
From this, we can know that the risk
taker is an importance entrepreneurial traits for the entrepreneur. Every
business involves risks. The ability to take risk is to trying something that
could fail. Although risk taking is dangerous, but opportunities often come
from risk-taking. As we know, no risk, no return. While some risks certainly
don't pay off, it's important to remember that some do. Reframing risk as an
opportunity to succeed rather than a path to failure. Besides, for them, taking
risk it’s allowing them to learn new things and those lessons may lead them on
an important, new path.
2.
Very Innovative
Steve Jobs is an innovation man. When
Steve Jobs returned to Apple he dramatically reduced the number of products the
company made so each product had an A-team. This is because, “Innovation comes
from saying no to 1,000 things,” said Jobs. For an example, when Jobs
introduced the iPhone in 2007 he pointed out that while other smartphone makers
were adding features and buttons, the iPhone would remove them, making it
simpler, cleaner, and user-friendly. When the company introduces a new product
it doesn’t add the product image and content to a cluttered homepage, but it
removes clutter, focusing on the product it wants to highlight. Furthermore, Jobs
found on that time, all computer were mainframe that are large and it is very expansive
as not all individual could afford to buy it. Therefore, Jobs renovate and redesign
their computers by making it smaller, and cheaper, with the idea of selling it
for the purpose of personal usage. The series of personal Apple computer had
been produce by him. Among his innovations are iMac, iPod, iPod nano, iTunes
Store, Apple Stores, MacBook, iPhone, iPad, App Store, OS X Lion—not to mention
every Pixar film.
Follow by Richard Branson, he is a
successful entrepreneur because he very innovative. He expand his business
venture that located at Oxford Street, London by adding a new record shop that
named Virgin Records. Then, he follow by adding a recording studios in
Oxfordshire, England. However, his airline Virgin Atlantic facing the financial
problem and he forced to sell the company of Virgin Record. After his early
career troubles, he learned that innovation was the key to success, but that
some confines were necessary. As such, he uses his past mistakes and intuition
to guide him and engages in trial and error when it comes to new ventures. For him,
innovation is an endless quest, a very few products are so good that they
cannot be continually improved upon.
Therefore, very innovative is an
importance entrepreneurial traits for entrepreneur. New and innovation product
will increase the standard of living and provide people with opportunities to
improve their lives. Besides, it would provide a quality product and increase
the competitive in the market because the product is different and attractive. Furthermore,
success comes to businesses that seek innovation, and find ways to adapt to
change, no matter which direction it comes from. As a result, innovation help
business growth up and help entrepreneur success in the future.
3.
Strong Perseverance
Bill Gates stay strong perseverance
in his business endeavours which is one of the most important characteristics
of being an entrepreneur. He don’t give up and calling the maker of the
computer, Micro Instrumentation Telemetry Systems (MITS), and told them that he
had written a BASIC computer program that could be used on the Altair. After
that, they put their effort on it and the programme work perfectly, and the
MITS arranged a deal to purchase the rights to Bill’s BASIC. Therefore, both of
them is then formed a partnership called Micro-Soft and the name change to
Microsoft when 1975 where Bill Gates
as the CEO. Due to him stay strong perseverance, now he become
the founder of the world’s largest software business, Microsoft.
Moreover,
Richard Branson to become a successful entrepreneur because he is stay strong
perseverance. He despite being such a success today, things didn’t always look
so rosier. At the beginning, he suffers from dyslexia, which made both reading
and learning certain things incredibly difficult. Although this still affect
him today, he has never let it hold him back. Furthermore, he experienced a
myriad of problems at the beginning of his career. Some of these included
cash-flow problems, tax issues, law violation and even a night in jail. For an
example, although his airline Virgin Atlantic facing the financial problems and
he decide to sell his Virgin Record to
saved Virgin Atlantic from collapse, but he stay strong perseverance and
remained determined to stay in the music business. After that,
Branson extended his Group including aviation, telecommunications,
entertainment, travel, merchandise, financial so on and so forth. Instead of giving
up, he choose to learn from his mistakes and use them to guide him later in
life. It also inspired him to educate himself in certain areas of business so
he could persevere and succeed.
Hence, entrepreneur should stay
strong perseverance to success in the future. Strong perseverance is an
importance entrepreneurial traits for entrepreneur because it would make them
don’t give up easily and face any problems or failure. Many people failed
because they cannot stay persevere and give up at the first sign of difficulty.
As long as you will be successful if you stay persevere and take positive steps
to achieve your goal.
4.
Very Opportunistic
Bill
Gates took a disciplined approach toward software as a potential source of
business opportunities. Gates and his partner Paul Allen wrote the first
version of Microsoft BASIC just to get in on the ground floor with a pioneer
maker of home-built computer kits. After that, Gates quit Harvard and moved to
New Mexico to work with the company, named MITS, hoping to make Microsoft BASIC
an industry standard. A few years later, Gates and Allen made similar moves to
get close to Digital Research, then the leading maker of the most popular PC
operating system. They even marketed a translator that allowed Digital Research
software to work on Apple computers, as a strategic move to ride on Digital
Research's coattails. Microsoft's ties to Digital Research led directly to its
big opportunity, with IBM. When IBM couldn't get Digital Research to provide an
operating system for IBM's new PC project, Gates was there to volunteer for the
job. It didn't matter that Microsoft had
no expertise in operating systems. From this, Gates get the opportunity to make
billions with MS-DOS for IBM.
In
sort, being a successful entrepreneur, it is important to be opportunistic
because entrepreneur seek out opportunity to earn profit and success. Often
entrepreneur look problem as opportunity and do not mind the uncertainly. In
addition, opportunity creates the chance for entrepreneur to improve and learn
something new.
5.
High Self-confidence
High self-confidence also another
entrepreneurial trait that assists him to be successful entrepreneur. For
example, when confirmation came from Indonesian authorities that the Air Asia
plane had crashed, Mr. Fernandes’s message was clear: He isn’t going anywhere,
and the carrier will make good on all its commitments to its passengers’
relatives, including compensation payments. Its shows that he is not running
away from any of his obligations even he was facing big problem.
For Bill Gate, he also is a high
self-confidence person and become a successful man. From the beginning, Windows
1.0 actually wasn’t much of a success, then Microsoft released Windows 2.0 two
years later, in 1987, but it didn’t fare much better. It found moderate success
thanks to software which are in particular, Excel, Word, and Aldus Page maker. He
believe on himself and it wasn’t until 1990, when Microsoft launched Windows
3.0, that they found significant success with a graphical operating system. It
was a big money maker for the company and it sold over 10 million units in just
two years. Therefore, Microsoft had found the model that would transform them
into a computer software giant.
Hence,
high self-confidence is an important entrepreneur trait because it make entrepreneur
to success. A high self-confidence
person enable to face difficult task and take it as a challenge. Even though
they face failure, but they stand up quickly and believe themselves. This is
because, the high level of confidence able entrepreneur to face the challenge
and done the job even under the most stressful conditions.
- 10:27
- 0 Comments
