New Venture Lab: Equipping Christian Entrepreneurs

Question

I read your post about the skills and experiences necessary to be an entrepreneur, but what about the "softer" stuff like my personality?  Any thoughts on what makes an entrepreneur?

Answer

God "wires" all of us in unique ways and there certainly seem to be personality traits that lend themselves well to entrepreneurship.  Jeffrey Timmons was an entrepreneurship professor at Harvard Business School when I attended and he has done some exhaustive research on this topic.  Here is a good excerpt of some of his research:

Could you be an entrepreneur? A commonly quoted research study of new venture start-ups, that has stood the test of time over the past quarter-century, was conducted through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by Jeffrey Timmons and colleagues. They identified 14 important entrepreneurial characteristics of successful enterprise owners (see box below).which still frequently crop up in entrepreneurship research.

• drive and energy
• self-confidence
• high initiative and personal responsibility
• internal locus of control
• tolerance of ambiguity
• low fear of failure
• moderate risk taking
• long-term involvement
• money as a measure not merely an end
• use of feedback
• continuous pragmatic problem solving
• use of resources
• self-imposed standards
• clear goal setting

Timmons admitted that few entrepreneurs would possess all traits but felt that strengths in one might compensate for weaknesses in others. Many of these characteristics are self-explanatory (such as high personal drive and energy, self-confidence and setting clear goals) and some appear to be linked.

Others may be less obvious or well-known, such as money and profits being used as a measure of success compared with others but less as an end in itself. Helping you to develop the last quality in the list, the ability to set clear goals, is the ultimate objective of the Investigating Entrepreneurial Opportunities   2 course.

These characteristics appear consistently in other entrepreneurial research studies. For example, more than 20 years ago a study of Irish entrepreneurs identified achievement, persistence and self-confidence as general successful business characteristics as well as internal locus of control and commitment to the business, as the characteristics peculiar to entrepreneurs.

Some of the qualities that people often find a bit obscure include tolerance of ambiguity and low fear of failure. Tolerance of ambiguity is the ability to accept contradictory or unexpected evidence of something while keeping an open mind. Low fear of failure can lead to pushy, goal-dominated behavior but, in fact, is the opposite of need for achievement. The anxiety caused by the fear can sometimes be strong enough to cause the individual to deliberately bring about the failure that is feared.

Low fear of failure means that the entrepreneur is prepared to risk things going wrong and can handle setbacks without being deterred. High achievement motivation is a great driving force but low fear of failure may be very useful in times of business chaos and uncertainty.

There is a tendency for high need for achievement people to come from very supportive backgrounds and for them to be motivated to achieve in different areas.

In contrast, high fear of failure people tend to come from disrupted or non-supportive backgrounds and focus more obsessively on areas where they are more likely to achieve their goals, though they often set goals well below their actual potential.

However, these tendencies are not set in stone and the actual experience of business can have a big effect in inducing either more caution or more confidence. Still, if you are uncertain of your own drive to succeed or your ability to persist, the wisest course of action is to consider pushing your idea as part of a team. Small groups not only provide support, they also have a wider range of abilities and skills and often come up with more considered decisions.

By: Nilesh Shah

Source: Accounts77