More about Entrepreneurship

More about Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship refers to the act of starting a business or managing a part of a business like a self-contained enterprise. Entrepreneurs are often innovators or people who are able to see deficits in the existing industry and manifest ways to fill those deficits, be it through a product, service, or combination of the two. The identification of high growth markets, a strong business or management background, possessing a written business plan, reinvesting profits, and assembling strong teams are often predictors of success. Many employers look for people with entrepreneurial qualities. This means they want self-starting problem solvers with good team building skills and in-depth knowledge of both markets and management.

Entrepreneurs in Practice

Entrepreneurs, or people with an entrepreneurial mindset, often have leadership and team-building abilities. Professionals involved in entrepreneurship include those who are starting a business, those taking companies or divisions of companies in new directions, and those professionals who facilitate those efforts. As such, most successful entrepreneurs are outgoing, socially involved, well-educated in business and/or their field, and have strong personalities. In practice, entrepreneurship involves starting a new business, building an existing business, or running a new subsidiary of an existing business. This latter concept is also called Intrapreneurship.  

Entrepreneurship Risk Factors

Of course, not all entrepreneurship efforts prove successful. Exhibiting low business acumen or otherwise failing to add real value to the identified problem constitutes a strong predictor of entrepreneurial failure. Other risk factors include trying to wear too many hats at once, not creating long-term solutions, misusing resources, and failing to build a strong team.

 

Entrepreneurship in Manufacturing

Entrepreneurship in Manufacturing

Certain professional traits are inherent in our genes but education could as well contribute in molding interest in a subject or profession; may it be music, language or concern for nature. The mechanism and method of delivery makes difference.  A child going for day-care in US enjoys looking at the dumper, excavator, and a crane at the construction site as much as visiting zoo to watch birds and animals. These are helpful in developing interest.

Teaching mechanism is crucial in making a subject lively or boring. The teacher must enjoy teaching rather than just caring to complete syllabus. It was tough to teach science when Google, animation and YouTube were not born. An example of random motion of insects around a streetlight in rainy season was quoted by my teacher to explain the random motion of electrons around the nucleus of an atom. But, I slept in class of advanced physics in engineering when professor enjoyed teaching Pauli’s Principle of Uncertainty.

-  Let's Make ENTREPRENEURSHIP part of Education.

There is a notion that Entrepreneurship carries high RISK, but is there an area in life that has no risk? Jobs in reputed organizations have risk of lay-off; defense and security services involve risk to life and there is risk of fracture and breaking hip bone if one falls while strolling in the garden. Accidents are associated with all modes of transport. There is risk in breathing polluted air, eating adulterated food and using cosmetics with carcinogenic effect that many are not aware of. There is also uncertainty of getting a job to one’s liking after higher education in science, engineering and management. Then why Entrepreneurship should not be a better option, rather than running from pillar to post!

Coming to nitty-gritty, it is assumed that entrepreneurship needs large capital, requires running after financial institutions, skill in marketing, managing technology and compliance of innumerable plethora of government rules and regulations, but are we not performing these functions while in employment? The only difference is in reporting. Be on your own boss, takes decisions and enjoy work without stress.

-  Link Science to LIFE?

Oxygen is an ingredient of air. Joseph Priestley isolated it in 1774 to study properties in England. French chemist Lavoisier explained its role in respiration, combustion and chemical reactions; but it remained in the laboratories till 1900, when German professor of mechanics Carl von Linde succeeded in producing oxygen. He liquefied AIR by compressing and separated oxygen by fractional distillation. LINDE also produced acetylene gas that if burnt with oxygen to give high temperature flame for welding. Linde Air products that originated in Germany, set up in US unit for industrial gases in 1907 that later got converted to the Union Carbide.

Historical developments are rarely referred to in the class room in school or college. A visit by students to industrial workshops or to a roadside vendor engaged in oxy-acetylene welding should be enough to excite passion in the subject. It should give a feel, how air, a natural free raw material is converted to multi-billion dollar business.

Parker Pool, the founder of Air Products and Chemicals Inc. in US was not an Engineer; nor did he have enough money. It was a coincidence that the promoter of Corning Glass entered the business without qualification and knowledge of the subject. Of course, Robert Bosch was a technician with a desire to be an Entrepreneur. In India, Lakshmanrao Kirloskar started his career as a drawing teacher and might not have thought that he was laying the foundation of a big enterprise while moving to trading in imported bicycles.

-  “E” for Entrepreneur

“E” for Entrepreneur accommodates many EXPECTATIONS as the Creator of JOBS. It needs to be promoted and supported in every country to eradicate POVERTY and unemployment. Now think of “E” for ENGINEER who himself may not have life time guarantee for job. Service invariably carries threats in career. And a way out of the uncertainty could be to develop taste and inclination for ENTREPRENEURSHIP, even while in job.

Real utilization of engineering lies in design, research, manufacturing and innovation but it would be interesting to explore why attraction to ENTREPRENEURSHIP in manufacturing is lacking? While achievers in trading, hospitality and e-commerce with persons like JACK Ma are lauded for creating history on Wall Street, it is rare to find persons like Mark Fuller, the high–tech fountain specialist that was referred to in one of the issues of “Entrepreneur” (http://entrepreneur.com).

-  The ENGINEER Entrepreneurs

Engineering is credited with the title of a CREATIVE discipline. The sphere of application is so vast and divergent that at times one finds it difficult to locate the limits within specific branch or stream. Engineers design, animate, create - machines, materials, mechanisms and processes but hold your breath, Engineers have created VIRTUAL Heart where medical professionals will be able to poke and prod in a way that is impossible to do with a patient’s Flesh–and-blood-Heart. Not many would have heard of Biomedical Engineering?

At the time of admissions, there are queries to know the prospects of placements but many would not know the real scope of one of the most sought after branches, the Electronics and Communications Engineering (ECE). It is difficult to distinguish the branch when one looks at the miracle of 3-D application to design sports shoe for athletes. These all have contributions from multiple fields of specialization including Mechanical, Electrical, Electronics, and Computer Science.

Courtesy: Virendra Grover, Founder Secretary at Ispat Bharti Foundation