Entrepreneurship: What are some of the success factors?

Entrepreneurship is about initiating and creating something, often in collaboration with others, it calls for practical means of making progress as well as for motivation. This text seeks to frame the best advice for making entrepreneurship sustainable, interesting and effective.

Be proactive and shape your environments

Choosing and connecting with the right environments may be an effective way of strengthening motivation and reinforcing a chosen development.

When entrepreneurship is the norm, there may be a lot going on around you that could strengthen your motivation.

The environment could strengthen your habits of thought and your values, and there will be plenty of practical ideas and examples to provide you with avenues and inspiration.

Some opportunities to consider may be educations in entrepreneurship, local business incubators, associations aiming to promote entrepreneurship, groups that meet up to discuss entrepreneurship, and much more.

Focus on networking and relational skills

Research has shown that a social network and the ability to form new relationships is highly related to entrepreneurial success.

So start relating to your communities, there are many forums and organizations that are specifically involved with the area of entrepreneurship.

It is also common for entrepreneurs to attend fairs and conferences which could uncover new opportunities.

These relational skills are, to some extent, related to communicative skills. As an example, research has shown that expressiveness is considerably related to entrepreneurs’ ability to acquire resources such as financial resources, employees, suppliers and customers.

And entrepreneurs themselves highlight oral communication skills as one of the most important skills they have.

In conclusion, relational and communicative skills are important, so get out there and start learning, connecting and improving.

Ensure that you create value

Seek to engage with the group that your service or product aims to provide value to and make sure that what you plan to make is truly aligned with what they desire and want.

It is truly important to allocate some time for this.

According to a survey of start-ups that had gone sour, sent out by a commercial company, 42% of the founders believed that the lack of a market for their product was the main reason for the failure, which suggests that they might not have connected with their customers at an early stage.

One way to connect with a target group at an early stage is to use surveys and, at best, letting them try your service or product and then ask them to give you some feedback on it.

Then listen carefully and modify if needed.

An attitude of learning from experience

Most often, entrepreneurship seems to be about learning from your experiences: You try something, you notice what goes and what doesn’t, and then you learn, you may find new solutions, develop new skills and gain knowledge.

This learning, in turn, gives rise to a new set of opportunities, which you will seek to exploit. Along those lines, opportunities create learning and learning creates new opportunities.

Entrepreneurs generally do not know from the beginning exactly how a venture will come about and exactly how it will operate.

And usually, they are not able to create a solid business on the first couple of attempts, but they do learn from their experiences.

So then, now that we know this, are aware of these facts, instead of focusing on creating something like a thriving venture in the next couple of months, it may prove to be a much more straightforward path to just focus on learning from experiences.

Garner and accumulate practical experience

There is some debate as to the value of practical experience versus the value of detailed planning.

Generally, it seems as if most researchers, as well as most entrepreneurs, favor a somewhat practical approach. Instead of planning in detail, for every possible outcome, get out there, try and see what happens, let your ideas meet reality and get valuable feedback from those experiences, and then improve.

So then take every opportunity to attend fairs, meet with investors, meet with prospective partners, present your ideas to prospective customers and meet and speak to advisers.

Of course, a fair amount of planning is essential sometimes, such as before meeting with investors, then you or I could preferably know a great deal of what there is to know about the venture and its prospects.

Seek out practical and specific knowledge

No one can be an expert on everything, but I could find the ones that are experts in a particular field or area.

Aim to find out who knows much about the specific area of knowledge that you need in the specific phase that you are in.

There is often a range of different organizations supporting entrepreneurship, each with a somewhat different focus and interest. It seems as if especially business incubators as a group is a gateway to practical knowledge and effective means of making progress.

And there may also be individuals such as mentors, advisers, friends, parents and others to approach.

Don’t hesitate to ask for advice, people are almost always interested and happy to point you in the right direction when they can, especially when they have an interest in entrepreneurship or in your specific area of pursuit.

Be opportunity-oriented

There are always opportunities, although far from everything is going to work out as you imagined.

So when one door closes, turn towards the other opportunities and seek to assess which opportunity seems the most promising. Start working towards them.

This way you will be adaptive and you will keep making progress.

There seems to be a place for optimism in this context, at least one study suggested that optimism is predictive of the identification of new opportunities.

Employ mentoring and coaching

There is research on the effects of mentors and this really seems to be a highly significant and useful tool for aspiring entrepreneurs to benefit from.

In recent academic research, mentoring carried out by experienced entrepreneurs comes across as an effective way of bridging the gap from theory and intention to real-life practice.

The benefits provided by a mentor can be, it seems, broadly classified as on the one hand knowledge or information, and on the other motivation, inspiration and adaptive attitudes.

The practical know-how they possess will make the entrepreneurship journey much more straightforward, as their experiences can often be efficiently transferred to us fledgling entrepreneurs. Someone with practical experience of entrepreneurship may then be able to teach you the most.

Their example, their reassurance and validation could also be highly inspiring, it could strengthen motivation and foster confidence with the entrepreneur.

A coach, more generally, can help you to stay committed and on track, as you share progress and setbacks. You could explain what you have done in order to circumvent barriers, what you have done to make progress, and the coach helps you to stay committed.

Moreover, a coach or a mentor can assist in exploring opportunities and roadblocks, finding new paths and perhaps providing input on the pros and cons of different pathways.

Find the right individuals to team up with

Generally, it is the case that groups are more likely to succeed in creating a growing venture than are individuals.

Two of the most important characteristics of strong teams seem to be complementarity with respect to skills and knowledge, and cohesion or integration, in terms of relational aspects.

Then make sure to team up with individuals that will complement your strengths, people who have the skills that you may be lacking.

And if you are having fun together, that will make the whole process more enjoyable; cohesion and liking within the group has been linked to team performance in a range of studies.

Some examples of skills that the venture will probably benefit from are planning ability, salesmanship, relational skills, technical skills, knowledge about the prospective customers and their desires, knowledge about suppliers, knowledge about other firms in your line of business, and insight into the specific service or product that you are aiming for.

Always maintain a heartfelt degree of autonomy

Working towards something that you find desirable, using whatever abilities you can summon to find ways to reach there.

That is autonomy and it is something to value and to strive for.

So whatever you do, whatever service you are after and whoever you collaborate with, always seek to maintain a heartfelt degree of autonomy in your work and in your strivings.

Then you will be more motivated and you will be happier.

Sustain motivation by maintaining awareness

Lastly, you can notice when motivation is waning. Take stock of your level of motivation, and if it is faltering, then engage and take steps to find out what is going on and what you can do to strengthen your motivation.

You could make it a habit to check in with yourself regularly, during the weekend sometime, in the mornings or in the evenings.

And if motivation is deteriorating, you may seek out something that is desirable, interesting and viable, or attend to environmental issues, or seek out whatever you think might be inspiring.

To recapitulate the different areas that could be a recipe for successfully making progress in entrepreneurial pursuits:

• Be proactive and shape your environments
• Focus on networking and relational skills
• Ensure that you create value
• Have an attitude of learning from experience
• Garner and accumulate practical experience
• Seek out practical and specific knowledge
• Be opportunity-oriented
• Employ mentoring and coaching
• Find the right team
• Always maintain a heartfelt degree of autonomy
• Sustain motivation by maintaining awareness

Selected reading:

• St-Jean, E. and Audet, J., 2012. The role of mentoring in the learning development of the novice entrepreneur. International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal. (about the learning outcomes facilitated by experienced mentors)
• Hood, J.N. and Young, J.E., 1993. Entrepreneurship’s requisite areas of development: A survey of top executives in successful entrepreneurial firms. Journal of Business Venturing. (success factors of high-growth entrepreneurial ventures according to the entrepreneurs themselves)
• Sharir, M. and Lerner, M., 2006. Gauging the success of social ventures initiated by individual social entrepreneurs. Journal of world business. (suggested success factors of social ventures)
• Baron, R.A. and Tang, J., 2009. Entrepreneurs’ social skills and new venture performance: Mediating mechanisms and cultural generality. Journal of Management.
• Deci & Ryan (2000). “The “What” and “Why” of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior”, Psychological Inquiry. (about autonomy, process motivation, competence and needs)
• Maxwell, A.L., Jeffrey, S.A. and Lévesque, M., 2011. Business angel early stage decision making. Journal of Business Venturing. (angel investors’ selection criteria for investing in new ventures)