Thinking Entrepreneurially - Entrepreneurial Mindset

Entrepreneurs cause entrepreneurship: market opportunities, technology changes and other factors influence entrepreneurship – but, the entrepreneur is at the heart of the matter.

Understanding entrepreneurs: who are they, what they think, how do they think and what influences their decision.

Entrepreneurial Mindset

1. Achievement: Entrepreneurs have personal drive and preference for challenge.

2. Individualism: Entrepreneurs are willing to go against the norm and seek individual initiative and achievement.

3. Control: It is about belief that a person can (internal) or cannot (external) control their own destiny and influence outcomes. What do you attribute outcomes to? Yourself or others (markets, luck etc.). Internals are more alert and discover more opportunities than externals.

4. Focus: It is about attention and commitment. Entrepreneurs are able to focus attention on single task and have ability to process information even in the changing environmental conditions.

5. Optimism: This leads entrepreneurs to frequently make judgements on subjective positive figure – tendency to overlook critical elements and discount uncertainties. Excessive optimism can lead to high level of risk acceptance and loss.

Moderate optimism improves success – objectively evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your solution, and examine potential problem areas – versus customer’s needs and versus competitors (now and in the future). Gather information from potential customers, experts, knowledge friends and family etc. to validate your beliefs and/or to challenge your assumptions. 

This blog post is based on my learnings from the course on ‘entrepreneurship’ offered by Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute, University of Maryland through Coursera (2014).