Can you imagine a day of complete
entrepreneurs' strike? Everything would stop, nothing would work.
Because entrepreneurship is all around us: from the baker who bakes
bread every morning to the retailer who sells this bread, to the
bar's owner who with the bread creates our sandwich lunch. And this
is just an example of how pervasive entrepreneurship is in our lives.
With our book “Human spirits and
entrepreneurship culture” we would like to underline the importance
of this aspect, that is often underestimated. We agree on the EU
Commission definition of entrepreneur “an
individual’s ability to turn ideas into action”. It includes
creativity, innovation and risk taking, as well as the ability to
plan and manage projects in order to achieve objectives. We think
that entrepreneurship mindset, his/her “perception lens” can be
used by everyone in every aspect of life, not just with the aim of
becoming self-employed. That's why entrepreneurship education and
training should be adopted by every school, at every stage, not just
to provide a foundation to establishing an activity, but to let
people becoming “entrepreneurs of themselves”. And we think that,
in the same way, also aspiring entrepreneurs, startuppers and
researchers, could find very useful to have clear in mind how an
entrepreneur thinks, how he/she behaves, which are his/her most
important attitudes.
In
recent years studies on entrepreneurs moved from an exclusively
economic point of view to the psichological one, deepening emotions,
attitudes, visions and motivations. This is very interesting for two
reasons:
-
-
because, at last!, it has been recognized the importance of the
entrepreneur as a person and not just as a one of the several
variables of the economy;
- - because it's becoming clearer and clearer that entrepreneurs are not born but they “learned” how to be it.
We
think that, with the right environment, the right recognition of the
importance of entrepreneurs among the society and with the right
teaching, everyone could be more entrepreneurial and maybe also open
his/her own company. But this is not the final and crucial aim: the
most important thing is learning to be proactive, creative,
motivated; in other words, how to see opportunities where anyone else
see just problems, finding solutions. Few months ago, an important
insurance multinational corporation published on LinkedIn a job ad to
establish a new branch office in Italy: among the carachteristics
seeked, there was “an entrepreneurial mindset”. That's the
future.
But
how we can be more entrepreneurial in our everyday life? Here are
some tips:
-
Test
yourself: who's driving my life?
Are you convinced that things in life happen by destiny, for chance
or for your lucky star? Or the steering wheel is just in your hands?
Entrepreneurs lean towards an internal locus of control, this means
that you have to recognize and take on your responsabilities, and
success or failure depends mainly by you.
-
“Sound
out” yourself to discover what is your dream, what passionates you.
Passion is the most important drive for entrepreneurs. Howard
Schultz, Starbucks' CEO, recently said that in 2008 he came back to
the company he established in the 80s, after an eight-year hiatus,
because “the general manager wasn't doing well, and I was too
passionate about Starbucks to just let it going down and disappear”.
-
Write
down how you see you within 20 years.
What will be your life? Will you be married? Will you have got
children? Where will you live? What you will be your job? What will
be your hobbies? Try to project yourself into the future and, if what
you see is good, try to find your way to reach it.
-
Train
every day your resilience.
Failure is the reverse side of every project, every action.
Resilience is the ability to recover and overcome failure, problems
of different kind, stops. It's easy to go on when everything is OK,
that's why it's important to be resilient: because when things will
go wrong, it will be hard. Nurture resilience from your passion, your
self-confidence, your skills, your vision and your network of
relatives and friends. Prepare some “what if...” scenarios, to be
prepared to react if something in your projects or in your life
doesn't go in the right way.
-
Work
hard to reach your aims.
It will not be difficult, if you're lead by passion for what you're
doing.
