A Review on Building Skills to Implement an Entrepreneurial Vision

Houssem Eddine Ben Messaoud^*
*Correspondence: Houssem Eddine Ben Messaoud, Department of Soil and Agri-Food Engineering, Laval University, Quebec City, Canada, Email:

Introduction

Entrepreneurship

According to Howard Stevenson, entrepreneurship is pursuing opportunity regardless of the resources presently controlled. This definition means that entrepreneurs see opportunities where most individuals see problems. While others are complaining about the problems currently available, entrepreneurs see opportunities in these problems, seize them, find solutions for them and make the most of them. There are some attributes that guide the success of entrepreneurship. Optimism and perseverance are fundamental aspects of entrepreneurship because entrepreneurs have to possess them to be willing to take risks. Entrepreneurs, nevertheless, cannot be optimistic without believing in what they desire to accomplish. Therefore, a vision is a necessity in entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurs cannot work alone. Instead, they need support in one way or the other, either human or physical resources. They can be supported only by those who believe in their vision because it is implausible to support something that does not guarantee success if you do not believe in its vision. People believe in a vision only if they believe in its attainability and why it is being achieved. This point means that someone with an entrepreneurship concept must have clear answers to two questions, who want it and what obstacles it solves.

Description

A person with a business concept in their mind should be able to answer these two questions explicitly for them to be successful. Hence, entrepreneurs must have an explicit vision grounded on needs, problems that need to be solved and self-awareness.

Entrepreneur has to be self-aware in that they must clearly understand their skills and limitations. They are therefore willing to work and listen to others and adjust their vision because of such discussions. Working with people is not essential, but working with those who understand and are dedicated to the vision. This results in an impartially flat organizational structure, which most entrepreneurs begin with.

True entrepreneurs are often more interested in attaining their vision than their status. What interests a true entrepreneur is not their business card’s title per se but being successful because of the success of their concept, process, or product. The weight of their ideas' consequences and businesses does the talking more than the title on their business card. Hence, they do not rush to print business cards with their ownership titles but focuses on building their business to succeed.

The fifth attribute of an entrepreneur is confidence. Entrepreneurs should ask themselves if their idea will work or not. It will indeed work if their answer is yes and they believe it. One who does not believe in their own idea should not expect others to and that idea is doomed to fail in the long run. Confidence does not mean overconfidence but having self-belief in themselves and those around them to the extent of resisting future challenges and following their vision. Additionally, they should be confident to lead and talk to others while dealing with external individuals not part of the organization. Entrepreneurs should be willing to work hard because businesses do not just happen. There is nothing like instant success as the media tries to portray it. One must put in the effort and work extra hours to achieve excellence in their businesses.

Another attribute is that a characteristic is not being scared to fail. There is always a possibility that a new business will fail. The entrepreneur should have the capacity to arise and try again. The willingness and ability to keep trying whenever a business fails gives the entrepreneur insights on what to do better next time. Failing is also an opportunity to learn and try new things, ideas and processes to improve in the next attempt. The key to successful entrepreneurship is not giving up at the first defeat. For example, the WD40 was successful on the fortieth attempt, thus the name 40 and the light bulb, which the inventor said he succeeded on the 1000th time.

To sum up, an entrepreneur should have a clear and realizable vision, have a vision where they may not control all the resources, self-aware, confident and self-motivated, being willing to take deliberate risks, being willing to hear others out, not fearing failure and accommodating hard work.

Developing a clear vision

Few people have visions they have personally created. Rather, they are other people’s expectations of them, shaped by parents, educators and peer groups they hang out with. Parents term their children who refuse to follow their expectations as rebellious and expect that they will outgrow them when that phase is over. Schools make judgments for their students’ future careers following their academic success and not on their own desires and visions. Like parents, peer group pressure plays a role in founding one’s vision. People expect one to conform to their group’s norms. For example, one’s social group is as determined to either buy or rent accommodation as their intrinsic desire.

To develop a clear vision, one must have their own definition of what they want to do with their life. Once they have this vision, they can proceed to other entrepreneurship competencies required to execute their vision. First, they have to construct a lifeline where they will track down their lifeline and examine the history that has shaped them. Identifying the high points in their life at this stage helps them construct a future vision grounded on the traits that produce higher points.

The second thing is to understand the values of their work and leisure. Understanding their most relatable values is essential for a more rewarding life in this section. The main things that motivate our life journey are our values. However, life events, experiences and varying self-image leads to these values and life journeys. We can make our lives more rewarding by discovering the underlying skills that can be transferred to other paid works and pleasures. This is because they are likely to use these skills more and not find them less satisfying.

The next one is applying the concept of data, ideas, people and things. If one has the necessary skills to record, communicate, establish and appraise data on goods and services, one will enjoy working with statistics, systems and routines. Similarly, people with skills used in creativity, experimenting with words and music and designing conceptual models, enjoy creating, clarifying, analytic thinking and synthesizing. People with skills in assisting, informing, tutoring, entertaining, serving, inspiring and directing others enjoy working to change other people’s life. Lastly, people with skills employed in producing, repairing, transporting and overhauling enjoy using tools and machinery.

To build a clear vision in their life, one must be aware of what has worked for them well in the past, the values they want from work and leisure and the transferable skills they posse that they want to use. From this, they can write down the life they fantasize about, including work patterns, residence, work integrity, lifestyle, home life, social life, status and income.

After writing the life one fantasizes about, they should then ask themselves the following questions; the distinction between fantasy and reality, the fantasies they can achieve now or in the future, what distracts them from achieving some of the fantasies and how they can overcome them, the presenting consequences for them and others in striving after these features, pursuing these fantasy features would be worth the repercussions and the basis they wish to set for themselves following this exercise. Whether the gap in achieving a fantasy life is large or small, everyone can recognize a path that will help them accomplish this fantasy [1,2].

Building skills to implement the vision

This stage helps one develop other skills to move vision to reality as they now have self-awareness. They no longer judge themselves by external values but rather by what they genuinely want and have faith in. They fully understand their skills and not the evaluation of others following their academic credentials and performance versus their required skill sets. Lastly, they know their needed values to satisfy so they can be satisfied with their home and work life instead of accepting their group peers’ values. Having all these, they now need the confidence to execute the vision. The most crucial thing is to build self-confidence.

One builds self-confidence by learning to speak up during leisure time or at work. Aim at speaking in a staff meeting or group forums with friends at least once. Preparing for it with suggestions and reasoned arguments will help ease the tension. Confronting their negatives is another way of building selfconfidence. Focusing on one’s negatives deprives them of having confidence in themselves as they will often see faults and do not appreciate their flaws, good things about them and successes. It will be impossible to act on actualizing their vision if they focus on negatives since they will use them as excuses.

Understanding failure and failing is another way to remove negatives and build self-confidence. Failure is not a person; instead, it is an event. Realizing this will help us remain positive when we fail our first attempts. It is through failures that we glean information and defines future endeavors.

Re-programming how we view negatives and failures because these two will always be there are the critical turning negatives into positives and learning from our failures. Be willing to take compliments, both positive and negative ones. Dismissing compliments or making self-deprecating jokes to camouflage embarrassments is a sign of lack of self-confidence. To work on this, one should thank the individual and accept the compliment gracefully.

Evaluating themselves is another excellent way of building self-confidence. Instead of focusing on the bad things that have happened in your life, focus on doing the things that would not let the negative past events happen, minding not to be hard on yourself. Positive thinking helps boost self-confidence too. All these aspects of building self-confidence will help us not be risk-averse but accept failure as part of our success in building our vision [3,4].

Conclusion

Be willing to work hard to accomplish your set goals. Once you conquer your fears and gain the confidence to follow your set goal, put utmost energy into it. Defining one’s vision is not being afraid but believing in themselves, having the self-confidence to go after their vision, being ready to take risks and not fearing failure. Moreover, getting up, trying again after failing and being prepared to work to accomplish things also defines one’s vision. The most important thing is to take charge of one’s destiny and not let society's, parents, teachers and peers’ expectations command it for them.

Acknowledgement

None.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest associated with this manuscript.

References

1. Kilby, Peter. "Hunting the heffalump." University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership Historical Research Reference in Entrepreneurship, SSRN (1971).
2. Gladwell, Malcolm. “Outliers: The story of success.” Little, Brown (2008).
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4. Jarvis, Edward. “Relation of education to insanity.” US Government Printing Office (1872).

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