By Youth Co:Lab
What does it mean to be an entrepreneur? While most people would answer “starting a business”, there is a lot more to being an entrepreneur than just doing business. An entrepreneur is someone who sees a challenge and imagines an opportunity, someone who takes initiative rather than waiting for others to deal with an issue, someone who can find the balance between risk taking and careful consideration of their options. And yes, this someone can be a business owner, but they can also be an employee, a student or a volunteer.
What’s more, you can be an entrepreneur in your personal life, using your entrepreneurial qualities to learn to play an instrument, to start a book club with your friends, or to organize a charity fundraising event at your university. So what are these secret qualities, you ask?
Here are five of the key traits that any successful entrepreneur must have:
1. Opportunity recognition
Do you recognize an opportunity when you see it? Our lives are constantly offering new opportunities, but most of us are generally too afraid or distracted to recognize them. Instead, we see them as problems. A successful entrepreneur is able to look at a problem and envision the potential to create a solution.
2. Initiative
Identifying opportunities, however, is not enough. A true entrepreneur has the confidence to take the leap and jump into action, often without without a previous point of reference. They can proactively and independently address an issue that they care about, rather than waiting for others to solve it.
3. Creativity and Innovation
When the path to a solution is not clearly defined, we need to be creative to design a new path. Creativity is a necessary quality for any entrepreneur, as it allows us to come up with new, out-of-the-box ideas that might be more effective than the tried and tested methods.
4. Flexibility
Welcoming diverse perspectives and adapting to different situations is a key step in overcoming the unforeseen obstacles that will inevitably appear in any entrepreneur’s journey. Only by being flexible can entrepreneurs adjust to changing contexts and build resilience to future setbacks.
5. Collaboration and communication
No entrepreneur can succeed in a vacuum. The ability to build connections and start collaborations is an essential part of the entrepreneurial mindset.Young people today have a clear advantage in this area. Their understanding of digital technology allows them to benefit from a diverse range of conversations and ideas and build partnerships across borders.
If you are interested in this topic, check out our social media campaign “What makes an entrepreneur?”, where we promote the idea that entrepreneurship is about more than just business. We hope that through campaigns like this one, we can build the confidence of young people around the region to lead their own initiatives for social change. Do you believe in this mission? Support it by sharing and liking our posts here.