Entrepreneurship : Do you have it in you

Few day back we were listening to Captain G.R. Gopinath of airdeccan ,his tell of building an empire was mesmerizeing and from that speech and our readings we have drawn some basic characteristics of an entrepreneur
1) Risk Taking abilities : So taking risk is the first step of entrepreneurship . An entrepreneur must have risk taking ability , one who can not take risk can not become entrepreneur. When one tries to enter into any venture he never knows whether it is going to be successful or a failure and that makes it very difficult for a normal person to come out of his comfort zone . The decision of taking a risk is very important , one who passes this examination of taking risk has surely one of the very basic characteristics of being entrepreneur. If we track back the starting point of some of the today’s successful entrepreneurs like G.R. Gopinath, Mr Narayan Murthy and many of their likes have left their jobs and took a risk of loosing the financial security of their life.

2) Entrepreneurs believe in humble start : Many of today successful entrepreneurship ventures have started in a garage , almost all of them have had very humble beginning be it HP , Amazon , Dell , Infosys , Linksys or Google. The reason was obviously not that they liked the idea of working from garage but because of obvious resource crunch in the beginning phase of entrepreneurship most of these people have to work with minimum available facilities and resources in early days. Just before starting google , larry page and Sergey bin have concerted their own hostel room into a research laboratory , In early days of Infosys it used to function from a small 2 BHK in Pune , there was no servant to clean the flat and founder members themselves used to clean it .

3) Entrepreneurship demands Vision : It is not a mandatory criteria that entrepreneurs must have some clear vision about what they are about to do but if this vision exist then the organization is bound to sustain for long term. When Gopinath Munde started a no frill cheap airline , he had a vision that his fellow countryman should be able to travel by air without paying a fortune for it , It was this vision that kept his motivation high and made air deccan an instant hit among people from middle society. Consider example of Harper-Arrington Publishing and Media which was started by Harper and Arrington with a vision to educate kids and adults.

4) Entrepreneurship demands persistence : There are very few entrepreneurs who get it all right in the very first shot. It need lots of persistence to carry on the quest for success and to not give up the hope. Entrepreneurs don’t let it go , they would exercise all available options and make sure that they get the outcome . One of the example of persistence is

5) Entrepreneurs learn from mistakes : Infosys was not the first venture started by Mr Narayan Murthy , First of all he started a company named softronix but within a span of 1.5 years he had to close it , after doing a job for few years he again started a new venture named Infosys but this time he had already learnt the lesson , Softronix was targeting indian software market which did not have much scope at that time so later on with Infosys Mr Murthy targeted US markets where software industry was booming at that time .

These are not the only characterstics for entrepreneurship but these are definitely few important onces and if you have them all then I guess you should start now

USe customer to innovate

If we talk about innovations , researching on cutting edge technologies , working on new systems and frameworks , the immediate thing which comes to mind is the huge cost associated with it which does not always provide a good return . Imagine how many innovations and research never make it to the production environment . What could be the way in which companies can still get innovative ideas without having to spend too much on thier own workforce , that is surely learning from customer and involving him in your system to innovate.
Who would know customer better then himself , Customers are the biggest source of innovation . They can come up with any weird idea because it is not going to cost them any thing , they won't be afraid of failure (It hardly matters to them ) and they don't have any pressure from thier management to drive innovation in a certain direction only . One such idea is innvated by customer in Punjab , Dhaba owners of Punjab also purchase Washing Machines but not for washing clothes , guess what they make lassi in those washing machines. Just imagine if one of the negineer in Videcon would have come up with this idea that lets project our washing machine as Lassi maker also , what would have been reaction from his management ?
Now when customers have shown the way , they must be seeing a business proposition here , may be in future they can simply do some changes in design of washing machine and make it more suitable for lassi making .

Going forward it will be very important to involve your customers into your business , just imagine you end having a workforce of millions of people by using this methods and guess what you even don't have to pay these people . All you have to do is to listen to them carefully , understand them and thir needs and encourage them to provide feedbacks on any aspect of product and services . One other industru where I see this practice prevalent is media and entertainment , Many news channels have started making thier cutomers their reporters . They ask viewers to send any latest happening around them , You see now they are literally coveringentire nation without sending any one physically anywhere. What adds to this is tehonology which has made it all very simple.

So remember when next time you meet your customer , don't think that he is just customer , give him a new role that is of critique and Engineer for your product and he may change the way you do business.