COMPETENCIES OF AN ENTREPRENEUR

COMPETENCIES OF AN ENTREPRENEUR

The role of an entrepreneur’s competency is highly a critical factor in achieving excellence in performance to ensure a sustainable growth and success of a venture amidst a competitive business environment. Therefore the importance of entrepreneurial competency has been increased during the past few decades due to the strategic role played by the human factor particularly the entrepreneur of a business enterprise. The person behind the successful performance is called the entrepreneur and the caliber required to carry on his business successfully is called his competency. Competency is composed of knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics which underlie effective or successful job performance; These competency attributes are observable and measurable; and These attributes distinguish between superior and other performers. The entrepreneurial competencies can be classified under the following categories;

1.         Initiative : it is one of the fundamental competencies required for an entrepreneur. He must be a keen observer of the society, the commercial trends, the product types, the change in consumer’s taste and preferences, etc. he must be willing to take necessary steps for starting enterprises.

2.       Creativity and Innovation : if an entrepreneur has critical thinking and positive outlook, he will be able to meet all challenges and to bring new ideas and creative ideas to satisfy the customers.

3.       Risk taking & Risk Management : Entrepreneurs always searching for new ideas , that are not familiar / uncertain to them . In order to achieve the goals he always ready to take the risks  and able to manage the risky situations occurring to the organisations.

4.        Problem solving : there will be lots of problems that will come to the path of the entrepreneur during the progress of his business. He should find out alternative solutions by bringing new ideas and products.

5.       Leadership : Leadership is the quality of leading his workers through proper guidance and motivation for the achievement of organisational objectives. Every entrepreneurs must possess all the good qualities of a leader by inspiring his workers.

6.       Persistence : Persistence of an entrepreneur denotes the ability which keeps him constantly motivated even when he is confronted by obstacles .  It is he who has to make his dream come true. Entrepreneurs moves up when things are not going well.

7.       Quality Performance : A successful entrepreneur perceives that his performance is different from others. He believes that it is his high performance which ultimately differentiates him from low performers.

8.       Information Seeking : Information collected by an entrepreneur plays a crucial role in the progress of an organisation . The quality in the method of collecting information and the extend of its utilization will helps for the success of the organisation .

9.       Systematic Planning :  An entrepreneur is expected to have systematic planning which will help him to prepare an action plan for every area of operation in order to achieve the pre -determined goals.

10.    Persuasion : Persuasion in entrepreneurship refers to the ability of entrepreneurs to link, convince and influence other individuals, groups, agencies, creditors, debtors, customers and even competitors in order to create a contact and maintain good rapport.

11.      Communication Skill : Communication skill refers to the ability of an entrepreneur to transfer ideas, plans, policies and programmes to employees, debtors, creditors, customers and everyone who is connected with the business in order to inform, influence and to express his feelings.

12.    Technical knowledge : An entrepreneur needs to address the rapid technical changes in the industry. Higher levels of technology must be introduced in the production methods in order to achieve productivity demands. Therefore he must update his technical knowledge in order to serve customers quickly and more effectively.

13.    Self Confidence : Self-confidence is an essential trait in an entrepreneur because he is regularly called upon to perform tasks and make decisions that require great amounts of faith in himself. He needs to have a strong but realistic belief in himself and his ability to achieve the predetermined goals.