Important Skills, Values, Talents, Abilities, and Mind-sets as an Entrepreneur

The entrepreneur involves building a team with complementary talents. The ability to work as a team and sense as opportunity where others see contradiction, chaos, and confusion are critical elements of success. Entrepreneurship also requires the skill and ingenuity to find and control resources, often owned by others, in order to pursue the opportunity. It means making sure the upstart venture does not run out of money when it needs it the the most. Most highly successful entrepreneurs have held together a team and acquired financial backing in order to chase an opportunity others may not recognize.

Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is a way of thinking, reasoning, and acting that is opportunity obsessed, holistic in approach, and leadership balanced. It results in the creation, enhancement, realization, and renewal of value, not just for owners, but for all participants and stakeholders. At the heart of the process is the creation and/or recognition of opportunities, followed by the will and initiative to seize these opportunities. It requires a willingness to take risks-both personal and financial-but in a vary calculated fashion in order to constantly shift the odds of success, balancing the risk with the potential reward.
Today, entrepreneurship has evolved beyond the classic start-up notion to include companies and organization of all types, in all stages. Thus, entrepreneurship can occur-and fail to occur-in firms that are old and new, small and large, fast and slow growing; in the private, not-for-profit, and public sectors; in all geographic points; and in all stages of a nation's development, and regardless of politics.

Paradoxes of Entrepreneurship:

1. An opportunity with no or very low potential can be an enormously big opportunity.
2. To make money you have to first lose money.
3. To create and build wealth one must relinquish wealth.
4. To succeed, one first has to experience failure.
5. Entrepreneurship requires considerable thought, preparation, and planning, yet is basically an unplannable event.
6. For creativity and innovativeness to prosper, rigor and discipline must accompany the process.
7. Entrepreneurship requires a bias toward action and a sense of urgency, but also demands patience and perseverance.
8. Adhering to management best practice, especially staying close to the customer that created industry leaders in the 1980's, became a seed of sel-destruction and loss of leadership to upstart competitors.
9. To realize long-term equity value, you have to forgo the temptations of short-term profitability.

The Team

The Resources

The opportunity

Timmon's Model of the Entrepreneurial Process

Change the odds: Fix It, Shape It, Mold It, Make It
 The process starts with opportunity, not money, strategy, networks, teams, or the business plan. Most genuine opportunities are much bigger than either the talent and capacity of the team or initial resources available to the team. The role of the lead entrepreneur and the team is to juggle all these key elements in a changing environment. Think of a juggler bouncing up and down on a trampoline that is moving on a conveyor belt at unpredictable speeds and directions, while trying to keep all three balls in the air.That is the dynamic nature of an early-stage start-up. The business plan provides the language and code for communicating the quality og the three driving forces of the Timmons Model and of their fit and balance.
In the entrepreneurial process depicted in the Timmond Model, the shape, size and depth of the opportunity establishes the required shape, size, and depth of both the resources and the team. We have found the many people are a bit uncomfortable viewing the opportunity and resources somewhat precariously balanced by the team. It is especially disconcerting to some because we show the three key elements of entrepreneurial process as circles, an thus the balance appears tenuous. These reactions are justified, accurate and realistic. The entrepreneurial process is dynamic. Those who recognize the risks better manage the process and garner more return.
The lead entrepreneur's job is simple enough. He or she must carry the deal by taking charge of the success equation. In this dynamic context, ambiguity and risk are actually friends. Central to the homework, creative problem solving and strategizing, and due diligence that lies ahead is analyzing the fits and gaps that exist in the venture. Make the necessary by  figuring out how to fill the gaps and improve the fit and attract key players  who can add such value, then the odds for the success rise significantly. In essence, the entrepreneur's role is to manage and redefine the risk-reward equation-all with an eye towards sustainability. 

Entrepreneurship = Paradox

    The greater the  

organization, orderliness, discipline, and control, the less you will control your ultimatE  destiny.

Entrepreneurship requires great flexibility and nimbleness in strategy and tactics. One has to bent with the knees bent. Over control and an obsession with the orderliness are impediments to the entrepreneurial approach. As the great race car driver Mario Andretti said, if i am in total control, I know I am going too slow.