Entrepreneurial Career: Self-Appraisal

• Appraising yourself for an entrepreneurial career involves evaluating your skills, strengths, and weaknesses to determine if you have the necessary characteristics to succeed.

Entrepreneurial Competencies

• Entrepreneurship is more than starting a business; it requires a strong mindset, skills, and competencies.
• Entrepreneurial qualities, activities, or characteristics relate to entrepreneurship.
• Competencies combine knowledge, skills, behaviors, and personal qualities for effectiveness in entrepreneurial ventures.

Core Competencies in Entrepreneurship

• These are skills and behaviors needed to create, develop, manage, and grow a business venture, including handling risks.
• Risk-taking involves calculated risks to seize opportunities and navigate uncertainty.
• Leadership includes setting a vision, making strategic decisions, and keeping the team motivated.
• Innovation requires creativity and new ideas to improve products, services, and processes.
• Adaptability means adjusting strategies to stay relevant in a changing business environment.
• Decision-making involves analyzing data, weighing risks, and making informed choices.
• Time management includes prioritizing tasks and delegating work.
• Financial literacy means budgeting wisely, managing cash flow, and analyzing profits for stability and growth.
• Networking is about who you know.

Entrepreneurial Mindset & Opportunity Recognition

• Building relationships with mentors, investors, customers, and partners opens doors to new opportunities.
• A problem-solving mindset identifies root causes and develops creat ive solutions and turns learning opportunities.
• Successful entrepreneurs learn from failures, stay committed to goals, and continuously strive for improvement.

Mindset

• This is a set of beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions that shape how individuals think, feel, and act.
• Carol Dweck coined the word "mindset".
• Mindset involves believing that qualities are fixed or changeable.
• People with a fixed mindset perceive their talents and abilities as set.
• Those with a growth mindset believe traits can be changed and strengthened through work.

Characteristics of Entrepreneurial Mindset

• The entrepreneurial mindset requires creativity, communication skills, high motivation, and openness to risk and failure.
• It enables individuals to identify opportunities, overcome obstacles, and create value.
• Curiosity strengthens the ability to understand things from new standpoints.
• Commitment is about persisting amidst problems.
• Optimism involves remaining hopeful in exploring learning opportunities.
• Flexibility helps deal with difficult situations, solve problems, and make progress.
• Ownership means trusting that success comes from one's own ability.
• Leadership involves guiding, motivating, and empowering a team.
• Connection means choosing people who can breed ideas.
• Self-respect is vital for both body and mind in business.

Opportunity Recognition using Mindset

• Opportunity recognition involves using the entrepreneurial mindset to establish new businesses or ideas.
• Key roles in recognizing opportunities are being curious, alert to changes, seeing problems as opportunities, connecting unrelated ideas, listening to customers and trends, and using empathy and observation.