You can change the external environment by changing yourself first

Changing the world requires unique characterististics

Save the artist by buying their work

Three most important words

Yes I can

Listen to your Children

You are always selling something

When did the term entrepreneur come into existence? What does the term an entrepreneur mean?

The word entrepreneur made first appearance as a distinct concept in France in 1750’s. It was introduced by Richard Cantillon twenty years before Adam Smith published his work on wealth of the nations in 1776. Richard Cantillon suggested that the entrepreneur is someone prepared to bear uncertainty in engaging in risk of buying goods and services at a certain (fixed) price in one market to be sold elsewhere or at another time for uncertain future prices usually in another market . Furthermore, Schumpeter (1934) described an entrepreneur as a person who can convert new idea and invention into innovation; a product that can be commercialized.

Moreover the entrepreneur is described as as a “dot connector” a man who can connect the dots to identify opportunities that create profit and wealth. Additionally, the entrepreneur is an individual who brings about improvement both for other individuals and for society as a whole. An entrepreneur is known for what he/she does; activities that entrepreneurs do include creating new products, processes and services in the market. 

Poem about courage on the journey of life

The Journey’ by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
‘Mend my life!’
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible. It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,

And there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Difference between Entrepreneurial ability and Managerial ability:Are both important for entrepreneurs?

Entrepreneurial ability is the ability to recognize an opportunity and acquire the necessary resources to exploit it while the managerial ability is the ability to maintain the profitability of a business.

The successful entrepreneurs need both abilities as they determine the destiny of their businesses.They enable the entrepreneur to recognize a business opportunity,acquire necessary resources to exploit it and then formulate a business while ensuring that the business is making profit.

Reference

Firtzsimons J.R & Douglas E.J.,(2005).Entrepreneurial attitudes and entrepreneurial intentions cross cultural of potential entrepreneurs in India,Thailand,China and Australia. Babson-Kaufman Entrepreneurial Research conference,Wellesley MA

What should it be called environmental degradation,negative entrepreneurship or entrepreneurship?

This is one of the things that is going on in developing world.Making charcoal which implies cutting down of trees is order of the day.This is done at the expense of environment and sustainable development.

Alternative energy could be the good solution as people must use energy for food preparation

UNETHICAL MARKETING BASED ON LIE

This is one of the announcement on HIV AIDS cure that I saw in South Africa.This is a lie of the highest order.Many marketers are marketing things they can't deliver just to get cash.This is absolutely unethical marketing.

With such type of marketing one can win some quick money for a while but in the long run such marketing campaign can not deliver.

Time Management Lesson

What you have to realize is that we are all human, we are all born and we will all die in 200 years period time. 

It’s what we do with our time in between that makes us special. Moreover, it’s our habits, actions and beliefs that separate us — not anything else.

Is it true that we don't accomplish much due to lack of resources?

May I please comment to the above well sugar-coated “catchy” photo with caption which says, ”Never start a project unless all resources are available”

May I start with the question; do you think all the successful people start and accomplish their projects with enough resources at hand?

Though the words in the above photo sounds well and good, no project will ever come into being with this type of thinking as the resources are always not enough. Remember the economists’ old adage that resources are scarce.

In my opinion, this type of thinking is good for economists, accountants, marketers, sociologists and even to strategists who have no idea of how the Morden economy is run; for entrepreneurs this type of thinking is not reasonable and credible because in entrepreneurship field project accomplishment is opportunity creation based rather than resource driven because if the opportunities are perceived as significant, resources will be found and mobilised to exploit on discovered opportunities(project).Entrepreneurship is thus idea driven rather than resource driven.

Thus, we don’t have any reason to think that we don’t accomplish much because of lack of resources because many successful people had as little resources as we had at a certain time in their lives yet they accomplished great feats.

May I also put forward a definition of what entrepreneurship consist of, a definition given by Stevenson, Robert and Groesbeck (1985) they argued that entrepreneurship is a field that is concerned and driven by perception of opportunity rather than resources currently controlled by individuals.

This implies that instead of saying I can’t start a project as I don’t have much resources; it is better to do a homework on what should you do to capitalise on the opportunity found in the project. The former thinking will make one to postpone every project that comes on the way, while the latter will make one think of the way or possibilities to capitalise on opportunities found in every project that he/she finds on the way.

‘’WHEN YOU BLIEVE, YOUR MIND FINDS WAYS TO DO IT’’

Reference

Stevenson H.H., Robert M.J., & Groesbeck H.I.,(1985).New business ventures and the entrepreneur. Homewood, IL: Irwin.

Dreaming and Doing your dream

"There are those who work all day. Those who dream all day. And those who spend an hour dreaming before setting to work to fulfill those dreams. Go into the third category because there's virtually no competition." 

~ Steven J Ross.

Why many famous entrepreneurs struggled with their early formal education?

Q: I am an architect and a young entrepreneur. It’s fairly obvious that most of the world’s great entrepreneurs had issues with their early education. Why is this the case? -- Akosu Paul

This is a very good question, and one that I am often asked by students around the world as they weigh continuing their studies against starting up their own ventures and diving into the world of business. In addition, many also want to know how I was able to start my own career while I was a young student struggling with my schoolwork, and how I eventually got people to take me seriously as an entrepreneur.

Looking back, I believe that the qualities that make for a great entrepreneur -- such as boundless energy, a curious nature and, sometimes, an obstinate streak -- are not often attributes demonstrated by top students in the classroom. So it should not be very surprising that many of the world’s great entrepreneurs and business leaders had difficulties with formal education.

Often, their frustration in the classroom was a result of impatience: The greats were eager to get out and build their businesses, which pushed them to drop out of high school or forgo college in order to follow their dreams. For instance, Walt Disney famously dropped out of school at age 16 to found his animation company, while the great American tycoons of the late 19th century -- Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt and Thomas Edison -- had little or no formal education before they set out to seek their fortunes. Some entrepreneurs, including Carnegie and Henry Ford, the 20th century industrialist, came from impoverished backgrounds and did not have the support at home to start -- let alone complete -- their formal educations. Rather, they set up businesses to make ends meet and eventually flourished.

More recently, the retail entrepreneurs Philip Green and John Caudwell made their fortunes in the U.K. after leaving high school and building businesses at young ages. And in the tech industry, Steve Jobs of Apple, Michael Dell, the founder of Dell Inc., and Oracle’s Larry Ellison all dropped out of college to create their companies, and they all reaped the rewards of getting an early start.

One thing that entrepreneurs have in common is a talent for seeing things differently. This allows them to identify important gaps in markets or the need for new sectors to serve specific customer demands. But this ability often leads budding entrepreneurs to rebel against the conformity that is common in traditional education.

I was no exception, and I have written in previous columns that I was not great at school. I constantly pushed against rules and authority, and I liked to challenge the way that things were “always” done. My curiosity often got me into trouble with teachers.

But it was not just my attitude that was different -- I had dyslexia. When I was a young student, this learning disability was poorly researched and was often mistaken for laziness or a poor ability to learn. At school I was thought to be slow, and indeed I struggled to keep up. I initially channeled my youthful energy into sport, then after an injury, I got into early business ventures, which failed to take off.

But my learning disability has never been a setback -- it actually gave me a great advantage in business, since I have been able to bring a different perspective to problems and challenges, which often enables me to see solutions more clearly. For example, I have always hated jargon, and I am confused by long and wordy drafts of plans. So in Virgin’s early days, I would ask simple questions that others did not. Over the years, asking the simple questions and striving to answer them have become some of Virgin’s most important characteristics.

When I was a young student, my restlessness and curiosity prompted me to set up Student magazine when I was just 15. Running the magazine actually served as an entrepreneurial education - I learned to effectively build a team, sell advertising, create content and market a product. I was my own boss and never needed to ask permission to try new things, and if I got things wrong, I did not have to fear the wrath of a superior. After all, a willingness to try new things and fail is important to becoming an entrepreneur, yet making mistakes flies against the expectations of traditional schooling.

So in many ways, my education has been my career. For almost 50 years, Virgin’s varied collection of businesses and nonprofits means that I have studied and come to understand many sectors - aviation, banking, media, hospitality and the fitness industry, to name a few. More recently, my career has also given me interesting new perspectives on many significant issues such as climate change, conflict resolution and global health care.

In the end, solutions to big problems such as these won’t come from doing school reports, but by getting out there, asking questions, seeing things differently and finding the answers ourselves.

 Source: Richard Branson

Success and Poverty

Success and poverty are not respecter of  profession,nationality and family name.They are respecter of principles of responsibilities and creating value for others.
So dream big to a success by being responsible and create value to the entire world!

MENTAL GROWTH: A RESEARCH ON HOW A BRAIN IS LIKE A MUSCLE

My 5-year-­old son has just started reading. Every night, we lie on his bed and he reads a short book to me. Inevitably, he’ll hit a word that he has trouble with: last night the word was “gratefully.” He eventually got it after a fairly painful minute. He then said, “Dad, aren’t you glad how I struggled with that word? I think I could feel my brain growing.” I smiled: my son was now verbalizing the tell­-tale signs of a “growth­ mindset.” But this wasn’t by accident. Recently, I put into practice research I had been reading about for the past few years: I decided to praise my son not when he succeeded at things he was already good at, but when he persevered with things that he found difficult. I stressed to him that by struggling, your brain grows. Between the deep body of research on the field of learning mindsets and this personal experience with my son, I am more convinced than ever that mindsets toward learning could matter more than anything else we teach.

Researchers have known for some time that the brain is like a muscle; that the more you use it, the more it grows. They’ve found that neural connections form and deepen most when we make mistakes doing difficult tasks rather than repeatedly having success with easy ones. What this means is that our intelligence is not fixed, and the best way that we can grow our intelligence is to embrace tasks where we might struggle and fail.

However, not everyone realizes this. Dr. Carol Dweck of Stanford University has been studying people’s mindsets towards learning for decades. She has found that most people adhere to one of two mindsets: fixed or growth. Fixed mindsets mistakenly believe that people are either smart or not, that intelligence is fixed by genes. People with growth mindsets correctly believe that capability and intelligence can be grown through effort, struggle and failure. Dweck found that those with a fixed mindset tended to focus their effort on tasks where they had a high likelihood of success and avoided tasks where they may have had to struggle, which limited their learning. People with a growth mindset, however, embraced challenges, and understood that tenacity and effort could change their learning outcomes. As you can imagine, this correlated with the latter group more actively pushing themselves and growing intellectually.

The good news is that mindsets can be taught; they’re malleable. What’s really fascinating is that Dweck and others have developed techniques that they call “growth mindset interventions,” which have shown that even small changes in communication or seemingly innocuous comments can have fairly long­-lasting implications for a person’s mindset. For instance, praising someone’s process (“I really like how you struggled with that problem”) versus praising an innate trait or talent (“You’re so clever!”) is one way to reinforce a growth ­mindset with someone. Process­ praise acknowledges the effort; talent­ praise reinforces the notion that one only succeeds (or doesn’t) based on a fixed trait. And we’ve seen this on Khan Academy as well: students are spending more time learning on Khan Academy after being exposed to messages that praise their tenacity and grit and that underscore that the brain is like a muscle.

The Internet is a dream for someone with a growth mindset. Between Khan Academy, MOOCs, and others, there is unprecedented access to endless content to help you grow your mind. However, society isn’t going to fully take advantage of this without growth mindsets being more prevalent. So what if we actively tried to change that? What if we began using whatever means are at our disposal to start performing growth mindset interventions on everyone we cared about? This is much bigger than Khan Academy or algebra — it applies to how you communicate with your children, how you manage your team at work, how you learn a new language or instrument. If society as a whole begins to embrace the struggle of learning, there is no end to what that could mean for global human potential.

And now here’s a surprise for you. By reading this article itself, you’ve just undergone the first half of a growth­-mindset intervention. The research shows that just being exposed to the research itself (­­for example, knowing that the brain grows most by getting questions wrong, not right­­) can begin to change a person’s mindset. The second half of the intervention is for you to communicate the research with others. We’ve made a video (above) that celebrates the struggle of learning that will help you do this. After all, when my son, or for that matter, anyone else asks me about learning, I only want them to know one thing. As long as they embrace struggle and mistakes, they can learn anything.

No quick wins in Business

Business is all about Relationship

It is easy to forget that people do business with people they like.This implies that business is all about relationship.
This implies successful business are those which are prone to make friendship and networking.Thus,relationship involves among others,shaking hands,do lunches,spread your good will,trying whatever you do to touch people's hearts and evangelizing your message

Quotation from Jay-Z

 "I am not a businessman.I am a business, man"