OE1-4.1 Entrepreneurship & the Entrepreneur
You can define entrepreneurship and the entrepreneur's characteristics and functions, distinguish entrepreneur from intrapreneur, describe first-generation and women entrepreneurship, and evaluate idea sources using personality, leadership and motivation models.
The entrepreneur-versus-intrapreneur distinction is more useful to engineering students than it first appears, because most of you will innovate inside an existing organization rather than found anything. Idea conception and evaluation is the practical skill here: ideas are cheap and evaluation is the scarce discipline. Treat the personality models as frameworks for reflection rather than as predictors — the evidence that any trait profile predicts entrepreneurial success is weak.
Work through these
Definition of entrepreneurship; characteristics of an entrepreneur
What the word means and what characterises the people it describes. Read the characteristics as tendencies rather than requirements.
Functions of entrepreneurs
What entrepreneurs actually do, which is mostly bearing uncertainty and organising resources. Stating the functions separates the role from the personality.
Entrepreneur versus intrapreneur
Doing it inside an existing organisation as opposed to on your own. The distinction is more useful to engineering students than it first appears, because the second is a realistic first step.
First generation entrepreneurs
Starting without a family business behind you, which is the situation most readers are in. The specific obstacles are worth naming.
Women entrepreneurship
The particular barriers and the particular support available. It is a real gap and the material treats it as one.
Ideas and their sources; conception and evaluation of ideas
Where ideas come from, and how to tell a good one from an appealing one. Evaluation matters more than generation, which is the counterintuitive part.
Personality: determinants, attributes and models
The psychology, which is here because the field has studied it extensively. Treat the models as frameworks rather than as tests you pass.
Leadership: concepts and models
Leading, which becomes necessary the moment there is more than one person. It overlaps with the management course material.
Values, attitudes and motivation
What drives people, which decides whether a venture survives its difficult period. It closes the topic on the human rather than the commercial side.
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