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c United Arab Emirates

c University
Master of Business Administration
MGMT 620 c

Paradox of Entrepreneurship
Diary ± 1

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4/20/2011
 Paradox of Entrepreneurship
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The Paradox of Entrepreneurship Model is the first lecture which was done in the first week on 18 Mar
2011 this is the revise diary which will be submitted to the Dr. Maqsood.

From Day one Dr. Maqsood gave us confidence and encouragement to talk first about our background and
experience and gave us time to think about the things we are really blind to see. We believe that most of
students at the beginning didn¶t think of the idea of becoming entrepreneur as a valid idea; we all can¶t
become one of them; but the Dr. proved it to us that anyone can but what is required is to eliminate the
pessimistic behavior.

We all know that in our life there are different levels of the successesful people but few of them have unique business
ideas which they just keep it in our mind.


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The first impression was delivered to us from the Dr. Maqsood was that we don¶t really need to think like
that in order to be entrepreneurs we need to be smart enough. Everyone has their own way of looking to the
things surrounding them. We tend to look to a specific item in way that might not give us any sparking idea
however there are some people who might think different than us, he or she looks at the same thing we look
at before but unlike us they look from different angles so they develop some hunches that lead them to
innovate an idea.

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The Dr. questioned us what do we know about entrepreneurship in general? Or what comes to our mind
whenever we hear this word, the majority of the students said that entrepreneurship is starting your own
business.

Most of the students have negative thoughts of the idea of being entrepreneur because they believed that
entrepreneur have certain set of characteristics. To be successful we need to be more focused and daring.
For most of us we think the road of entrepreneurship is very risky and requires some skills and factors
which are not available for anyone.

We know from the Dr. that, there is a difference between the enterprise and entrepreneurship.
Any business organization or company may be called an enterprise. On the other hand the entrepreneurship
is a business created by an entrepreneurial person who has a different ways of thinking, use the opportunity,
undertakes innovations, finance and business intelligence in an effort to transform innovations into
economic goods and use new product or services or use the existing product or services and make them
unique and add additional value on them by using special skills and resources.

We can lose our money along with our own confidence, it is easy to take risks when you have nothing to
lose; we all know that risk is an action ceases to be risky if you only can gain from its outcome. Thats why,
entrepreneurship is less risky to those which have less. Furthermore, Progress can be made only when
failure is risked. Failure and setbacks are often learning experiences, a step on the road to success. Failure

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 Paradox of Entrepreneurship
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is not a disgrace; we should ask ourselves what we learned and say, ³Where do we go from here?´ to share
this saying ³The fastest way to succeed is to double your failure rate,´ said former IBM Chairman Thomas
Watson Sr., who used that formula to build a hugely successful company.

In the highlight of the innovation we would like to mention here a character in the Douglas Adam book it
describes innovation as it like learning how to fly. In the one of his trilogy Arthur Dent learn that flying is
learning to throw one¶s self at the ground and intentionally missing. It has to do with ignoring everything
you know to be true and taking the risk.

We would like to arise a question, which we didn¶t have the opportunity to state it. We would like to know
³Why does an entrepreneur start a venture?
Since the principal purpose of a venture is to add value through profit and growth, it has to be innovative to
gain the so-called abnormal profit or economic rent that may simultaneously be a necessary condition for
growth.

Another question raised by the Dr. Maqsood which causes argument was is an entrepreneur a person and
not a team, committee or organization?
Most of the students immediate answer was entrepreneur is person (individual), because they think that the
idea of starting a business holds individual prospective, maybe the idea itself started with one person but
logically he need more than one person the estimable his own business, we can¶t forget the resource here.

If we think that the entrepreneur is an individual we can explain by saying this person may have some
comparatives advantages in decision making, because he or she will have better information or different
perceptions of events or opportunities. We had read similar argument which is that entrepreneurial actions
are performed in all societies by individuals whose judgment differs from the norm.

To get the concept of entrepreneurship the Dr. went through the PowerPoint Slide and introduced to us the
7 skills of entrepreneurship:

when we looking at what required to succeed in the chosen market, there are critical skills that every
entrepreneur need, beyond those specific to their area of business, actually we are agreed with that as it will
be difficult to enter the market without specific skills to suit the market conditions.

We will go through all the 7 skills but we would to explore to theses 7 skills that we think every
entrepreneur need to have:c

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c1*cThink (begin with the end in mind) Plan (know what to do) Control Changes.
In our opinion, it has the same meaning of flexibility: Entrepreneurs must be able to adopt to meet the ever-
changing need for their markets. Sales skills Entrepreneurs must be able to read a market and differentiate
the products and services they offer. If we are not aggressive in business our products and services we will
not be able to hold it against our own competitors and will probably fail along with our business.

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Innovation is filled with paradoxes like this ± where we are simultaneously pulled in opposite directions.
We need to be comfortable with the ambiguity that this imposes on us. And we need to be wise enough to

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 Paradox of Entrepreneurship
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figure out which way is the best in each particular circumstance. Both of these are hard skills to develop ±
and even harder to quantify. But it¶s the soft skills like that which are essential to managing innovation.

We had some paradox entrepreneurship debates such as whether entrepreneurs born or made? Although
most of the students answers were revolve around the personality, we would like to explore our opinion inc
this argument in two angels:
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: we believe that according to some people, attitude is the most important personal
characteristics, which cannot be trained. The attitude of the entrepreneur affects the early success of the
venture. That same attitude needs to be present in the firm's employees to continue the entrepreneurial
energy that creates competitive advantage in the operation of the business, even after it has become a large
successful company.


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c*cHowever, attitude is not everything in terms of actually having success at an

entrepreneurial business. Knowledge about financial and marketing is far more important in today's world
in order to be able to compete in the economic market, as far as small businesses are concerned. A person
can have good aptitude and the drive to get something started, but do they have the knowledge to keep it
going and actually learn something from it? MONEY drives business, so much more than attitude will.
Thus an entrepreneur can also be made because they need to have the knowledge and skills to make a
business on their own work like it should be and not have to ride on the coat-tails of their employers. Any
dummy can start a business, but it takes a knowledgeable person to make it grow and prosper.

Some arguments between the students during the class about who can be entrepreneur, is the woman can
be, that drew our attention to that fact around the world most of known entrepreneur are men but we believe
that there are many women entrepreneurs but we do not know them and also we cannot ignore the life
circumstances and responsibilities of the women which may reduce their chance to lead and become
entrepreneurs.

To summarize our views in this argument, we all agreed on that it is a known fact that anyone can start a
business but not everyone has the ability to maintain and develop it successfully. We believe that the idea
that the characteristics of entrepreneurs cannot be taught or learned they are native behavior one must be
born with, has long been prevalent the hard reality is that our previous experience is not what will make us
an entrepreneur. At best it would make us a good start up business but it takes much more to make us an
entrepreneur. Anyone can start their own business if they have the spirit or the will to do so; but not many
are going to be entrepreneurs; we are all born with different characters, however, no special attribute exists
that will make us an entrepreneur.

There is a paradox contained in being an entrepreneur. On one hand we need to run a successful and
growing business that will produce enough income and revenue. What all this means is that we need to
focus very clearly on what might be successful and well accepted in the market place. On the other hand, if
we really want to be an entrepreneur, we need to be able to lead a business, take risks, going against the
flow and somehow we have the long sight of things to come. All these may take some times to develop.

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It is important for entrepreneurs to plan their business but we believe they need to plan a way to exist if
they uncertain about the business, if it unclear road they need not to cross it. We would like to mention
some article by Holekamp who use this concept in his article ³Keeping Your Exit in Mind,´ he outlines the
steps to take in order to build a new venture worth selling. From operations to legal advice, he says
planning to make your business independent or not completely dependent on its founder is crucial to
creating an efficient operation that will appeal to outside investors.


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We believe that although it is true entrepreneurs tend toward action, they are also thinkers. We can see that
they are often very logical people who plan their moves carefully. We see the importance today on the
creation of clear and complete business plans is an indication that ³thinking´ entrepreneurs are as important
as ³doing´ entrepreneurs.

Dr. explained that the entrepreneurs tend to be more opportunity-driven; we can describe them as people
who have high level of creativity and innovation combined with high level of management skills and
business know-how. In exploring this point we would like to add that entrepreneurs have intense
commitment and determined perseverance, they see the cup half full, rather than half empty, they strive for
integrity, they burn with competitive desire to excel and win; they are dissatisfied with the status quo and
seek opportunities to improve almost any situation they encounter, they use failure as a tool for learning and
eschew perfection in favor of effectiveness, and they believe they can personally make an enormous
difference in the final outcome of their ventures and their life.

The last one which we would want to mention is all entrepreneurs need is money. It is true that a venture
needs capital to survive; it is also true that a large number of business failures occur because of a lack of
sufficient financing. Yet having money is not the only a safeguard against failure. The failure can be due to
lack of proper financing often is an indicator of other problems: managerial incompetence, lack of financial
understanding, poor investments, poor planning and so. Furthermore, many successful entrepreneurs have
overcome the lack of money while establishing their ventures. To those entrepreneurs, money is a resource
but never an end in itself. Highlighting in the a presentation done by Amal from group 4 about some ³rock
starts´, if they are considered as entrepreneur or not, we would like to comment here we don¶t agree that
rock starts can be called entrepreneurs, because we think that these starts are wasting their money and never
use it to develop an entrepreneurial venture and because it is not where their passion lies.

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To summarize this diary in few words we think that in the midst of hardship, we can be stronger than we
think we are. Human beings grow most from situations they try hardest to avoid. Mistakes come from
doing, but so does success. We¶re playing it too safe if we don¶t fail occasionally. Effective achievers
focus on the task at hand and don¶t let the possibility of failure break their concentration.

I we understand the concept of entrepreneurship and all the factors and if we want to be one of
entrepreneurs then we need to have all skills such as leadership to lead the people to be innovative and add
value to the business, we need to became strong to make the decisions, we need to trust ourselves as
entrepreneur and trust the people around us.

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