TRAITS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP

INTRODUCTION TO ENTREPRENEURSHIP

GROUP ASSIGNMENT

PREPARED FOR:  

MATHIVANNAN A/L JAGANATHAN

PREPARED BY:      

WEE ZHEE WUEI (234985)

CHEE FOONG ZHI (237751)

SHAHIRA BT MD SHARIF (239981)

SITI ROHANI BT ABDUL HALIM (240039)

1.0 INTRODUCTION

            An entrepreneur not an employee, they are individual that run a small business. They have to assume all the profit, expenses and risk of a given idea, business enterprise, goods or services. In new ideas and business processes, entrepreneurs are often seen as innovators and business leaders. 

            Entrepreneur is a prime mover and backbone of any economy, so these entrepreneurs have an ability, skill and initiative to bring new ideas to market and make the right decisions that would gain profit. The reward earn by entrepreneur which for taking business risk is the potential economic profit.

            Be a successful entrepreneur, they have a unique profile and characteristics. Those character, behaviour, trait and personality are already have on the entrepreneurs have brought many changer to the world. It made our life more advance and easier. Those ideas which come up from the entrepreneurs are influenced by their characteristics.

2.0 TRAITS OF ENTREPRENEUR

There are eight traits will be discussed in this assignment which are persuasion, self-confidence, work commitment, efficiency oriented, tolerance for failure, high initiative level, information seeking and problem solving.

2.1 PERSUASION

There are many factors that can affect a successful of entrepreneurs. One of the factors is the traits of entrepreneur. Among the general traits that are often associated with the personality of an entrepreneur who can give an overview of the trait and profile of an entrepreneur is persuasion. Persuasion can be defined as a powerful in term of influence. Persuasion can attempt to influence a person’s intentions, beliefs, motivations, attitudes or behaviours. In business, persuasion is a process aimed at changing a person’s or group’s attitude or behaviour toward some idea, object or another person, by using written or spoken words to give information, combination, feelings or reasoning thereof.

            They try not to be influenced by others. But they like to control others, to influence other people’s behaviour such as power to give directive to their employees, ability to influence customers to buy, bankers to give loans, government officers to open up business opportunities and so on. Persuasion can also be interpreted as by using one’s personal or positional resources to change people’s attitudes or behaviours. There are two types of persuasion that is systematic persuasion works through which attitudes or beliefs are influence by appeals to logic and reason and other one is heuristic persuasion through which attitudes or beliefs are influence by appeals to habit or emotion (Rosli Mahmood et al., 2010).

            As a successful entrepreneur, they will achieve their objective with the best ways that they can takes. They always think about how to makes their business growing and more successful. They will use the persuasion as the way. Example of entrepreneur who has trait of persuasion is Jan Koum. Jan Koum is a founder of WhatsApp application. Koum has managed to create Whatsapp application by using the observation and persuasion. At the beginning, he had trouble logging in Skype because he often forgot the password. Through these observations, he thought to create applications that do not require a password and simply use the phone number as the user ID. WhatsApp application also provides protection of personal information very good for users. This is due to the observation of the parents who often fear their conversation over the phone can be intercepted by the Ukrainian government.

            In conclusion, Jan Koum will always make observing to the surroundings and persuade people that made him be a successful entrepreneur today. He knows how to persuade and attract people to use this application. This trait helps him to meet the requirements and needs of the community over time. For the proof, the variety of uses in WhatsApp application gives the maximum satisfaction for the user. Now, whatsApp application has been upgraded with more uses such as can share types of documents. In fact, WhatsApp has been used extensively around the world for ease for uses.

2.2 SELF-CONFIDENCE

For entrepreneur, self-confidence is the most important trait for them to achieve successful business. Self-confidence defines as the entrepreneurs have a stand in making any decision despite stiff opposition from various quarters. They are willing to take risk, brave with the action taken. Besides that, entrepreneur is self-confident on his or her ability and capability. As an entrepreneur, self-confidence is the most important trait for entrepreneur, it is because without confidence in themself, becoming a successful entrepreneur is nearly impossible. There are many reason why entrepreneur must have a high level of self-confidence such as they need confident making a good decisions, self-confidence results in a positive attitude, confident individuals go on after failure and so on (Rosli Mahmood et,al, 2010).

            Entrepreneur must be confident and brave in actions taken if they want to achieve the goals and vision of the organization. Example of entrepreneur who has the trait of self-confident is Tan Sri Syed Mohktar Al-Bukhary. Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary is one of the most richest and successful entrepreneur both in domestic and abroad. The total net worth owned by Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary is approximately $1.76 Billion (Forbes, 2016). He is interested in variety of business such as logistics and transportation, plantations, property development, engineering and power generation. He was held with the philosophy that "education does not guarantee successful in life, but hard work".

            Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary has a high level of self-confidence on himself on making a good decision. He has successfully started a business with require making tough decisions. This is because, without confidence in himself, he will find decision making a difficult task. He is also confident on himself about his ideas, enhancing his ability to make good decisions. Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary was born in Alor Setar, Kedah in 1951 at middle class family. In youth, he helped his mother planting and selling vegetables in the market and selling roti canai. After finishing school, Tan Sri Syed Al-Bukhary helps his father in the business of cattle. Because he has a high level of self-confidence on himself, his success story in business began by helping his parents in the cattle business around 1960-an. However, this did not last long due to the outbreak of disease which hit their livestock. But, he never gives up because he has a high level of confident individuals go on after failure.  He has been prepared to go on after failure. He’s confident in himself and he realize that failing is just another step in the right direction. Hence, Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar took other initiative by applying for MARA’s assistance to start a lorry business in the 1970s. The lorry company which is known as “Syarikat Kenderaan Sentosa” now owns more than 40 lorries (Rosli Mahmood et al., 2010).

            Besides, Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary also have a high level of self-confidence results in a positive attitude. Self-confidence is a very important as an entrepreneur is to ensure you have a positive attitude. This is because, when entrepreneurs start a business, it is easy to allow fears and doubts to keep entrepreneurs from achieving success if they have a positive attitude. To Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary, his efforts did not stop at that point. In 1974, Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar bought his first shop house under the hire-purchase agreement with Urban Development Authority of Malaysia (UDA). He expanded his business empire by establishing Shah Company, known as a rice supplier to FELDA, MARA Senama, Pernas Edar and Sergam Sdn Bhd after having succeeded in obtaining the rice trading license from Lembaga Padi Negara or BERNAS.

            Tan Sri Dato’ Seri Syed Mokhtar Albukhary is one of Malaysia’s most recognised and successful business figures. Tan Sri Mokhtar Al-Bukhary confident on himself to challenging and make makes something different by venturing on various sectors of business. He brings exceptional knowledge, experience and foresight in managing diverse business environments because his have a large and heavily-diversified business portfolio. Tan Sri Dato’ Syed Mokhtar breakthrough into mainstream corporate activities with controlling interests in several public-listed companies including Johor Tenggara Oil Palm Berhad and Johor Port Berhad.

2.3 WORK COMMITMENT

Work commitment defined as the relative between work and self. (Loscoc, 1989) Commitment is multidimensional structure and complex. Commitment is the driving force of entrepreneur. It can take different forms. There has expanding the area of studied commitment. We can feel the commitment to a work, top management, supervisors or a particular work group. It is a long-term commitment to promise never give up on the dream, commit to get up and start again if destiny orders. Furthermore, commitments have been reviewed to “career, union and profession” (Darolia & Kumari, 2010). Studies have shown that high commitment to work has also been shown to be highly correlated with organizational performance. It is the second commonly researched work attitude in I/O psychology (PSUWC, 2013). It affects organizations to a certain level and enables companies to assess issues in vary economic stability, such as turnover.

As a successful entrepreneur, they will achieve their objective with the highest priority. They are concerned about satisfying their customers and commit to their work. For example of entrepreneur who has trait of work commitment is Richard Pratt. Richard Pratt was a brilliant Australian business man. He is the private company Visy Industries’ chairman. Pratt was Australia’s fourth richest person in the year before he die. His commitment quotes is ‘Encourage your people to be committed to a project rather than just be involved in it.”

2.4 EFFICIENCY ORIENTED

            Efficiency oriented way include a broad range of management approaches designed to increase the ratio of output to input for the organization. The definition of efficiency is the actual production and implementation of the content. It can also use the same resource such as money, consumption to achieve the content of comparison. In determination of productivity, efficiency is an important factor. Efficiency also can define as ‘how well are you using what you are using’ by Premji, 2006. The efficiency representation describes the performance level of a process that creates a maximum quantity of output using a minimum number of inputs. It also relates to the uses of inputs to produce any output, include energy and time.

            As a successful entrepreneur, they will always find the faster or use litter resources even lower cost ways to do things. For example, improve efficiency by using business tools or information, search a ways faster ways to achieve objective. They are interested in designing new ways to improve efficiency.

            Bill Gates is one of the example of entrepreneur who has the trait of efficiency oriented. Bill Gates is a business magnate, author, philanthropist and investor from American. He also is the co-founded Microsoft which is the largest PC software company in the world. The quote of efficiency is “The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” by Bill Gates.

2.5 TOLERANCE FOR FAILURE

The common theme of all entrepreneurs about failure is that is just a part of business. We often heard about entrepreneurs succeed because of them earned a lot of money but actually they are always continue to try again and again when others people would give up. Besides that, failure will makes them more motivated to achieve objective or target. For an entrepreneur, they will always learn from mistake to get experiences to overcome failures. Bill Gates (founder of Microsoft) says that “It is fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”

Henry Ford is one of the tolerances for failure entrepreneur. He is the founder of the Ford Motor Company. He introduced revolution automobile industry in United States. His innovative manufacturing process to produce low-cost, reliable vehicles, and at the same time keeping his workers well-paid and loyal.

There are some failures he faced before his success. Ford encountered failure when his initial production of first automobile which is called “Quadricycle”, the Detroit Automobile Company. In 1901, after the company began operations a year and a half, his partner, William H. Murphy got restless because he cannot see any result of the company. Soon, the company was dissolved due to a dispute with partner. But Ford did not give up. Yet, he reorganised his first company to construct his second venture which is the Henry Ford Company.

On his third attempt, he nearly failures again because of the low sales cause he impossible to pay back to the investors. Before the collapsed, the company was saved by angel investors. Thus, Henry Ford Company was born. “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently” said by Henry Ford. Ford is ability to take risk and learning from his failure to instruct him to become an inventor and a businessman. 

2.6 HIGH INITIATIVE LEVEL

A sense of initiative and entrepreneurship is defined by the European Parliament and the Council (2006) as ‘an individual's ability to turn ideas into action. It consists of creativity, innovation and risk-taking, and the ability to plan and manage projects in order to achieve objectives. Initiative is one of the essential traits to become a successful entrepreneur because if you are not willing to start without being pushed, your new business will never get off the ground. Thus, Jeff Bezos is one of the examples who had this trait.

Jeff Bezos was born on January 12, 1964 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States. He is an American technology entrepreneur and investor. He is the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Amazon.com which is an online merchant of books and a wide variety of products and services or called it online shopping retailer. Amazon.com became the largest internet retailer on the World Wide Web and a model for internet sales.

Jeff Bezos has used 5 strategies to build his empire. First is to be like the “God Father” just like make them an offer they can’t refuse. For instance, Amazon.com interactions with Melville House were not the most moral, but they help them to secure the deal. Second, do not give up information unless absolutely necessary. There are different between Amazon.com with others competitor because all information in Amazon.com is kept private and confidential. Third, keep teams small enough to feed with 2 pizzas. Two Pizza Rule is the management rules by Jeff Bezos. This is because the more people there are will lead to “group think” which will causes dysfunctional decision making. Fourth, stop talking so much. Jeff Bezos said “No, communication is terrible!” Cross-team communication limits team independence and leads to people agreeing too much. The last strategy is get adversarial. Those who do well at Amazon are the people who thrive in an adversarial atmosphere. Why? This is because, to avoid group thinking. When people are agreement with each other and consensus comfortable but innovative ideas is not come from comfortable.

Amazon.com became one of the most successful online retailers still now due to his high initiative level. Therefore, it shows that high initiative level is an important trait for entrepreneur to go forward and achieved a great success in business.

2.7 INFORMATION SEEKING

For entrepreneur, information is the biggest advantage for them to make their business more successful. Information seeking is one of the traits that all entrepreneurs need in their mind set. According to Peter Dara (2013), information seeking is when an entrepreneur is able to take an action on how to seek information in order to achieve business objectives and clarify business problems. This trait includes how well the entrepreneur does their personal research on how to provide a product or services.

Warren Buffett is one of the most richest and successful entrepreneur in the world. The total net worth owned by Buffett is approximately $64.3 Billion as he is the owner and CEO’s of Berkshire Hathaway (Forbes). He is also known as “wizard of Omaha” or “sage of Omaha” because of his generosity. The traits that had in Buffett is he always seek information before doing something because from that information, he can decide either he will success or not after investing in any project that he join. 

Buffett is an investor and he had his own ways to invest in any project. The approach he has always done is invested in only what you can understand and analyse. Buffett is really strict and he always seeks information before doing in investment. He’s a very meticulous entrepreneur and before he invests, he will always make an observation and try to find the best ways to invest in that company or in the stock market (Hagstrom, 2014).

Buffett’s father owns an investment company and from that time he learns how to invest and it shows how he gets the information about stock by watching his father work. The first investment he does is by buying three shares of city service for him and his sister. Buffett is interested in investment and stock market is when he always spends time in the customer lounge nears his father’s brokerage company. From that he develops the basis of stock market and finds more about investment through the information he get from his father and his observation.

Buffett also had a connection with Ben Graham as he tries to work on Wall Street but being opposed by his father and also Graham. Ben Graham is his teacher and he also taught Buffett how to invest. When Buffett discovers that Graham is one of the board directors at GIECO, he goes there and offered to work for Graham for free of charge but being rejected. But his hard work pays off when he opened Berkshire Hathaway and became a billionaire also the most influential entrepreneur in the stock market and investment sector.

One of the famous quote from Warren Buffett is “it's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price”.

2.8 PROBLEM SOLVING

Problem solving traits is something that all entrepreneurs must have because if they didn’t have these traits, it will create a lot of problems in future. Problem solving is really important because the problem can be an opportunity for an entrepreneur to success in their business.

            The best ways to overcome the problem is using the combination of intuition and logic. Sometime, logic is really important and useful compared to the facts. So, the entrepreneur need to be someone who always fast at thinking and can balance between fact and logic. The entrepreneur that has this trait is Steve Jobs, the founder and owner of Apple and Pixar.

            Steve Jobs is the founder and owner of Apple Inc.. He started the era of technology by creating a lot of gizmos and high technology gadgets. Jobs is very creative in creating and solving the problem faced by them. He leads Apple Inc. as a company that solve the problem and through that he creating an iPad as a substitution of laptop and notebook.

            He took the challenge and try to overcome the problem by creating something new and from that the generation of iPhone, iPod, iPad and IOS being created. Jobs most famous quote is “What I do all day is met with teams of people and work on ideas and solve problems, to make new products, to make new marketing programs, whatever it is”. From this quotation, it makes sense that he always challenge himself to create something from the problem that he faced to something new and innovative.

            When him being sick, he can create a new iPhone, and it’s really impressive because in that situation he can overcome the problem and concentrated on making a new gizmo. Unfortunately, Jobs was diagnosed with a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor in 2003 and died of respiratory arrest related to the tumor on October 5, 2011. But his contribution in the technology industry is very impressive and he is someone that will always be remembered.

  

3.0 BIOGRAPHY OF ONE SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEUR

TAN SRI DATO SERI DR. JEFFREY CHEAH “NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE TO SUCCESS”

Tan Sri Dato Seri Dr. Jeffrey Cheah Fook Ling is the owner and the founder of Sunway Group. He also is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for Sunway Group and the total net worth owned by him is approximately $865 Million and he is one of the richest entrepreneur in Malaysia (Forbes, 2016).

            He was born in Pusing, Perak and got his secondary education at SMK Sultan Yusof at Batu Gajah. Then he pursued his studies at Victoria University of Technology, Australia in Business Studies. After he got his bachelor degrees, he comes back to Malaysia and work as an accountant for a while before he start his own company in 1974.

               The first business he joins is tin mining company and being operated in Sunway. However, after a few years, tin in Sunway is slowly decreasing and he changed his business from tin mining to sand mining and quarrying. In 1984, his company Sunway Holdings Berhad had been listed on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange. After an economic downturn in late 1980, Jeffrey Cheah starts to diversify his business to hotels sectors, manufacturing and investment. Through that he succeeds to open Sunway City Berhad, Sunway Construction Berhad and Sunway Technology Berhad (Rosli Mahmood et al., 2010).

3.1 ENTREPRENUER TRAITS

Like others entrepreneur, Tan Sri Dato Seri Dr. Jeffrey Cheah also has a trait that really important in entrepreneur which is tolerance for failure, high initiative level, persuasion, self-confidence and information seeking.

            For tolerance for failure, in 1985 when Malaysia had suffered economic downturn, Sunway Group also had been affected. It almost makes the group losing their shareholders stocks when the economic downturn getting more critical in 1987. However, Dr. Jeffrey Cheah takes a challenge and plan to do different business in that situation. From that, he starts doing a lot of business focusing on construction, hotels, property development and property investment and manufacturing. The risk that he took during the crisis is really important because of that, Sunway Group grows big and had its own influence to the economic. He brave to do something different and he also braves to fail because one of the traits that all entrepreneurs must have is tolerance for failure. Tan Sri Dato Seri Dr. Jeffery Cheah is one of the entrepreneurs that have this trait and his philosophy is nothing is impossible to success and he proves it through the success of Sunway Group (Rosli Mahmood et al., 2010).

            Besides, he also is someone that has a very high self-confidence. It can be seen when he starts the tin mining business. Although a lot of people are not confidence in his plan to develop Bandar Sunway, but he is very determined and confidence that he can do it. The plan to develop Bandar Sunway is already in his mind for a long time and finally he succeeds to develop Bandar Sunway although the area is former tin mining. Now, the value for Bandar Sunway is approximately RM2 Billion and that area is really booming with a lot of facilities such as Sunway University, hotels, shopping complexes and so on. Though his self-confidence to develop and built Bandar Sunway although receive a lot of objection from his colleague make him success and he prove that confidence is really important in order to success in life.

            Tan Sri Dr. Jeffery Cheah also has a trait which is persuasion. Persuasion can attempt to influence a person’s intentions, beliefs, motivations, attitudes or behaviours. In business, persuasion is a process aimed at changing a person’s or group’s attitude or behaviour toward some idea, object or another person, by using written or spoken words to give an informative, combination, feelings or reasoning thereof. This trait is important for entrepreneurs to get the trust and to develop good relationships with other people to influence, to plead, to urge and to convince other people. This trait can be seen when the Asian economic crisis in 1997 in which Sunway Holdings Berhad also had been effected. In order to face the economic crisis, he takes an action to gather all the workers Sunway Holdings Berhad and showed them the stability of the company's accounts at that time. He wants to get the full supported from all employees by ensuring that the companies pay salaries on time. He acts like that because he wants all workers believe in the organization that led by him. The next step was by reducing the cost by selling machinery that not needed and closing down the business did not bring the profit for them. Tan Sri Dr. Jeffrey Cheah also reduced her salary and changed his lifestyles that would less the fancy and wasteful lifestyle.

            Tan Sri Dr. Jeffrey Cheah also has a trait that really important in entrepreneur which is tolerance for failure. He is someone who likes to learn from mistakes. He always prepared to go on after the failure. Not only depends on facts, he also does not forget to benefit from his instincts and using it in making a right decision. He also does not emotional when takes control of him because he makes decisions based on his mind, not emotions. Other than that, his risk-taking attitude, he highly respects and believes on his abilities and integrity is valued in achieving success. For example, he will make sure that all of his debts had been settled with the bank in deadline. That is his secret key to success in business that has been holding onto this whole time because his philosophy is “nothing is impossible in this world in achieving success” (Rosli Mahmood et al., 2010).

            Furthermore, information seeking is the next important trait that entrepreneurs should have if they want being a successful entrepreneur. For entrepreneurs, information is the biggest advantage for them to make their business more successful. This trait also refers to how well the entrepreneur does their personal research on how to provide a product or services. The traits had in Tan Sri Dr. Jeffery Cheah is he always seeking information before doing something because of that information, he can decide either he will success or not in any project  that he joins. Tan Sri Dr. Jeffery Cheah always looks for business opportunities abroad, such as Australia, Taiwan and India. At the same time, he also makes a partnership and joint ventures with a few companies such as the company of Singapore government investment. Now, he is the founder of the Asian Strategy and Leadership Institute (ASLI), an institution set up to promote international trade and investment through a high level dialogue.

4.0 CONCLUSION

            Entrepreneur is an engine of growth in economy. Entrepreneur are the people who have the skills and initiative necessary to provide a new ideas to market and to make the right decisions that lead to profitability. They are willing to take risk to achieve objectives and to earn higher profits.

            Furthermore, commonly the entrepreneurs are facing problems everyday with seemingly no end while they are started their business. But they never give up and try again and again to achieve objectives. This is because, it become a challenges for them to build up experience and knowledge in their life.

There are some traits of entrepreneur have been discussed in this assignment. There are includes persuasion, self-confidence, work commitment, efficiency oriented, tolerance for failure, high initiative level, information seeking and problem solving and others. These traits are helps them to achieve a great success in their business.

Steve Jobs, Henry Ford, Bill Gate, Warren Buffett, Richard Pratt, Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary and Jan Koum are the good example of successful entrepreneurs that we used in this assignment. Therefore, these entrepreneurs have a good trait of being a successful entrepreneur and role models that we should learn from.