LB5933 Venture Capital and Entrepreneurship- Innovation and Creativity

This assessment is intended to get you to reflect on the key characteristics of an entrepreneur or innovator and to consider your own strengths and limitations in this respect. You are expected to identify three aspects of your personality and/or behaviour that exhibit strong entrepreneurial or innovation characteristics and three aspects of your character and/or behaviour that might inhibit your potential to be an entrepreneur or innovator. In so doing you need to consider the importance of self-development and self-managed learning in both innovation and entrepreneurship, and the extent to which an entrepreneur/innovator must take ownership of their learning. You need to relate your views to aspects of entrepreneurial theory as well as practice and where possible provide examples to illustrate and support your views.

In summary, reflect on your skills, personality and behaviour and explain how well placed you are to be an entrepreneur and/ or innovator, and in particular to manage entrepreneurial and/or innovative activities either within an organisation or in the preorganisational stages of an entrepreneurial endeavour.

Answer

Reflective Essay

Entrepreneurial personality refers to the personality that is combination of various characteristics and qualities that co-ordinately form individual distinctive characteristics. Personality traits in a person differ on the basis of their nature as characteristics that one person possess cannot be possessed by another person in the same way. Entrepreneurship refers to the act of initiating the business process by taking risk and working on various opportunities to earn profitability for the company. An entrepreneur effectively make use of innovation and creativity in the working environment to grow and earn maximum profits as well. The below mentioned reflective essay explain about three characteristics that I possess can help me to grow as an entrepreneur and three characteristics that can hinder my personal leadership growth.

Initially talking about the positive characteristics in me, it should be noted that I believe that I possess good communication skills in the environment wherever need. An entrepreneur and innovator need to make changes in the environment and then convince the subordinates to grow and succeed. I believe that with the help communication skills I can easily convince group of people to follow my decisions in the environment. Not only in the field of entrepreneurship, has a leader also needed to have good communication skills so that they can deliver their word to the people connected with them (Ahmetoglu, Leutner and Chamorro-Premuzic, 2011). Further, communication also helps me to satisfy people on large scale by listening to their issues and addressing them properly. I believe that good communication is something when a leader speaks as well as listen. Leaders need to circulate their views and opinion and at the same time listen to their issues and solve them appropriately. Further, second personality trait that I possess is great vision, I am a visionary person and I do not believe in taking decisions on the basis of temporary circumstances. I believe if I have to take a decision then it is not important it should give me benefit right then only, but I believe that it should for sure benefit me in future. In addition, I believe that successful entrepreneur always keep one eye on the futuristic vision and another on the current situation. In this way, they successfully grow by satisfying people at large scale.

Vision is strategic planning that creates an authentic futuristic path. Third characteristic trait is motivation; this aspect helps in motivating people and motivating myself as well. It is not important that every task deliver good results but I believe that failure leads to a great experience. Therefore, I think that I keep myself motivated in every situation and I have good capability to motivate other people as well. Motivation also helps me in convincing other to work in my favour that is believe is an entrepreneurial personality. Motivation brings enthusiasm among team and creates a positive environment as well. Thus, these are the three characteristics that I believe are most important for an entrepreneur.

Further, talking about traits that I believe can hinder my future entrepreneurial growth are varied as I believe that there is always scope of growth. First aspect is lack of risk taking ability. An entrepreneur is person who converts risks into opportunities and helps the company to growth. Risk taking is very important for an entrepreneur; it is the basic trait that an entrepreneur needs to possess. However, I lack in taking risk in the environment as it makes me fear of losing of what I have. Risk taking characteristic has its own benefit as well as drawback but an entrepreneur is one who converts the risks into opportunities for the company (Anderson, Poto?nik and Zhou, 2014. ). Further, second trait that can hinder my growth, as an entrepreneur is lack of versatility as being versatile is an important aspect that helps an entrepreneur to use innovation and creativity in their actions. Versatility also motivates the subordinates to grow and become versatile in the environment. I believe that versatility is an important characteristic that I need to adopt and learn. Self-learning is very important for an entrepreneur as the business environment is constantly changing (Karwowski, et al. 2013).  

Lastly, the third aspect is lack of flexibility. Flexibility is very important for the business along with the changing environment. Flexibility hinders the overall growth of a person as it stagnate the individual growth at various places. Flexibility, versatility and risk taking characteristics that I believe are very important and needed to be learnt from different environmental situations. Further, self-learning and development is the most important aspect for an entrepreneur as it constantly help them to learn and develop personally. According to me, these aspects help in building my personality and are very important for my personal growth as well. Working on these aspects will certainly help me to grow in my personal and well as professional life. Thus, in the limelight of above mentioned events, the fact should be noted that the above mentioned essay highlighted my personal characteristic traits that are good and bad as well. Some of these aspects are good and will help me in creating my life as a professional whereas there are some areas that I need to consider while working as a professional. Lastly, I need to develop the traits that I do not have right now and learn them from diverse environmental conditions. These traits will further help me to become a good leader.

References

Ahmetoglu, G., Leutner, F. and Chamorro-Premuzic, T., 2011. EQ-nomics: Understanding the relationship between individual differences in trait emotional intelligence and entrepreneurship. Personality and Individual differences, 51(8), pp.1028-1033.

Anderson, N., Poto?nik, K. and Zhou, J., 2014. Innovation and creativity in organizations: A state-of-the-science review, prospective commentary, and guiding framework. Journal of management, 40(5), pp.1297-1333.

Karwowski, M., Lebuda, I., Wisniewska, E. and Gralewski, J., 2013. Big five personality traits as the predictors of creative self?efficacy and creative personal identity: Does gender matter?. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 47(3), pp.215-232.