Communication

Entrepreneurs need to practice effective communication both within their firm and with external partners and investors to launch and grow a venture and enable it to survive.

An entrepreneur needs a communication system that links the staff of her firm and connects the firm to outside firms and clients.

Entrepreneurs should be charismatic leaders,

so they can communicate a vision

effectively to their team

and help to create a strong team. Communicating a vision to followers may be the most important act of the transformational leader.

Compelling visions provide employees with a sense of purpose and encourage commitment.

According to Baum et al.

and Kouzes and Posner,

the vision must be communicated through written statements and through in-person communication.

Entrepreneurial leaders must speak and listen to articulate their vision to others.

Communication is pivotal in the role of entrepreneurship because it enables leaders to convince potential investors, partners and employees about the feasibility of a venture.

Entrepreneurs need to communicate effectively to shareholders.

Nonverbal elements in speech such as the tone of voice, the look in the sender's eyes, body language, hand gestures and state of emotions are also important communication tools.

The Communication Accommodation Theory posits that throughout communication people will attempt to accommodate or adjust their method of speaking to others.

Face Negotiation Theory describes how people from different cultures manage conflict negotiation to maintain "face".

Hugh Rank's "intensify and downplay" communications model can be used by entrepreneurs who are developing a new product or service.

Rank argues that entrepreneurs need to be able to intensify the advantages of their new product or service

and downplay the disadvantages to persuade others to support their venture.

Apple co-founder and longtime leader Steve Jobs (pictured in 2010) led the introduction of many innovations in the computer, smartphone and digital music industries

Stanford University economist Edward Lazear found in a 2005 study that variety in education and in work experience was the most important trait that distinguished entrepreneurs from non-entrepreneurs

A 2013 study by Uschi Backes-Gellner of the University of Zurich and Petra Moog of the University of Siegen in Germany found that a diverse social network was also an important characteristic of students that would go on to become entrepreneurs.

Studies show that the psychological propensities for male and female entrepreneurs are more similar than different. Empirical studies suggest that female entrepreneurs possess strong negotiating skills and consensus-forming abilities.

Åsa Hansson, who looked at empirical evidence from Sweden, found that the probability of becoming self-employed decreases with age for women, but increases with age for men.

She also found that marriage increased the probability of a person's becoming an entrepreneur.

Jesper Sørensen wrote in 2010 that significant influences on the decision to become an entrepreneur include workplace peers and social composition. Sørensen discovered a correlation between working with former entrepreneurs and how often these individuals become entrepreneurs themselves, compared to those who did not work with entrepreneurs.

Social composition can influence entrepreneurialism in peers by demonstrating the possibility for success, stimulating a "He can do it, why can't I?" attitude. As Sørensen stated: "When you meet others who have gone out on their own, it doesn't seem that crazy."

Entrepreneurs may also be driven to entrepreneurship by past experiences. If someone has faced multiple work stoppages or has been unemployed in the past, the probability of becoming an entrepreneur increases

Per Cattell's personality framework, both personality traits and attitudes are thoroughly investigated by psychologists. However, in case of entrepreneurship research these notions are employed by academics[which?]

too, but vaguely. Cattell states that personality is a system that is related to the environment and further adds that the system seeks explanation to the complex transactions conducted by both—traits and attitudes.

This is because both of them bring about change and growth in a person.

Personality is that which informs what an individual will do when faced with a given situation.

A person's response is triggered by his/her personality and the situation that is faced.

Innovative entrepreneurs may be more likely to experience what psychologist

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls "flow".

"Flow" occurs when an individual forgets about the outside world due to being thoroughly engaged

in a process or activity.

Csikszentmihalyi suggested that breakthrough innovations tend to occur at the hands of individuals in that state.

Other research has concluded that a strong internal motivation is a vital ingredient for breakthrough innovation.

Flow can be compared[by whom?] to Maria Montessori's concept of normalization, a state that includes a child's capacity for joyful

and lengthy periods of intense concentration.

Csikszentmihalyi acknowledged that Montessori's prepared

environment offers children opportunities to achieve flow.

Thus quality and type of early education may influence entrepreneurial capability.

Research on high-risk settings such as oil platforms, investment banking,

medical surgery, aircraft piloting and nuclear-power plants has related distrust to failure avoidance.

When non-routine strategies are needed, distrusting persons perform better, while when routine strategies are needed trusting persons perform better.

Gudmundsson and Lechner extended this research to entrepreneurial firms.

They argued that in entrepreneurial firms the threat of failure is ever-present, resembling non-routine situations in high-risk settings.

They found that the firms of distrusting entrepreneurs were more likely to survive than the firms of optimistic or overconfident entrepreneurs.

The reasons were that distrusting entrepreneurs would emphasize failure-avoidance through sensible task selection and more analysis.

Kets de Vries has pointed out that distrusting entrepreneurs are more alert about their external environment.

He concluded that distrusting entrepreneurs are less likely to discount negative events and are more likely to engage control mechanisms.

Similarly, Gudmundsson and Lechner found that distrust leads to higher precaution and therefore increases chances of entrepreneurial-firm survival.

Researchers Schoon and Duckworth completed a study in 2012 that could potentially help identify who may become an entrepreneur at an early age.

They determined that the best measures to identify a young entrepreneur are family and social status,

parental role-modeling,

entrepreneurial competencies at age 10,

academic attainment at age 10,

generalized self-efficacy,

social skills,

entrepreneurial intention

and experience of unemployment.

Leadership

Leadership in entrepreneurship can be defined [by whom?] as "process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task"

in "one who undertakes innovations, finance and business acumen in an effort to transform innovations into economic goods".

This refers to not only the act of entrepreneurship as managing or starting a business,

but how one manages to do so by

these social processes, or leadership skills.

(Entrepreneurship in itself can be defined somewhat circularly as "the process by which individuals,

teams, or organizations identify

and pursue entrepreneurial opportunities

without being immediately constrained

by the resources they currently control".

An entrepreneur typically has a mindset that seeks out potential opportunities during uncertain times.

An entrepreneur must have leadership skills or qualities to see potential opportunities and act upon them.

At the core, an entrepreneur is a decision-maker.

Such decisions often affect an organization as a whole, which is representative of entrepreneurial leadership within the organization.

With the growing global market and increasing technology use throughout all industries, the core of entrepreneurship and the decision-making has become an ongoing process rather than isolated incidents.

This becomes knowledge management,

which is "identifying and harnessing intellectual assets" for organizations to "build on past experiences and create new mechanisms for exchanging and creating knowledge".

This belief[which?] draws upon a leader's past experiences that may prove useful. It is a common mantra for one to learn from their past mistakes, so leaders should take advantage of their failures for their benefit.

This is how one may take their experiences as a leader for the use in the core of entrepreneurship decision-making.

Links to sea piracy

Research from 2014 found links between entrepreneurship

and historical sea piracy.

In this context, the claim is made for a non-moral approach

to looking at the history of piracy

as a source of

inspiration for entrepreneurship

education as well as for research

in entrepreneurship

and business model

generation.

Charismatic, "leadership" and "entrepreneurship"

The majority of scholarly research done on these topics has taken place in North America. Words like "leadership" and "entrepreneurship"

Global leadership - German culture frowns on such charisma - charismatic, leadership - do not always translate well into other cultures and languages. For example, in North America a leader is often thought of as charismatic,

Other cultures, as in some European countries, view the term "leader" negatively, like the French.

The participative leadership style that is encouraged[by whom?] in the United States is considered disrespectful in many other parts of the world due to the differences in power distance.

Many Asian and Middle Eastern countries do not have "open door" policies for subordinates, who would never informally approach their managers/bosses.

authoritarian leadership subordinates, would never - approach their managers/bosses

For countries like that, an authoritarian approach to management and leadership is more customary-Many Asian and Middle Eastern countries,

Despite cultural differences,

the successes and failures of entrepreneurs

can be traced to how leaders adapt to local conditions.

Within the increasingly global business environment

a successful leader must be able to adapt

and have insight

into other cultures. To respond to the environment,

corporate visions are becoming transnational in nature,

to enable the organization to operate in or provide services/goods for other cultures...