Thank you for the feedback. This is the first time a thread has gone more than 10 comments with a lot of people chipping in their opinions on achievement.

Yek Soon and Darius:
On the definition of entrepreneurship, here is how I differentiate an entrepreneur from a business man. A lot of people use passion as a distinguishing feature, but through the following:

An entrepreneur is a business man who either comes up with a new innovation or product that will revolutionize the marketplace or redefine or redraw the boundaries of a traditional market with a different and new business model that is not previously known. To me, in economics, an entrepreneur participates the process of creative destruction in the economic cycle of the firm. Hence he can also work for a big company.

For example, a young student who starts a cafe like Starbucks cafe is not an entrepreneur. He or she is an entrepreneur when he or she creates a new service or new theme for the cafe, maybe a different kind of coffee brewing or another way to attract her customers.

Anonymous:

I do agree with you that there are two groups of people who are engaged in entrepreneurship, the observers and the players. I was a player before I have to be forced to be an observer because of being employed by a government agency.

As an academic, my philosophy is that entrepreneurship is a contact sport, i.e. if you have not started up a company and gone through any three of the five stages which I mentioned, you should not research on the entrepreneurship process.

Fortunately, I went through the process and I am still doing that in the big corporation which I worked for. I worked out the business model for the technologies generated within my institute both as the scientist and the intrapreneur. I think that the research is only possible if you have been part of the process.

I welcome further debate on the issue.

the word “entrepreneur” is a box that traps people. there’s entrepreneurship everywhere, the fruit drink store in NUS science canteen – very entreprenuerial. every week do research and try need recipe. some selling very well with high margins – avocado, beetroot apple, etc.

( this reminds me that someone recently said we should take the word “social” out of “social entrepreneurship” – otherwise it implies that social entrepreneurship is a special kind of entrepreneurship and thus other businesses does not have to be socially responsible, which is not true )

i think the point is this..Bill Gates is a drop out and is successful does not means much. You have to understand yourself. If you can get statistics, i believe u will find an even distribution in terms of success in both dropouts and non drop out. The point is that dropouts success makes a better news story that is why you hear it more often!

I think there are only 2 things to consider

1. Personal. What do you want to achieve for yourself? Your goals etc.

2. Business. What do you want for the business? Start thinking about cashflow and profit for the business.

If ‘experience’ is the name for mistakes made, then ‘entrepreneur’ is the glorified name of being in business.

The key thing still lies in knowing what you want to achieve. A plan for 5, 10, X years down the road.

i believe in writing business plan – and constantly rewriting them.

i think we are dealing with the issue of visibility here – students dont have visibility, and thus have courage to venture into the wilderness; whereas people who have too much visibilty knows the journey is too perilous to take on.

BUT that does NOT make visibility itself a bad attribute.

it’s like a weapon – it’s not good or bad, but in this world you rather be the guy who has the weapon then the guy who doesnt.

to reiterate my point, i think a lot of students fall into the trap of percieved visibility – the business model makes sense and looks good, thus it will work. this report says there is this pain – so the organization will pay to solve it.

whereas i have learned the hard way that this is not so, sometimes things just dont work out even if they make sense. a small legal problem may throw you completely off course, or that a fantastic business model canibalizes the main business of an essential partner and thus gets thrown out.

there are too many variables. the best way is to test it first before jumping blindly.

my 5 cents!

Back then, when they were in primary school, they had a close friend that was very enterpreneurial. He would buy rubbers, pencils and books and sell them in school to fellow students.

Then her parents migrated to China, both got a University degree, yet the other friend stayed back in Indonesia, out of school and moved on.

Now that friend owns a bank. So we joked with her, had your parents stayed back, they could have been co-owners.

I think, only yourself know whether or not you are ready to be an enterpreneur. If you are green after school, then gain more experience before start.

If you are already selling pencils, rubbers and books when you were in primary school. By all means, start something even before you finish your school!!!

I think you pulled one of my favourite quotes out of the hat, TY.

I’m Rachit and I an alcoho … sorry, entrepreneur :)

Obviously, I’m quite biased here … having started my business immediately after graduation.

And a little disclaimer, I’m also probably gonna be politically incorrect.

This message is meant for those people who know they want to be business owners eventully … but just haven’t taken any action yet (and it’ll probably sound a little strange to everyone else … my apologies :)

Most people are kidding themselves when they announce to the world that they want to get some “experience” under their belt first.

They probably aern’t ready to start their businesses … but experience isn’t the problem. 3-5 years of another job won’t make an ounce of difference when you actually start up.

The real problem is that they don’t have the right skills.

They’re not confident if they can market their products well enough. They don’t know how to manage people well yet. They just don’t have confidence in themselves to carry the venture off.

But guess what … confidence comes from success.

It’s sort of a cycle … the minute you get your first tiny taste of succcess, you’ll start to feel more confident and do your job of being a business owner better.

You can’t get that success from the “experience” of doing a semi-relevant job for someone else.

You really won’t know what the water tastes like, unless you jump into the pool (Yeah, I’m a sucker for poetic metaphors).

So, here’s my advice … take all the time you need before starting your venture.

But don’t give anyone the excuse of “gaining experience”.

Spend every waking second picking up the skills you need to be successful.

Study wealth attraction (read “think and grow rich”, “the magic of thinking big”, robert kiyosaki etc) … study effective real-life marketing (find books by Jay Abraham, Dan Kennedy, Jay Conrad Levinson) … fix your inner game for success (read Dale Carnegie, study NLP, stephen covey etc).

And do all this so that at some moment in time … a few months down … you can take an objective look at yourself and say – I’m now good enough to manage this business on my own and don’t have any more excuses to hold me back.

I know I was sometimes overly dramatic in the last few paragraphs … but if you’re an entrepreneur at heart, you owe it to yourself … to give yourself a fair chance at success.

Pick up the skills, be honest with yourself and then take lots of action.

Good luck, and I’ll see you at the top!

Rachit (www.RachitDayal.com)