Introduction
There are endless companies around the world, some good, some bad, but a few of them excellent. Nowadays, it is common to speak of great successful entrepreneurs who have taken their company to a level that has exceeded even the expectations of their founders, but how come they have become so successful? What do they have that other entrepreneurs do not have?
In the following essay we will talk about a rare topic among Mexicans; "Entrepreneur" or, to undertake in the Spanish language.
Background
Entrepreneurship is a word commonly used to refer to a person who is about to start something. This word has been used since previous decades, however this concept has had great importance in the 21st century because society needs to solve its economic problems by creating its own business.
Undertaking… comes from Latin (from Lat. In, en, and prendĕre, take): Undertake and start a work, a business, an endeavor, especially if they involve difficulty or danger. (RAE, 2001) The word entrepreneurship comes from the French entrepreneur, whose meaning is "Pioneer" (RAE, 2001)
That said, we can understand that a business entrepreneur is a person who is about to start a business or innovate a business or add value to an existing idea, product or process based on a stated goal or objective.
However, entrepreneurship is not everything. For a company to work, it is necessary to constantly innovate in order to keep competing in the market and thus be able to prevent other companies from leading us to fail. Innovate is a word that causes admiration in those who execute it
Innovation is the introduction of a new or improved product, a process of a new marketing method or a new organizational method, into the internal practices of the company, the organization of the workplace or foreign relations (Innovation in Mexico)
Without a doubt, if we mix these two concepts, either to create or improve a product, the result will be an improvement in the competitive position and will help us to get ahead, unlike the data released by INEGI, in which it tells us that 200 thousand companies that are created every year, only 35 thousand survive the first 2 years from its foundation, of which only 25% have possibilities of development (Innovation in Mexico).
Development
A person who is really financially successful is not the one who works to carry out the business of a third party, a successful person is the one who decided to make his plan come true, is the one who has managed to finance his own company and manages to take it forward day by day.
It is common to see students who are graduates or about to graduate from their respective careers, preparing to work in a subordinate way, with a few deciding to start their own business or give a new twist to the family business.
Taking this into account, it is important to decide what you want to achieve and achieve when considering a business idea, but it is even more important to ask yourself questions like, What do I want to achieve? How can i achieve it? When am I going to do it? And how am I going to finance it?
Data reveal that In Mexico, 80% of small and medium-sized companies close the first year of operations due to lack of financial forecast (Notimex, 2011), this means that to undertake we must foresee the possible future events that we may face in the future. Entrepreneurship is an arduous task because without the proper knowledge, not much can be done to move the company forward. Although there have been people who have achieved a lot with little, it is necessary to have the initiative, motivation, innovation and knowledge to be able to make great changes.
People often ask me to explain Microsoft's success. They want to know the secret of how to go from an activity that employs two people and requires very little money to a company that has more than 21,000 employees and invoices more than 8,000 million dollars a year. Of course, there is not a single answer and luck has influenced in part, but I think the most important element was our original vision (Bill Gates Way to the future)
Bill Gates has been a person to admire, because giving up a prestigious university to found a company that would possibly fail, is something that is not seen often, much less if that company becomes a revolutionary icon that generates billions of dollars. We could say that Gates has an entrepreneurial spirit, he is a person who has managed business perfectly. Bill Gates is an enterprising person because he decided to give up something to achieve something bigger than he could have imagined, Gates is a person with innovation initiative because he has created unique characteristics in his products that it is difficult for the competition to copy.
The reason that undertaking becomes a difficult task is because there are problems along the way that can lead to failure. The most common problems that an entrepreneur faces are:
- The lack of support obtained by sharing the idea with friends and family causes demotivation.The lack of financial resources to finance the project could prevent us from carrying out our business idea or in the same way could make us fall into a bigger debt than you can pay for. Lack of motivation. It is common for people to become discouraged in the first days of starting a business, this because they do not receive large income as they expected. This does not always mean that the company is not profitable. The proposal of an unprofitable idea is a mistake made by many entrepreneurs, it is common to see companies so poorly thought that after a few days they end up closing.
It is necessary to adopt an entrepreneurial and innovative mindset to be constantly changing for an evolving market. People should be more concerned with making a profit than with making an income. Great leaders should think like entrepreneurs and keep the following in mind:
- Anticipate the future with possibilities of failure. Large companies have revealed that the secret to their success has been the ability to learn from their failures.
Great entrepreneurs do not realize that to succeed you have to fall and get up, that is why an entrepreneur rarely succeeds on the first attempt and even many of them give up without trying a second time.
- Delegating a little power is good. We must realize that in order to get a company afloat it is necessary to lean on someone else and share information and ideas to be able to move the company forward. Learning new things is important to obtain knowledge that can help improve work performance, as well as to acquire new skills. Follow your instincts since perhaps in business you will have to make important and risky decisions. He decides to hire people with a sense of innovation and initiative for the company and not those who only have a good title.
Perhaps one of the most important points for achieving success in the market is being able to constantly innovate the ways of working, the ways of producing and thinking. It is a very important factor since through innovation we will give ourselves the task of changing in order to continue satisfying customer demand.
conclusion
Thinking and wanting is not the same as wanting and doing. A person who lives by dreaming and creating a world of fantasies may be an entrepreneur, but if everything remains in just that, a dream, it will not transcend. To achieve what we want in life we have to dream and create, idealize what we want, make it come true. And as we saw earlier, those types of people are those who undertake their dreams, who seek to be the winners of their lives and who never give up.
It is important that we all always seek our own essence, that is, what distinguishes us from anyone else. And this essence will only be achieved if we undertake and innovate our own ideas, and not copying those of other people. Remember that many times we will have to make decisions that may be wrong or right, and regardless of whether we are wrong or not, what is important is that those decisions will give us the experience we need to continue moving towards our goals.
Works cited
- Bill Gates Way to the future. (sf). Retrieved on June 13, 2014, from http://blogs.fad.unam.mx/academicos/cuauhtemoc_garcia.pdf Innovation in Mexico. (sf). Retrieved on 06/03/2014, fromNotimex. (25 of 10 of 2011). THE ECONOMIST. 80% of SMEs in Mexico close due to lack of forecast, p. 1.RAE. (2001). Spanish dictionary. Retrieved on 04 of 06 of 2014, from
