What’s important in a business environment is the ability to create jobs and not so much to be employed. PHOTO | FILE
What you need to know:
Doing business requires skills that make a business competitive, productive and sustainable. This is what is needed in today’s world
Dar es Salaam. Somewhere someone must write a word and that person could be you, says Chinua Achebe.
To be successful in business requires knowledge of social skills that encourage transformation leadership, a passionate team and employees, business development services, financial services and non-financial services such as capacity building (training), consultancy, services advisory, marketing strategies, among other things.
Some businesses are not performing well. The issue is not the symptoms of a business, but what deliberate efforts needed for its success.
The majority of people are ambitious to run and own businesses as others do from entrepreneurship rather than a traditional business perspective, where the former is more innovative and revolutionary to meet the 21st century challenging business environment.
To balance things, entrepreneurship means special talent that some people have for searching and taking advantage of new business opportunities and developing new products and new ways of doing things. An entrepreneur does any or all of the following three things: searches and takes advantage of new business opportunities, develops new products and services and develops new ways of doing things.
Entrepreneurship skills are inevitable and are needed for a sustainable business. A businessperson starts a business from an existing idea or concept. Furthermore, he or she hires to increase productivity and earn a living from his/her business, whereas an entrepreneur starts a business from a unique idea or concept. UK business coach Peter Ryding and a successful entrepreneur says 70 per cent of entrepreneurs are naturally born, 20 per cent nurtured and 10 per cent trainable.
Such people possess core genetic characteristics, which he terms adaptive thinking and seeing reality with a positive spin.
Brian Morgan, professor of entrepreneurship at Cardiff Metropolitan University, says about 40 per cent of entrepreneurship skills can be thought of as in the DNA, but 60 per cent of the competencies are required to create a successful and sustainable business.
San Francisco based technology investor Jennifer Moses and former advisor to former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown says economic necessity sourced or making more people think about starting their own company and necessity is the mother of invention.
Luke Johnson says changing the nature of a job market is making more people start their companies. He also says the workplace is more fluid than it used to be and taking charge of your working life can actually be a better choice as you do to a degree your own destiny.
Cary Cooper, professor of organisational psychology and health at Lancaster University Management School says negative life experience in childhood (divorce, poverty, being bullied at school) makes an individual survive this, learn from it and want to bounce back or prove people wrong. This determination makes them far more prepared to take calculated risks needed to be a successful entrepreneur.
Successful entrepreneurs such as Tanzania Private Sector Foundation chairperson Reginard Mengi, Said Salim Awadh Bakhresa and other Tanzanian mentors. Starting and running one’s own business entity is everyone’s dream.
There is empirical evidence from Business Registrations And Licensing Agency (Brela) on an increase in the number of registered individual companies whether sole proprietor, partner or corporate though surveys show some die within the first three years of operation, five years and so on.
Bear in mind that there is a high risk in postponement than making a wrong decision. Running a business today is more challenging than ever as most businesses face some challenges such as retaining and pulling back old customers, attracting new ones, environment sustainability, building a business image, market competition, service and product quality, sustainable peak and others.
Entrepreneurship is superior to traditional business as it gives innovation clues in solving people’s problems with almost equal fruits of distribution to all social classes.
The author is an economist, an entrepreneur and a business analyst. He is also managing director of Service Adding Value Training Network Tanzania Company. He can be reached at [email protected], +255754988050 or +255712533772.
