All 3 entries tagged Entrepreneur

What are rules for?

Rules are there for being broken or rules are there to be kept? My research area involves entrepreneurship in my dissertation. Some of the interesting elements in a individual entrepreneur is that he or she stresses the boundaries of the rules made for keeping order in the business world. Some succeed other fails and serve time in jail. You should think that if you served time in jail you would not do something illegal again but that is not true. Well we all know the habitual criminals who steel which is not those who I am referring to. I am referring to the habitual entrepreneur who doesn't seem to learn from serving time in jail. He or she do fail but they try again when being released and sometimes fail again which goes on in bad circle. However some also succeeds and become very successful with their business and creates huge benefits for the society in shape of jobs etc.

Criminals don't do anything good for the society, I think that is what is the general thinking in the society, including me. They do create jobs for people guards and other security areas so they could be seen as being beneficial in a far out there way. But what about the entrepreneur?

He too is sometimes a criminal, but when he succeed people seem to look beyond his past and more focus on his current situation due to the success. Not like other criminals where the past keep haunting them down by not being able to find a job. Why is crime so different?

So when is it okay to break the rules and when should they be kept? is it always a question which can only be answered based on the current situation or can it be made general?

Rasmus Gejl Kristensen : 07 Aug 2012 16:34 |  Tags: Entrepreneur Rules |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

We are the new leaders of the world– Or is it followers?

Starting up a business sounds so exiting. You alone or with a partner are in charge of everything. Where should the money be spend, when does the day start and end etc. it's all up to yourself to decide. Creating an environment and future based on your own original vision. And last but not least earn a lot of money. It seems to be only positive factors in starting up a business, why do so few people start up then? And also why do so many company fail doing the startup phase?

Well for a start the whole picture around being an entrepreneur is wrong in my mind. Starting up a business is hard and requires a lot of work for it to be a success. The positive factors stated above is the goal and does not say anything about the journey towards it. It's not an easy journey- you will fail a lot of times. At least that what I was told doing my entrepreneur conference.

When comparing this with being a leader I find many similarities. Being a leader sound good and exiting so we ( maybee only I) tend to forget the journey towards becoming a leader. I think the journey is similar to the one becoming a successful entrepreneur. You will also fail on your journey to become a leader and the only thing you can do about it is learn from it. A leader has to do different things for being a leader. He has to be the one taking the first step into the new world. This have to require some experimental work doing the journey where some goes right others wrong. So how often have I seen a leader fail in my working experience?

Well I know every time one of my leaders has failed I have become frustrated of his or hers lack of competences. I never thought about his or hers development process towards being an efficient leader. Don't know how often this happens in the real life, but could this be one of the reason why some "leaders" don't dare to fail? or some entrepreneurs don't dare to take the first step? Because of frustrated followers?

If that's true, who then has the power- the leader or the follower?

Rasmus Gejl Kristensen : 22 Feb 2012 23:01 |  Tags: Entrepreneur Entrepreneurship Le |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Entrepreneur and MBE perfect cocktail

Just ended an fantastic weekend at an entrepreneur conference in Birmingham at Aston University. The topic of the event was "CTRL Alt Disrupt", which says it all. Everyone at this event was energized to the maximum level. People were positive, constructive and open to meet new people. Actually networking was a main part of this event and I must say I was pushed out of my comfort zone there.

My reason for taken part of this event was my MSc dissertation which is about entrepreneurship and excellence. The goal for me was therefore to find contacts which could help me gather data or just be a sparring partner in my project.

During this networking and talk with different entrepreneurs I quickly realized how different this environment was compared to MBE environment. People said or had some believes which was totally in conflict with what we learn at MBE. But that was just a signal to me showing the relevant for my project and what kind of areas I might be focusing on. When that is said, we could also learn a lot from their environment. People were supportive in a constructive manner, and everybody kept talking about their failures and what they learned from them. In a way they had what I would define as a safe environment, but that was only at this conference. The real world seemed to be different, which led to a thought.

You have to be brave for starting up a business, at least that was my interpretation of many different speakers experiences. It's like being a leader who takes the first step towards finding followers. But not in the way we have be thought or learned it. I heard things like " fire fast, hire slow", " paying bonus and commission is the only way to motivate sales people", " its all about the money" etc. all things which doesn't match what we learn about organizations.

Is the reason for this that a entrepreneur environment and an established organization is so different that theories cannot be shared? or is it a signal saying that entrepreneurs are in lack of scientific knowledge? It could also be the opposite that some theories are just talk and not able to be walked?

Well what I will conclude is just that Entrepreneurship and MBE seems to be a perfect cocktail.

Rasmus Gejl Kristensen : 19 Feb 2012 21:14 |  Tags: Entrepreneur Le |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem