What are the skills required for Entrepreneurship?

Skills required for entrepreneurship

The skills which entrepreneur possesses include his ability to deal with new situations, organisation, social and economic forces as they arise from time to time.

The skill to deal with a situation which suddenly arises must be an essential characteristic of an entrepreneur. The small entrepreneur must have the skill to get positive response from bankers, administrators, infrastructure institutions, employee and clients.

The entrepreneur is directly responsible for all the aspects of business though he rarely possess all management skills. Often he assumes the post of General Manager, personnel manager, production manager all rolled into one.

Therefore an entrepreneur should have an understanding of marketing, finance, banking, quality control, commercial law, government regulations and procedures and human relation.

Types of Skills Required:

(1)   Technical Skills: An entrepreneur must have a reasonable level of technical knowledge. He should be proficient in the use of specialized information, methods, processes, procedures and techniques involved in the technology of the product or services of the industry or company.

(2)   Behavioral Skills: It is utilization of knowledge to understand people. It requires and awareness of attitudes and beliefs held by individuals and groups and how these govern their goal reaching processes.

(3)   Conceptual Skills: An entrepreneur should have the ability to utilize the existing knowledge in order to acquire additional knowledge. It is the purposeful risk taking for creating new conditions. These skills are interdisciplinary in which various functions of systems depend on others systems as well as the way changes in any other part affect all the others.

(4)    Economic-Business Skills: It is utilization of knowledge to understand a business enterprise operating in a market for the sale of goods and services. It involves use of scarce and limited resources to meet changing and unpredictable demands, the strategy of production, distribution and consumption of goods and services with minimization of output and minimization of input.

(5)   Implementing Skills: It is ability to get the work done on a day-today, programme-to-programme basis or the ability to concentrate on availability of resources of time, money and manpower to initiate an activity, conduct the activity and bring it to a successful end.

(6)    Strategic Skills: An entrepreneur must have a vision for the future. He/she must be able to see the bigger picture and know where he/she is going with everything. Setting clear objectives and effective strategies are essential for running a business successfully.

(7)   Financial Skills: The success of a business is measured by the profit it makes. It is essential that the entrepreneur has knowledge about managing income and costs. The long-term future success of the business is also determined by the type of investments the business makes and how successful the entrepreneur manages those investments.

(8)   Management Skills: A manager/entrepreneur ensures that work is done and completed successfully by taking responsibility for Planning, organizing, leading and controlling.

(9)   Human Relations Skill: The success or failure of an entrepreneur depends on the maintenance of public relations or human relations. The most important skill contributing to his success are the personal relations, stability, consideration and tactfulness. In order to achieve higher productivity and efficiency he must maintain good relations with his employees.

(10)Communication Skills: An entrepreneur should have the ability to communicate effectively. Good communication means that both the sender and the receiver of the message understand each others. An entrepreneur is most likely to succeed if he can communicate effectively with his employees, creditors, suppliers as well as customers.

(11)Diagnostic Skills: This skill is used to measure risk. It gives an idea as to how to go about planning and developing. It consists of two parts — technical diagnosis and commercial diagnosis. The technical diagnosis consist of evaluating two dimensions of risk, i.e. risk related to technology and the risk related to technological environment. The commercial diagnosis consists of assessing the dimensions of risk: the advantages and shortcomings of the company and the market appeal and constraints.

(12)Project Development Skills: The entrepreneur should have the skill to make a suitable and proper selection of the project which will give him reasonable returns. It is said well begun is half done, therefore if the project is selected with due care and developed in the right way it could achieve sure success.

(13)Marketing Skills: Modern marketing considers the creation of customer as the purpose of marketing. It is a broad concept with stress on consumer satisfaction and social welfare. Special attention is to be given towards different social groups. Therefore an entrepreneur should possess selling skills which will produce revenue for the project to succeed.