A compilation of my thoughts and learnings...

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Entrepreneurship in India

Well, when we talk about entrepreneurship, which is the first country that comes to your mind? United States? Singapore? Japan? What do you think when someone talks about Entrepreneurship in India? Is "naah" your immediate reaction? If so, read these snippets from a recent article in TOI. They might make you think otherwise...

"With about 11 retail shops for every 1,000 persons, India has the highest shop density in the world. That's one shop for every 20-25 families. In cities, the density is much higher. Delhi, for example, has nearly 45 shops per thousand persons! Americans, arguably the biggest spenders in the world, have to make do with just about 4 shops per 1,000 persons."

So, if we consider these facts, we have counted atleast 12 million entrepreneurs in India. Of course, I have trivialized the counting over here by equating each shop owner to an entrepreneur. But hey, aren't "Hard work", "Desire to work for themselves" and "Optimism" some of the key characteristics of entrepreneurs? Believe me, we Indians are pretty good at exhibiting these ;-)

My take - India might lack the advanced technology or infrastructure that seed so many ventures in the western world, but it does have a lot of other things which are equally crucial for a successful venture. To mention just a couple of them:
  1. A culture that promotes socializing and team work - Don't we all agree that collaboration is one of the biggest building blocks for entrepreneurship?
  2. A huge domestic market - With such a large population base, capturing even a mediocre market share can mean huge revenues/profits.
Now coming to certain areas where I feel we need to get our act together:
  1. Orientation to excellence - We have accepted mediocrity for far too long. The "chalta hai" attitude, as also recently highlighted by our PM, is our biggest bane. We have to conquer it, and conquer it fast.
  2. Organization and Support System - Our industrial environment, procedures, bureaucracy and red tape are causing a lot of entrepreneurs to shun even the most stupendous of opportunities. Also, the society and the government needs to do a lot more to promote entrepreneurship and support entrepreneurs. Institutes like "Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDI or EDII)" and "Indian Institute of Entrepreneurship (IIE)" are few and far between.
  3. Role models for entrepreneurs - Entrepreneurs are admired and emulated. It is time for the media to uncover and idolize more Dhirubhai Ambanis and Narayan Murthys.
To end this post, I'll use another recent quote, attributed to our PM, as a reply to the question, "What must we do to build a strong India?". His response, "Our strength will lie in the capabilities of our industry, in our ability to produce enough food for our people, to generate enough electricity, and to create a knowledge-based economy with full literacy".

Promoting entrepreneurship is definitely a good and fool-proof road to reach there!

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Characteristics of an Entrepreneur!

In the previous post, I had tried to share my thoughts around "What is Entrepreneurship?". In this post, I will highlight some characteristics of entrepreneurs as enlisted by John G. Burch. I was trying to find a definition for the word "Entrepreneurship" when I ran across this list on wikipedia. I thought I'll list it here so that all of us can relate that a budding entrepreneur is hiding within each one of us ;-)

John G. Burch[Business Horizons, September 1986] lists traits typical of entrepreneurs:

  1. A desire to achieve: The push to conquer problems, and give birth to a successful venture.
  2. Hard work: It is often suggested that many entrepreneurs are workaholics.
  3. Desire to work for themselves: Entrepreneurs like to work for themselves rather than working for an organization or any other individual. They may work for someone to gain the knowledge of product or service that they may want to produce.
  4. Nurturing quality: Willing to take charge of, and watch over a venture until it can stand alone.
  5. Acceptance of responsibility: Are morally, legally, and mentally accountable for their ventures. Some entrepreneurs may be driven more by altruism than by self-interest.
  6. Reward orientation: Desire to achieve, work hard, and take responsibility, but also with a commensurate desire to be rewarded handsomely for their efforts; rewards can be in forms other than money, such as recognition and respect.
  7. Optimism: Live by the philosophy that this is the best of times, and that anything is possible.
  8. Orientation to excellence: Often desire to achieve something outstanding that they can be proud of.
  9. Organization: Are good at bringing together the components (including people) of a venture.
  10. Profit orientation: Want to make a profit; but the profit serves primarily as a meter to gauge their success and achievement.

For those who want to read the complete write-up on wikipedia, here is a quick link, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrepreneur. It is pretty interesting!

What is Entrepreneurship?

Isn't it true that nowadays, wherever we look around ourselves, we find our friends and colleagues moving out of their jobs? Well, look who's talking... Didn't I myself just do that? :-)

Jokes apart, in the past 14 days that I have been on my own, I have already met 3-4 friends who are in a similar situation. Some have already left their jobs, while some are in the process of doing so. Most of them are moving out because they want to start their own business. So, keeping the title of this post in mind, am I implying that moving out of a secure job and building a business of our own is entrepreneurship? Does taking risks to tread uncharted territory mean entrepreneurship? The answer is yes and no. Yes, because this is one way that can lead to entrepreneurship. No, because entrepreneurship is a much more evolved concept than just starting a business or taking some risks.

If you ask me, I would say that entrepreneurship is one's desire to evolve. It is the desire to identify one's own capabilities by testing them to the limits. It is our desire to shape the future of the world, in whatever small capacity. Entrepreneurs are people who want to do something innovative, something which is unique to them.

Now this leads me to discussing a very common notion about entrepreneurship, which I believe is wrong. According to Investopedia (http://www.investopedia.com/), an entrepreneur is "An individual who, rather than working as an employee, runs a small business and assumes all the risk and reward of a given business venture, idea, or good or service offered for sale". While this seems fine coming from the mouths of "Investopedia", which projects itself as "Your source for investing education", it is wrong to imply that to be an entrepreneur one has to quit their jobs. I truly believe that one can be an entrepreneur while still working with some organization. I'll probably write another post, "Entrepreneurship in a job", to convey what I mean by this. But that's for later.

The following definition by "Houghton Mifflin" (http://www.hmco.com/indexf.html), "One that creates, founds, or originates", is the one that I believe comes closest to capturing the real spirit of an entrepreneur.

Well, what I have done with these few words is share my thoughts around what is entrepreneurship. I know a lot of you out there have your share of thoughts on this topic. So I would like to invite all bricks and bouquets. Do keep them coming ;-)

I am back to blogging...

Okay - I did say that I have started blogging. But from no account have I done any justice to it so far. Hence, here I am, back, to make amends. And what better way than to write a couple of posts, one after the other.

Choosing a topic to write on is a very difficult thing. For a couple of days, I had donned my thinking cap and deliberated a lot to come up with a topic that I should write on. Ideas ranged from giving a spin to some of the cliche sayings, to some around writing a post on some of the technical topics. But then I thought, let's write about something that is the flavour of the season. And is so rightly so. The topic that I am talking about is "Entrepreneurship". As soon as that word came to my mind, there was a free-flow of ideas moving all across my brain. So much so, that the neural system, which was once finding it tough to utter even a single word that could be written on any topic, is now having such a hard time filtering out content which should be skipped. Perhaps, I might do a mini-series on this topic. So, without much further ado, I'll move on to writing my next post in which I'll share my thoughts around "What is Entrepreneurship?"

Saturday, December 2, 2006

The entrepreneurial bug

Ok guys - the entrepreneurial bug has struck me, and I have decided to take matters in my own hands. I have quit my job, and am on my own now.

I have a few ideas that I am passionate about, and over the course of next few months, I will try to crystallize them and see if they make commercial sense to implement. Some of the ideas are in the IT domain while some are non-IT. But in the short term, I would be focusing on the IT-related ideas only.

Of late, blogging has become a very powerful means of communicating one's feelings/thoughts. Hence, I too have got inspired and have decided to share some of my thoughts on life, management, work etc. through this medium. The first one is coming right after this post...

Would love to hear your feedback on the same!

Cheers,
Amit

If you are replaceable, then you are indispensable!

Ever wondered why you constantly hear the phrases, "Oh, that guy is indispensable!" or "Thank god, he is in my team!", over and over again for the same person? Ever wondered why it is always someone from only a handful set of people who keeps getting picked for any new assignment that is interesting or challenging? What's your first reaction when you notice such things? "That guy is extremely intelligent", or maybe "He is extremely lucky"? Agree that such people are both highly intelligent, and that luck might also be on their side. But look deeper, you might find something really interesting…

Most of the fast movers are typically the ones who make their entire team run with them. While they are focusing on getting their day-to-day job done well, they are paying equal attention to getting replaced easily. These are the people who will organize their work properly, make sure that each member on their team keeps high-level tabs on all the work being done by everyone, and are actively involved in knowledge–share sessions, be it the technical domain or understanding the bigger picture related to different aspects of their organization's business. If I can call them so, they are typically "great delegators". By grooming the junior members on their team to take on more and more of their current responsibilities, they are creating bandwidth for themselves to start contributing towards more challenging/interesting assignments. Whenever something new comes up, these guys have already developed the next set of people who can do their current job, thereby allowing the senior management to easily move them elsewhere. Every good manager wants such people, and these people are always "available" when others need them. So, it is neither magic nor pure luck, it is instead the art and science of being organized (replaceable) that is behind all the "wows" that these folks gather. Hence, the title, "If you are replaceable, then you are indispensable!"

An interesting by-product of this is "chain growth". When such people move on to new assignments, someone else on their team steps up to fill their shoes. This creates a ripple effect which, if organized properly, leads to sustained growth for all people who were below them in the hierarchy. Also, in their new assignment, these people start owning certain portions of responsibility which earlier lay in the hands of their seniors. This allows those higher up in the chain to now expand their horizons further, leading to a ripple effect in the upward direction as well.

To conclude, I'd like to capture a symptom that I have noticed pretty regularly. People sometimes show resistance when encouraged to delegate their work, or organize it properly so that it can be de-centralized. They do this under the fears of job security or sometimes plain lethargy. One thing that they don't realize is that by doing so, they might themselves be creating a "job jail" in which they could be stuck for a very long time. This short term protectionist attitude towards the "current job" can have a far-reaching negative impact on their overall career. Sometimes, the organization/managers are also responsible for creating such an environment. They inadvertently misjudge the people, basing the "dispensability" criteria on the amount of work due from that person. Instead they should recognize the "dispensable" people, because not only have they done their work, they have done it properly!

Hence, remember the mantra, "Be replaceable. You never know what new opportunity might be lurking for you around the corner. Be prepared to grab it, when it finally unveils itself!"