COURSE MATERIAL 1

ENTREPRENEURIAL MINDSET

THE PRACTICE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

The Learners shall be able to:

 Combine the two view of entrepreneurship for new ventures;

 Relate the start of entrepreneurship in the Philippines;
 Develop the skills important in entrepreneurship;
 Express the truths about entrepreneurship;
 Distinguish each type of entrepreneurship;
 Adapt entrepreneurship as a method;
 Contrast between managerial and entrepreneurial thinking; and,
 Justify deliberate practice of entrepreneurship.

Traditionally, entrepreneurship has been related with launching new businesses. Today, however, a lot
of people and organizations has considered entrepreneurship as an important life skill that is beyond
just starting a ventures. Entrepreneurship is a life skill that readies a person to manage the vague and
undefined future particularly in the business environment. Entrepreneurship is composed of collective
mindsets and skillsets that can empower an individual to create and act on opportunities of any kind for
himself. There is no need to build a business in order to think and act like an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurial Mindset:

Is a set of skills that enable people to identify and make the most of opportunities, overcome and learn
from setbacks, and succeed in a variety of settings.

Importance of Entrepreneurial Mindset:

Having an entrepreneurial mindset allows us to escape the conditioning that might otherwise hold us
back from starting our own business.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP VIEWS

Two ways of thinking about entrepreneurship, the older and newer views:

1. Predictive Approach (older view)

 Consider entrepreneurship as a linear process where there are steps to do and the
results are usually predictive.
 Traditional entrepreneurship is supported by the predictive approach.
 Entrepreneurs using predictive approach, identify the goals they wanted to attain and
search for available resources.
 Works best during times of ambiguity and when there is enough information where to
base decisions.
 Most well-known and established companies make use of this approach.
 For the reason that they have predetermined goals, their problems are clear and
they are in possession of dependable information.

2. Creation Approach (newer view)

 Sees entrepreneurships as a mindset and a method that needs practice and used only
when the future is unpredictable and not certain.
 Entrepreneurs who use this approach define their goals based from the resources
available at hand.
 These entrepreneurs do not delay the action they wanted to take despite scarcity of
resources.
 Often, small businesses always begin with creation.
 Most entrepreneurs start their ventures with a broad idea that they feel is worth trying
and most likely to succeed.
 In the initial phase of a business, creation is vital over prediction.

Note:

 The end goal of both approaches is similar though the means toward action is different.
Entrepreneur should be encouraged to use both standpoints.
 Entrepreneur who would like to use either prediction or creation must know under what
situations each or the combination is applicable.
 For new ventures it is still best to combine the two approaches in order to get the best results.

THE START OF ENTREPENEURSHIP IN THE PHILIPPINES

 Philippines is known as a developing country. It is always challenged by high poverty rate

compared against other Asian countries.
 Entrepreneurship has become the solution to poverty through job formation, wealth creation,
and social empowerment.
 The Philippine government sees entrepreneurship as the sole means to address the poverty
problem.
 The 1987 Philippine constitution identifies entrepreneurship as an instrument of economic
growth.
o The role of private enterprises in supporting fair distribution of income and wealth,
satisfying production of goods and services and escalating productivity is emphasized in
Article XII section 1. The intention is to raise the quality of Filipino’s lives.
 The government’s objective of economic development and job formation has been placed in the
supervision of the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) which strengthens the thrust on
entrepreneurship by way of trade and investment. The pursuit is on strengthening the
Philippines competitiveness and contribution to job formation.
 The evolution of entrepreneurship has been influences by fast integration of economies and
globalization of Markets.
 Today, entrepreneurship lessons are embedded into the school curriculum to cultivate a culture
of enterprise and nurture tomorrow’s competitive entrepreneurs.
 The country has now regarded entrepreneurship as a way of thinking and not just an economic
term.
 These days, entrepreneurship has become a way of motivating innovative individuals to pursue
opportunities regardless of its risks.

THE SKILLS IMPORTANT IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP:

In the creation approach, entrepreneurs are able to learn through action and manage uncertainty by
developing Five important skills.

 These skills could only work for those who are eager to take action.
 In order to develop these skills, an entrepreneur needs to learn by doing.
o Putting an idea into action is the most important thing to live a more
entrepreneurial and influencing life.

Five Important Skills:

 The skills of Play:

o Allows his imagination to explore.
o Expose his mind to a measure of opportunities and potentials and is very innovative.
 The skills of Experimentation:
o Calls for entrepreneurs to act so as to learn.
 Acting to learn means attempting to do something.
 learning from such attempts and structuring, said learning when the
next thing similar happens.
o It refers to making action.
 Action could be in the form of going out in the streets and gather real time
data instead of just using google to find information.
 This could be done by asking questions, confirming assumptions and
noting every details in consideration.
 The Skills of Empathy:
o Means being sympathetic with the feeling, situation, purposes, opinions, and want
of other people.
o Empathy is putting one’s shoes in the shoes of others.
o It is simply relating to the feelings of others when placed in a similar circumstances.
o Empathy is vital to an entrepreneur, it is significant in order to completely
understand the reality of becoming an entrepreneur.
o Empathy is needed when evaluating oneself in terms of the ability to be an
entrepreneur.
 The skills of Creativity:
o Means being an open minded and letting loose ones ability to create, discover
opportunities, and resolve problems.
o The intention in using the skills of creativity is not just to discover or search for
opportunities but to form them.
 Creating opportunities depends on how much an entrepreneur desires to
learn, how interested he is and how much effort he would invest to apply
his idea/s.
 Anyone have ideas, but ideas could only be great once executed and
tested.
o Creating opportunities could only be successful based on the amount of resources at
hand, the capability to cooperate rather than compete, the determination to form
relationship, the understanding of how much one can afford to lose and the
preparedness to use ones knowledge in case of failure.
 The Skills of Reflection:
o Reflection organizes all the four skills mentioned.
o Taking time to reflect is the most vital skill of all skills.
o The discomfort handled, the feelings felt and the knowledge possessed gives new
perspective and allow for more assessment of the result and forming of conclusion,
which can be done through reflection.

Several ways to do reflection:

1. Narrative:
 `it is describing what happened in terms of what took place, what was paid
and the people involved.
2. Emotional:
 This centers on the feeling and the management of these feelings during a
certain situation.
3. Perceptive:
 It focuses on ones insights and feedback as well as the others in addition to
how various, views, needs or inclinations affected the experiences.
 4. Analytical:
 It is rationalizing about skills and understanding obtained from an
experience and relating what has been learned to anything heard about
before.
5. Evaluative:
 This concerns on what went well as well as what went bad or whether the
experience was useful or not.
6. Critical:
 This is considering the role played in a situation, the approach applied, what
could still might be done; the lessons from the experiences, queries in mind
and the anticipation of the possible result.

THE TRUTH ABOUT ENTREPRENEURSHIP:

There is no shortcuts when it comes to entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs must understand that it is a

hard commitment and there is no quick formula for success.

Some of the Truth about entrepreneurship:

1. Entrepreneurship is Not solely for start ups.

 Start up:
 is a new company that is just starting to progress and looking for a feasible
business model.
 Typically small and primary funded and operated by a few founders or one
person.
 Being a start up is not the only track for entrepreneurs. They can be all over, from
companies to franchises, to profit and non-profit organizations, to family owned
businesses.
2. Entrepreneur Do Not Have Exceptional Personality Qualities:
 In reality there is really no evidence to prove that entrepreneurs possess special
personality qualities above others.
 Traditionally: four recognized qualities of entrepreneur:
 Being achiever
 An influencer
 Risk taker
 Open minded for uncertainty
3. Entrepreneurship can be taught yet entails practice:
 Entrepreneurship requires a person to possess a set of skills.
4. Entrepreneurs are not so much a risk takers:
 Entrepreneurs are really risk takers but they normally would make calculations first
prior to taking the next step.
 Entrepreneur usually measure every lose they are willing to take on each step of
what they do.
  Entrepreneur take every single step as lesson to learn and make use of said lesson
on the next level.
5. Entrepreneurs work in partnership more than they compete:
 The community is a vital partner of most entrepreneurs.
 Most entrepreneurs learn their lessons from the shared experiences others had
faced.
 The support of a community of entrepreneurs with similar mindset and willing to
support each other is important.
 Working in partnership not only works with the rest of the entrepreneurs but also
with target consumers, with prospective investors and with family and friends.
 Customer relationship is essential, investment requires thrust and relatives and
friends are necessary as support groups.
 Partnership usually brings about more efficiency, additional fresh ideas and
produces ingenuity and innovation.
6. Entrepreneurs are more on doing than planning:
 Most people believes that any business to succeed requires a business plan.
 Not all successful companies had wrote a formal business plan. Simply, because this
entrepreneurs had acted. They went out of the streets, talked to people, relate with
customers, buzz about their offerings whether product or service and most
importantly, they form a solid network.
7. Entrepreneurship is truly a life skill:
 A lot of people as well as organizations these days consider entrepreneurship as a
skill that is useful in every human’s life.
 As a life skill an entrepreneurship can offer:
 Methodological way of thinking;
 Opportunity identification
 Special way of problem solving
 Adapting to new situations, and
 Governing ones goals and ambitions.
 Some of the life skills includes:
 Resilience:
 Being able to deal with setbacks through bouncing back and refocus
after failure.
 Agility:
 Responding speedily and conclusively to adjust to dynamic changing
environment and situations, grab opportunities and be competitive.
 Negotiating:
 This is about setting boundaries, ensuring for a good relationship
and understanding that a good rapport is necessary to give any
business the best chance of success.
 Problem solving:
 This concerns creating solutions from minor technical difficulties to
major financial headaches.
 Relationship Building:
  this involves the give and take relationship of the entrepreneur with
a suppliers, investor or even his employee.
 Mindfulness:
 This is the ability to disconnect from the pressure and focus on
being in the moment by techniques such as breathing and
meditation to better manage ones thoughts and feelings and escape
from being burdened by them.

TYPES OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP:

1. Intrapreneurship:
 Refers to encouraging people to discover high-risk, high reward concepts with the
support of a big corporate organization.
2. Entrepreneurs Inside:
 Almost similar with intrapreneurship. The only difference between the two is that
entrepreneurs function inside any type of organizations such as:
 Government agencies
 Non-profit organizations
 Religious entities
 Self employed,and
 Cooperatives
 This type of entrepreneurs must be supported by management
3. Buying a Franchise:
 Franchise:
 Is a type of license bought by an entrepreneur as the franchisee from an existing
branded business (franchisor).
 The license serves as the right to open the business using the brand’s proven
business model and system, Its proven pricing, products, and promotional
tactics.
 For franchisee, it is best to buy the right brand.
 A franchisee has the complete access to the brand’s logos, slogans, signage, and
other things related to it.
4. Buying a Small Business:
 Another way to enter the business;
 The entrepreneur buys out the existing owner and takes the management and
operations of the small business.
 It normally involves more upfront cost and also prevents less risk than starting
from zero.
 In buying a small business, the new owner may be able to acquire valuable patents or
copyrights, or have the opportunity to drive an unprotective business in an existing
direction with his expertise.
 Advantages of buying a small business:
1. The new owner is able to take over an operation that has already
making cash flow and profits.
 2. The small business has an established customer base, reputation, and
employees who are familiar with all aspects of the business.
5. Social Entrepreneurship:
 Means pursuing innovative applications that have the likelihood of solving community-
based problems.
 Lots of entrepreneurs has been able to make solutions to social problems such as:
 Water shortage
 Education
 Poverty and global warming
 Social entrepreneurs may try to produce environmentally, friendly products, serve an
undeserved community, or focus on philanthropic activities.
6. Family business:
 Owned and managed by members of the family that is usually handed down from
generation to generation.
 Entrepreneurship is practiced with this type of business through the opportunity
available for each generation to be innovative in their own way.
 It is essential for business survival to have an entrepreneurial program done by each
generation.
 But, Most family businesses stuck to their old ways and are unwilling to embrace
changes.
7. Serial Entrepreneurs:
 Is an entrepreneur who constantly crops up with fresh ideas and start new businesses.
 Different from the classic entrepreneur who only have one idea to start with his or her
venture.
 The entrepreneur give the responsibility of running the operations of each business it
started once it is established and move on to other projects.
 Often serial entrepreneur sell his business earlier.