Written Assignment Unit 3: Entrepreneurship Skills

University of the People

BUS 3303-01 Entrepreneurship 1

Jane Burman-Holton, Instructor

November 29, 2022

Based upon the readings for this week, which of the skills, traits, or characteristics of

entrepreneurs do you think would be the most important to have?

After going through the readings this week especially the one from the mind tools we learned

about the various characteristics and skills that are necessary to become a successful

entrepreneur. The paper divides entrepreneurial skills into 4 different categories including

personal characteristics, interpersonal skills, critical and creative thinking skills, and finally

practical skills. I will go through each of the categories and try to highlight those which I feel are

the most important to have.

Firstly the Personal characteristics list optimism, vision, initiative, desire for control, drive and

persistence, risk tolerance, and resilience. In my opinion, the most important of these are drive

and persistence. This is because I feel like if the person is driven enough and persists he can

simply develop all the other skills and characteristics during his journey. Yes, it may take a

longer time but he will be able to succeed in the end.

In the case of Interpersonal skills, which include leadership and motivation, communication

skills, listening, personal relations, negotiation, and ethics. I think the most important is the

ability to lead and motivate, I choose this because I feel like it is a vast term that may even

cover other skills from interpersonal skills. If you can’t lead and motivate a team, you can never

be a successful entrepreneur.

In Critical and Creative thinking skills, I think creative thinking is the most important in

problem-solving and recognizing opportunities. The entire purpose of an entrepreneur is simply

to look at a problem and discover new ways to solve the problem. This is only possible if the

person thinks creatively and out of the box.

Finally in the Practical Skills. I think the most important are planning and organizing. An

entrepreneur must know the direct path to achieve his goal. I do think that knowledge is

important but a smart entrepreneur can even hire more knowledgeable people than himself to

deal with the problem.

Research a successful entrepreneur. Describe the entrepreneur’s type of innovation or

business, what characteristics or traits they have, how they got started, and what they did

in order to become and remain successful.

I would like to write about the man of the moment, the most hated and the most liked

entrepreneur, the current richest man on earth Elon Musk. Elon Musk was born on June 28,

1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. His father was South African while his mother may musk was

Canadian. He had an early interest in computers and IT, in fact, at the age of 12, he created a

video game and sold it to a magazine. He attended Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario and

later he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia where he received a bachelor

degree in physics and economics in 1997.

In 1995, he founded his first website called Zip2, the company would provide maps and business

directories to online newspapers. The website was a success and was bought by computer

manufacturer Compaq for 307 million dollars. He saw a need in the market and founded a site to

fix the need. Musk saw that there is no online way of providing people with financial services

and thus co-founded X.com which would be bought by eBay for 1.5 billion and later go on to

become PayPal.
Musk always believed that in order for humanity to survive, humans must become a multi-planet

species. He did not like the great expense of rocket launchers thus in 2002 he founded a space

exploration private company called SpaceX. The idea was to design rockets that cost much less

than competing rockets. Although musk did face many failures finally his rockets were

successful in fact he managed to cut the cost by 1/3rd and double the payload of his competing

rockets. His latest rocket the Falcon Heavy can carry 53,000 kg to orbit and in fact, can land

back and be used again and again which was a revolution in space exploration.

Musk has many other works including becoming the CEO and rescuing Tesla motors from

bankruptcy where he decided to move away from traditional petrol cars to new electric cars.

Musk also founded the boring company to create underground tunnels. Finally, recently Musk

believed the major social media companies are biased and are preventing free speech which he

believes is the right of everyone to which he decided to buy Twitter which is probably the most

politically used social media, and is now working to transform it.

Musk has a very introverted calm and composed personality. He is a very focused, passionate,

and hardworking individual. He has great persistence and a real work ethic. While there is no

doubt his online presence is controversial when he shows his humourous and funny side the truth

is that he reached there due to his sheer hard work and work ethic. He is a revolutionary who

sees a problem and goes out to fix it. Despite being successful in every way he still has not

stopped working. He still shows up to work and leads teams to fix all the major problems the

world faces today.

Word count: 847 words

References

Gregersen, E. (2022, October 28). Elon Musk | Biography, SpaceX, Tesla, Twitter, & Facts.

Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elon-Musk

Holden, J. (2008). Decisions and downfalls: Entrepreneurship is an attractive career

choice, but decision making is a must. Retrieved from http://www.saylor.org/site/wp-
content/uploads/2012/12/BUS305-1.2.1_Decisions-and-Downfalls.pdf

Mindtools Content Team. (n.d.). Entrepreneurial skills: The skills you need to build a
great business. Mindtools. Retrieved from mindtools

Shandrow, K. L. (2015, April 7). What type of entrepreneur are you? (Infographic)
Retrieved from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244811