 "The rise of the new entrepreneur")
I have always believed that the starting context of entrepreneurship - why someone turns entrepreneur - has a significant impact on not just the entrepreneur's behaviour but also the trajectory of the business.
Typically, you can visualise three profiles of the entrepreneur: entrepreneur by compulsion, by volition, by presumption. The profiles are self-explanatory - the first turns an entrepreneur because of not much other choice, the second has many choices and yet chooses the entrepreneurial road and the third is expected to join the family business.
The stable table
Thirty years ago, when I was completing my Engineering degree, choosing the entrepreneurial road was the exception if you were academically good. Most people started their business because they didn't get good employment or dropped out of formal education or had family responsibility to take care of. Those were the days of tightly defined professional career landscape, with families emphasising on 'position', 'stability of 'income' etc. Things have changed a lot since then. Now we see people across the whole spectrum - from school and college students to mid-career executives, to former c-suite folks and even close-to-retirement managers wanting to be entrepreneurs. While most are aware of the inherent risks, they want to experience the thrill anyway.
We are also seeing the rise of the Entrepreneur by Volition or the New Entrepreneur. This is an entrepreneur who has many options - an offbeat profession, a pampering workplace, a quality-starved employment market that offers a career ladder within the country, an overseas position - but still wants to take the plunge.
Youth-minded and bullish
Young people experiment with entrepreneurship because their risk bearing ability is greater, they often have family and peer support and their inherent experimentative nature is just what entrepreneurship needs. Even senior executives are ready to jump off the stable career ship driven by a need to create change in the society, solving problems while being stimulated by opportunities. Their ability to turn entrepreneur is facilitated primarily by the reduction of relative risk. There was a time when a good job meant two-way stability; for the manager and for the organisation. Today, however, it would be naive for either the manager or the organisation to assume stability or long-term commitment from each other. The uncertainty that organisations have to face in our VUCA world combined with a certain degree of dispassionate approach between the organisation and its managers often results in rightsizing and non-cause termination. Since the manager's learning opportunities are no longer restricted to 'on-the-job' her perspective is now broader than before. With experience -and the talent vacuum at middle and higher levels of hierarchy - an exiting manager is confident that if her entrepreneurial gig does not work out, there is always scope to return to the old organisation.
What helps entrepreneurship even more is our acceptance to see a setback in the entrepreneurial venture as just that and not a personal failure. Combine these two - a lower stability in formal employment and a better safety net in an entrepreneurial venture - and it is easy to see how they create a reduction of relative risk. Self-confident executives are also learning to quickly handle loss of stature in case entrepreneurial plans fail.
Typically, you can visualise three profiles of the entrepreneur: entrepreneur by compulsion, by volition, by presumption. The profiles are self-explanatory - the first turns an entrepreneur because of not much other choice, the second has many choices and yet chooses the entrepreneurial road and the third is expected to join the family business.
The stable table
Thirty years ago, when I was completing my Engineering degree, choosing the entrepreneurial road was the exception if you were academically good. Most people started their business because they didn't get good employment or dropped out of formal education or had family responsibility to take care of. Those were the days of tightly defined professional career landscape, with families emphasising on 'position', 'stability of 'income' etc. Things have changed a lot since then. Now we see people across the whole spectrum - from school and college students to mid-career executives, to former c-suite folks and even close-to-retirement managers wanting to be entrepreneurs. While most are aware of the inherent risks, they want to experience the thrill anyway.
We are also seeing the rise of the Entrepreneur by Volition or the New Entrepreneur. This is an entrepreneur who has many options - an offbeat profession, a pampering workplace, a quality-starved employment market that offers a career ladder within the country, an overseas position - but still wants to take the plunge.
Youth-minded and bullish
Young people experiment with entrepreneurship because their risk bearing ability is greater, they often have family and peer support and their inherent experimentative nature is just what entrepreneurship needs. Even senior executives are ready to jump off the stable career ship driven by a need to create change in the society, solving problems while being stimulated by opportunities. Their ability to turn entrepreneur is facilitated primarily by the reduction of relative risk. There was a time when a good job meant two-way stability; for the manager and for the organisation. Today, however, it would be naive for either the manager or the organisation to assume stability or long-term commitment from each other. The uncertainty that organisations have to face in our VUCA world combined with a certain degree of dispassionate approach between the organisation and its managers often results in rightsizing and non-cause termination. Since the manager's learning opportunities are no longer restricted to 'on-the-job' her perspective is now broader than before. With experience -and the talent vacuum at middle and higher levels of hierarchy - an exiting manager is confident that if her entrepreneurial gig does not work out, there is always scope to return to the old organisation.
What helps entrepreneurship even more is our acceptance to see a setback in the entrepreneurial venture as just that and not a personal failure. Combine these two - a lower stability in formal employment and a better safety net in an entrepreneurial venture - and it is easy to see how they create a reduction of relative risk. Self-confident executives are also learning to quickly handle loss of stature in case entrepreneurial plans fail.
Ravi Kiran
Co-founder, Friends of Ambition, & Co-founder, VentureNursery
Co-founder, Friends of Ambition, & Co-founder, VentureNursery