5 Personality Traits of an Entrepreneur

By John Rampton - Forbes

What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur? Is it being born a prodigy? Is it having a Type-A personality? Is it being an extrovert who spends all their time tinkering around on projects?

While some entrepreneurs have those traits, they rarely define the characteristics that make a majority of entrepreneurs. Not everyone is born with an intellect that will change the world. That student who couldn’t make it through college, like Bill Gates, is more likely to succeed than the lifelong overachiever.

So, if you’re not a born genius or overachiever, what personalities actually make-up entrepreneurs? Here are our five common personality traits that entrepreneurs possess.

1. Passion

For those uninitiated, entrepreneurs are not in it for the money. While there have been some icons who have made more cash than most of us we’ll dream of, think Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, the reality is that most entrepreneurs work an insane amount of hours for little or nothing. Why would they put themselves through this? Because they are driven to either solve a problem or make easier.

How passionate are entrepreneurs? According to research conducted by Tony Tjan and co-authors Richard Harrington and Tsun-Yan Hsieh, 65% of founders have been identified as driven by “heart.” Tjan also added that most entrepreneurs are fueled “by an unshakable sense of purpose.”

Throughout all the trials and tribulations, entrepreneurs reward themselves internally by realizing that they’re on a mission for the greater good. No matter how bad it gets, it’s their passion that motivates them between paydays and during all the times when everyone else tells them to quit.

2. Resilience

Sir Winston Churchill once said, “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” As an entrepreneur, you’re going to fail. That’s just an unfortunate fact. While something that drastic would be too much for most people to handle, an entrepreneur has the uncanny ability to get up and dust themselves off. Instead of giving up, an entrepreneur will learn from their failures. What went wrong? How can I long from my mistakes? How can I succeed next time? These are the type of questions an entrepreneur will ask themselves. An entrepreneur doesn’t stay down when times get rough. They’re resilient and thrive off of the negativity.

If you need proof on the resilience of entrepreneurs, just look into the stories of successful entrepreneurs like Walt Disney, Donald Trump, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Henry Food or Thomas Edison. They all experienced setbacks during at some point to only become some of the most well-known and successful entrepreneurs in history.

3. Strong Sense of Self

Any entrepreneur will tell that there are numerous problems to overcome. Whether it be not securing enough funding, proving the naysayers wrong or facing the competition head on, it’s not easy being an entrepreneur. And, being passionate and resilient can only go so far. Which is why entrepreneurs also have an extremely strong sense of self.

For example, being self-confident and self-motivated are also key traits for most entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs don’t think that their idea could be good. They know it’s good. And, they’re going to be motivated enough to illustrate to others that it’s worth the time and money to go forward. While they also understand that they can’t do everything on their own, they realize that they are the only ones to make their idea a reality.

And, just how confident are entrepreneurs? According toa study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation on behalf of LegalZoom, “91% of entrepreneurs are confident that their businesses will be more profitable in the next 12 months.”

4. Flexibility

Being able to adapt to changes and challenges is crucial for any business. In fact, most entrepreneurs will inform you that their idea or business plan is drastically different than when it began. An idea may be brilliant, but in reality it isn’t effective. Entrepreneurs are flexible enough to make the adjustments to make that idea feasible. Furthermore, entrepreneurs are prepared and willing to modify their plan when new information arrives and when there are changes in circumstances.

A great example of being flexible would be the recent story behind Hyungsoo Kim and his company Eone, which is short for Everyone. Kim initially develop a wristwatch that featured braille. He quickly discovered that people want to be included and not have attention brought to their disability. So, he trashed the original plan and came up with a watch that would not only be worn by the blind, but even people with sight.

5. Vision

Entrepreneurs see opportunity everywhere. They’re innovators who are always on the lookout to either develop a new idea or improve an existing product or service. And, chances are that’s the main reason why they became an entrepreneur in the first place. At some point in their lives they noticed something that could be better. But, instead of just saying that something could be better wasn’t enough. They actually put a plan in motion. In other words, entrepreneurs have the ability to see the future before it happens.

I always say Entrepreneurs are inspired by things that have never been seen before, things yet to be discovered. You must have the vision that nobody else does. Then the vision to see it through.

Jeff Bezos had a vision to tap into the new-world of electronic retelling in 1994 and become “the world’s most consumer-centric company.” His little virtual bookstore was Amazon, which today is the model for all e-commerce businesses.

Philosophy's influence on technology design-and why it needs to change

Something's not right about how we see communication. Credit: wiertz, CC BY

Philosophy often appears abstract and other-worldly, particularly when compared to the practical technology in our everyday lives. But there is much that technology can learn from philosophy, and vice versa.

Software is typically designed with the effciency of communicating in mind - whether communication within the software, or software that allows communication between people. But communication is much more than the mere exchange of information. Humans talk or write for a variety of reasons, often simply tostay in touch or just because they are friends.

The history of philosophy and psychology is full of attempts to reduce all human motivation to one ultimate principle or drive - be it survival, sex, power, or desire or satisfaction. Similar approaches are taken to communication: the 16th century English philosopher John Locke suggested we communicate in order to obtain information about each other, which in turn helps us to satisfy our desires. 

Locke's view remains prevalent in the way information communication technology is designed today. But we would do better to replace this and other reductivist accounts with a more pluralistic view of why we do the things we do. Perhaps philosophers would do well to pay greater attention to human behaviour.

Don't leave me hanging. Credit: bykst

How we communicate is as important as why

Communication technology has tapped into a very human need to be liked and appreciated. Through social media we like, share, re-tweet, and comment on others - actions that are not predominantly geared towards conveying information. Precious data is given away of course, data which can be mined by advertisers for information, but it's a mistake to equate data with information. When I make a joke, I'm not typically attempting to inform anyone of anything, though I may inadvertently reveal all sorts of things about my sense of humour.

The entire greeting card industry - whatever you might make of it - has been built on the understanding that we often want to express (or be seen to express) good wishes on auspicious days. The linguistic philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, taught us that the public expression of a desire, wish, sentiment or belief is not a description of our mental life. This is why "this app is faulty but I don't believe that it's faulty" may be a true statement of fact, even though it sounds aradoxical.

Why should any of this matter to designers, manufacturers, and users of technology? A narrow view of why we communicate inevitably limits the sorts of communication technologies we build. Interestingly,many of the things we do with technology are byproducts of what they were originally designed for (e.g.the internet emerged as the result of a US Defence project researching possibilities for network packets).Once we drop our preconceived ideas that transmitting information is their only purpose - an assumption that carries with it a shortsighted vision - the possibilities of what we could create are endless.

From communication to understanding

This misconception of communication also applies to our sense of understanding. Neither understanding nor communication can be reduced to simply the acquisition of new facts. There is a difference between understanding the words a speaker has said, and understanding the speaker - understanding the "why" as well as the "what".

Wittgenstein famously said: "If a lion could talk, we could not understand it". Not because of an insurmountable language barrier, but because we wouldn't know what it was aiming to do with its words.Apple's Siri and Microsoft's Cortana, which support voice-activation and interaction, make use of articial intelligence. Such software stems from the hope of creating technology that can understand us, and be understood by us. But there is no point asking whether such machines currently can or ever could understand us without first asking ourselves what we want these machines for. Why should we want to communicate with them in the first place? The answer is unlikely to require that they understand us in anything but the loosest sense. A good hoover doesn't need to understand why I might require more powerful suction in order for it to switch to turbo when I press the appropriate button. The same is true of a web mapping service. If anything, understanding is likely to stand in the way of utility.

We need to free ourselves from approaching communication as something geared towards the transmission of information that either enables understanding between humans and machines, or that requires it. The way we design and use the increasingly ubiquitous technology we use to communicate would benefit from an approach that isn't driven by this unacknowledged assumption.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Source: The Conversation
"Philosophy's inßuence on technology designÑand why it needs to change" February 12, 2016http://phys.org/news/2016-02-philosophy-technology-designand.html

One-Third of Innovators in US Are Immigrants

Co-founder and CEO of Whatsapp Jan Koum speaks during a conference at the Mobile World Congress, the world's largest mobile phone trade show in Barcelona, Spain.

By VOA

More than one-third of U.S. innovators are born outside the U.S.

Only 13.5 percent of all U.S. residents are immigrants. But a new report says 35 percent of residents with a doctorate degree, or Ph.D, in science and mathematics are immigrants.

This shows that highly-educated immigrants could be one of the country’s most valuable resources.

The report came from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (or ITIF) in February. The ITIF is an organization that studies how technology affects the world.

Adam Nager is an economic policy analyst at the ITIF. He said, "U.S. innovation really depends on individuals born outside of the U.S."

"These are scientists, engineers, people with really, really high education, who’ve made the choice to immigrate to the United States," Nager added.

"[They] often [seek] the kind of research opportunities, the kind of entrepreneurial opportunities that are offered in the United States that might not have been available in their home country…they bring new ideas and new ways of thinking about things that we… need."

Immigration has been a major issue for the campaigns of the 2016 presidential candidates. But the candidates have rarely talked about how high-skilled and low-skilled or illegal immigrants are different.

The ITIF report does not examine the effects of low-skilled or illegal immigrants on the U.S. But Nager said the report does show "the value of bringing in the best and brightest engineers from around the world and the benefits that they bring to the U.S. economy."

"The more of them we can get, the better," he said.

The other two-thirds of American innovators are mostly white men, the reports shows. But that does not mean they are highly intelligent, young men who never finished college, like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.

The ITIF found the average age of these innovators is 47. Also, most of them have at least one advanced degree.

To collect information for the report, the ITIF spoke with almost 1,000 people. All of those people have won national awards for inventions or are working towards international patents on their ideas.

These inventions and ideas are all in the fields of information technology, life or material sciences and advanced technology.

The results of the report are a topic of interest for the White House. The White House has honored 11 immigrant innovators so far.

Additionally, President Barack Obama spoke about the importance of innovation in his final "State of the Union" speech in January.

President Obama also spoke at a conference at SXSW, or South by Southwest, in Austin, Texas earlier in March. The conference was part of an event that mixes live music and displays by several technology companies.

Researchers working on the report expected to find few female and U.S.-born minority innovators. But researchers were surprised at how low those numbers were.

Only 12 percent of U.S. innovators are women. Just 8 percent of innovators are Asians, African-Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, and other minorities born in the U.S.

In the U.S., 32 percent of the whole population are minorities.

"We have this [large] untapped labor pool in African-Americans, in Hispanics and in women… who really aren’t tapped at all for creating these types of innovative, marketable products," Nager said.

"There's nothing about white males… that would make them [naturally] any better at innovating than any other group, so if we’re looking to grow the pool of innovators in the future, definitely, greater inclusion among women and minorities is the way to get there."