Redefining Entrepreneurship, Lesson 1

This is the first in a series of posts sharing CIE’s 10 Lessons for Redefining Entrepreneurship.

Challenge: How can we get past our myths, preconceptions and filters to see entrepreneurial potential in every person? How do you go into a new community and make change with only one staff person?

Lesson 1: Yes, Anyone

We need a new definition of entrepreneur. One that includes ordinary people with simple solutions to everyday problems.

Everyone is inalienably endowed with unique gifts. Everyone desires to productively contribute their unique gifts to their family and their community. Entrepreneurship is a strategy for doing this.

Being entrepreneurial is not a genetic trait. It is a mindset. A mindset is nothing more than a set of beliefs and assumptions that govern decisions and actions. We are not born with a mindset. We acquire it. And that means we can choose to change it.

5 Traits of the Entrepreneurial Mindset

There is much recent research defining the key elements of the entrepreneur mindset. And those elements have NOTHING to do with wealth, education, gender, race, creed, genes. They are just this:

Lemons to Lemonade

Leverage contingencies. Turn problems and obstacles into opportunities to learn, grow and find solutions.

Bird in the Hand

Start within your means. Start with what you have and who you know. Know that many things are beyond your control.

Affordable Loss

Focus on the downside risks. Make small bets knowing sometimes you may bet wrong. Fail often, fail cheap, and fail forward with new information.

Crazy Quilter

Form partnerships. Starting a business is a social activity. Build networks with stakeholders who will help you co-create your market.

Pilot in the Plane

Control rather than try to predict. Know that future is made by your actions. Get behind the wheel.

An entrepreneur mindset isn’t ONLY about creating businesses. It can be applied to anything – getting a good job, climbing the corporate ladder, furthering your education, writing the next great American novel, curing cancer – anything!

Focusing on the entrepreneurship mindset is a potentially very empowering and very powerful form

Read the next post in our series, 10 Lessons for Redefining Entrepreneurship: Respect: Yes. Gatekeepers: No.