PR for People Monthly November 2013 The Entrepreneurial Mindset | Page 28
The Entrepreneurial
Mindset
The “Entrepreneurial Mindset” is a book
title, the subjectof a few websites and management
courses, and a topic that has spawned an uncountable
number of talks. To say the least, the “Entrepreneurial Mindset” has established its place in the modern
vernacular.
Look up “Entrepreneurial Mindset” in Wikipedia and it redirects to “Entrepreneurship.” The
keys to entrepreneurship, as defined in Wikipedia,
are, “the quality of being an entrepreneur, i.e. one
who “undertakes an enterprise.” The term puts emphasis on the risk and effort of individuals who own
and manage a business, and on the innovations that
result from their pursuit of economic success.”
Business innovation is at the very heart of
many online businesses or endeavors. Some of those
endeavors lack a business plan, yet have an entrepreneurial spirit, and an understanding that revenues
will be the net effect of success.
How does a digital strategy coordinate or
resonate with the entrepreneurial mindset? There’s
no rule or obligation for one to have or acquire a
digital strategy, And yet it would seem all but incumbent upon the modern entrepreneur to have one.
The entrepreneur needs to have more than
just a digital strategy. The entrepreneur needs to
have a complete digital arsenal at their disposal. In
a world with ubiquitous connectivity and the ability
to communicate, collaborate, share ideas and take actions at speeds heretofore unimaginable, digital tools
are a necessity.
Simple as it may seem, digital basics are
critical from Day One: email accounts, perhaps an
email server; a site or suite of sites;a cloud entity
(which could be as simple as a shared online storage account, as vast as a high volume account with
Amazon’s AES); digital backup solutions; firewalls
and digital protections against malware and virus
attacks; online collaboration tools such as conferencing, video, shared whiteboards and file exchanges.
This list just scratches the surface.
The newentrepreneurial mindset takesall of
these as a given. If entrepreneursdonot master the
skills to execute or operate any of these themselves,
they bring in people capable of creating them, implementing them, and using them to optimal benefit.
This goes hand in hand with being entrepreneurial:
having the ability to lead, motivate, and inspire a
sense of loyalty and passion. It takes teams to get
things done. The entrepreneur leads the teams. The
distributed, non-centralized workplace of the Digital
Era means using digital tools to gather and coordinate teams, from across the globe, if need be.
The entrepreneurial mindset welcomes disruptive or “new think” methods. This means never
accepting, “it can’t be done” or “it can’t be done that
way.” Protective, legacy mindsets would not allow
progress. Think of how many businesses, not so
very long ago, would not use email. This was primarily due to lawyers’ fears of liability or accountability. But those who embraced it made clear to the
rest of the world that this was an obvious evolutionary step in messaging and communications. Entrepreneurs understood this from the get-go.
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