ENTREPRENEURSHIP LEADER - Part 2

3. Observant

To be highly competitive in business arena, an entrepreneur needs to be highly observant in nature. These traits differentiate entrepreneurs with others people. Observant means be alert, quick at noticing things. Observant entrepreneurs will pay strict attention and perceptive to environment and the surrounding. They will be highly sensitive to the details and changes of the surrounding. Observant entrepreneurs have high insightful towards customer’s needs. When they determine the trends and demands of the market, they can easily find the opportunities in the markets. 

Jeff Bezos is a great example as an observant entrepreneur. Jeff Bezos is the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Amazon, which became the world’s largest online shopping retailer. As of October 2016, Bezos is the second richest person in United States and ranked at third place in the world on The Forbes list of the world's wealthiest people with net worth estimated to be US$71 billion. The Internet was firstly created by the Defense Department and adopted by government and academic researchers only. At that time, internet commerce was not existing yet. Jeff Bezos observed that Internet usage was kept increasing by year. He saw an opportunity for Internet commerce, and began considering the possibilities. In 1994, he quit a lucrative New York hedge fund job and founded Amazon, an online bookseller website. Amazon.com is a huge success by achieving US$20,000 sales in a week. The company grows rapidly and became e-commerce leader in two years. Amazon’s vision is “To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online.” Thus, Bezos put his focus on customer’s needs. He and his team observe the trends and customer’s needs by reading customer reviews. Bezos continued to diversify Amazon’s offerings with the sale of CDs and videos in 1998, and later clothes, electronics, toys and more through major retail partnerships. In 2006, Amazon ended up with annual sales over US$10.7 billion, with nearly three times the sales compare to it’s nearest competitor. (John Rossman, 2014) John Bezos can lead Amazon to the path of success due to his observant trait. He is alert and good in observing trends and customer needs. He know what his customer wants and expand the product line in order to fulfill customer’s needs.

Jeff Bezos

4. Visionary

A person is not necessarily have to be an expert in specific field in order to be success, but one has to be visionary. Based on Oxford Dictionaries (2016), visionary defined as thinking about or planning the future with imagination or wisdom. Entrepreneurs often see something and believe something that others do not see and cannot believe. They have a vision for a business, product, service, or innovation; they can see how it can make a difference; and they go about enlisting others’ help in bringing that vision to fruition. 

Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft Corp is a great example of visionary entrepreneur. Starting in 1987, Gates was included in the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest people and was the wealthiest from 1995 to 2007, again in 2009, and has been since 2014. Bill Gates quotes “The only big companies that succeed will be those that obsolete their own products before somebody else does” show that he is a true visionary. Microsoft’s vision was elegantly precise: ‘A computer on every desk and in every home’. (Des Dearlove, 2010) Bill Gates is not an inventor, he takes existing technology and adapting it to a specific market. Gates and his partner Paul Allen weren't the first people to recognize the potential of microprocessors to bring hardcore computing power to the world. In 1974, Allen showed Gates a magazine article about the world's first microcomputer, the Altair 8800. This was the first microprocessor powerful enough to run a full computer programming language like BASIC. Gates saw the opportunity and he knows it is the time to strike. He contacted the manufacturer, MITS, that they had written a version of BASIC ready to go for the Altair, the first 8080-powered computer. Gates dropped out of Harvard and officially established Microsoft in 1975. Eventhough BASIC and Altair were not Gates’s ideas, but he saw something that others do not see and implement it. His visionary and innovation made Microsoft success. (Janet Lowe, 1998)

Bill Gates