What I learned when I took an entrepreneurship class at age 14

What I learned when I took an entrepreneurship class at age 14

By Pau Pavón

Last year, I made one of the best decisions of my life.

At school, I had to choose one of three subjects: French, classic culture, or Entrepreneurship. I didn’t know what the last one was all about, so I joined in.

I was told it would be something “about business” and stuff like that. It sounded good, but nothing too exciting. Oh, was I wrong: it turned out to be awesome . We had this class twice a week, and I remember looking forward to it every single day.

The goal of the subject, ultimately, was to build a project or a service that answered a need in society.

Before and while doing that, we learned some (very useful) concepts which are essential to setting up a business, like defining the value proposition(s), evaluating costs and revenue streams, and so on. Overall, we learned how to make our own business model canvas, which I now believe to be key when building or trying to understand any business.

Despite the usefulness of this knowledge, that wasn’t the best part. What ended up being better — way better — was what I would learn on my own.

As I said, taking the class itself was great. But I wasn’t satisfied with what I was taught in it: I wanted more. I began googling and youtubing (is that even a word??) and eventually got really, really interested in entrepreneurship.

And that’s really the point I want to make in this article. Entrepreneurship is a passion for a lot of people, just as writing, engineering, sports, and art are for others. So I’ve been wondering: why isn’t it a subject that most schools teach? Not only may you find your passion, but entrepreneurship classes come with plenty of other benefits as well.

Here are some lessons I learned, both from my class and from working through problems on my own.

Entrepreneurship enhances creativity and boosts innovation

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Being creative and innovative is something inside ourselves that needs to be developed. It’s only through putting these abilities to work that you can improve them. It’s undeniable that entrepreneurship requires both skills, so they’ll get used and improved along your way.

You learn to listen to others and value their ideas/points of view

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Working with your team in order to get something done is essential. People naturally excel in different subjects. If you accept that fact and learn to use it to your advantage (the team’s advantage), the end product, service or whatever project you’re working on will turn out really well.

You get to think about the problems society is facing today

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When choosing what we wanted to develop, we had to find a need or a problem in society that we wanted to solve. It’s very likely that you don’t think about this every single day, and trying to do so can even be difficult at first. Once you get into the flow of it, though, you start to realise that there are tons of things that can be solved or improved. You also become aware of a lot of problems you hadn’t ever thought about.

Your team needs to chase an end goal

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Combining the above three, you finally set yourself and your team an objective and start working towards it. I believe that this is essential, not only in business/school related matters but in life in general. Having clear goals you’re passionate about makes it easier to realise your dreams and fulfill your aspirations in any field.

And, at the end of the day, that’s what I think entrepeneurship is about. It’s about making other people’s lives better while you improve yours as well. It’s about giving, receiving, hearing and being heard, and, overall, loving the work you do.

I hope you liked my story, and I’d really like to read your opinions on entrepreneurship being taught at school. Thanks for reading!

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Essay Samples on Entrepreneurship

What is entrepreneurship in your own words.

What is entrepreneurship in your own words? To me, entrepreneurship is the art of turning imagination into reality, the courage to chart unexplored territories, and the commitment to leave a lasting mark on the world. It's a journey of boundless creativity, relentless innovation, and unwavering...

  • Entrepreneurship

What is Entrepreneurship: Unveiling the Essence

What is entrepreneurship? This seemingly straightforward question encapsulates a world of innovation, risk-taking, and enterprise. Entrepreneurship is not merely a business concept; it's a mindset, a journey, and a force that drives economic growth and societal progress. In this essay, we delve into the multifaceted...

Social Entrepreneurship: Harnessing Innovation

Social entrepreneurship is a transformative approach that merges business principles with social consciousness to address pressing societal challenges. This unique form of entrepreneurship goes beyond profit-seeking and focuses on generating innovative solutions that create positive change in communities. In this essay, we explore the concept...

Evolution of Entrepreneurship: Economic Progress

Evolution of entrepreneurship is a fascinating journey that mirrors the changes in society, economy, and technology throughout history. From humble beginnings as small-scale trade to the modern era of startups, innovation hubs, and global business networks, entrepreneurship has continuously adapted to the dynamic landscape. This...

Importance of Entrepreneurship: Economic Growth and Societal Transformation

Importance of entrepreneurship transcends its role as a mere business activity; it stands as a driving force behind innovation, economic growth, and societal transformation. Entrepreneurship fosters the creation of new products, services, and industries, while also generating employment opportunities and catalyzing economic development. This essay...

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Entrepreneurship as a Career: Navigating the Path of Innovation

Entrepreneurship as a career is a compelling journey that offers individuals the opportunity to create their own path, shape their destiny, and contribute to the economy through innovation. While the road to entrepreneurship is laden with challenges and uncertainties, it is also marked by the...

Corporate Entrepreneurship: Fostering Innovation

Corporate entrepreneurship represents a strategic approach that empowers established organizations to embrace innovation, take calculated risks, and explore new opportunities. In an ever-evolving business landscape, the concept of corporate entrepreneurship has gained prominence as companies seek to maintain their competitive edge and adapt to changing...

Challenges Faced by Entrepreneurs: Innovation and Success

Challenges faced by entrepreneurs are a testament to the intricate journey of turning visionary ideas into tangible realities. While entrepreneurship is often associated with innovation and opportunity, it's also characterized by a multitude of hurdles and obstacles that test an entrepreneur's resilience and determination. In...

300 Words About Entrepreneurship: Navigating Innovation and Opportunity

About entrepreneurship is a dynamic journey that involves the pursuit of innovation, creation, and the realization of opportunities. It is the process of identifying gaps in the market, envisioning solutions, and taking calculated risks to bring new products, services, or ventures to life. Entrepreneurs are...

Best topics on Entrepreneurship

1. What is Entrepreneurship in Your Own Words

2. What is Entrepreneurship: Unveiling the Essence

3. Social Entrepreneurship: Harnessing Innovation

4. Evolution of Entrepreneurship: Economic Progress

5. Importance of Entrepreneurship: Economic Growth and Societal Transformation

6. Entrepreneurship as a Career: Navigating the Path of Innovation

7. Corporate Entrepreneurship: Fostering Innovation

8. Challenges Faced by Entrepreneurs: Innovation and Success

9. 300 Words About Entrepreneurship: Navigating Innovation and Opportunity

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What Does It Take to Be a Successful Entrepreneur?

Female entrepreneur using laptop in workspace

  • 09 Jul 2020

The world is filled with aspiring entrepreneurs—people who believe they have what it takes to launch a company and build it into a profitable business. While anyone can start a business, not everyone will succeed.

Research by Harvard Business School Professor Shikhar Ghosh shows that up to 75 percent of startups fail. According to Zippia , 22 percent of small businesses fail within one year of being launched, half fail within five years, and approximately two-thirds fail within 10 years.

In light of these statistics, the question becomes: What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur ? What steps can aspiring entrepreneurs take to lay the groundwork for success?

Access your free e-book today.

What Is an Entrepreneur?

An entrepreneur is someone who launches a business venture, typically in the form of a company that manufactures and sells a product or provides a service. Entrepreneurs are often viewed as innovators who identify a problem or opportunity, then develop a solution no one else has recognized.

In the online course Entrepreneurship Essentials , it’s noted that “entrepreneurs—either individuals or teams—actively scan the environment for opportunities, or discover them as they live and work. They form hypotheses about what customers want or need and how they can deliver value to the customer.”

Successful entrepreneurs don’t just charge ahead with their ideas. First, they seek to validate there’s demand.

One way they do so is through testing. According to Entrepreneurship Essentials , entrepreneurs “recruit people and invest money to determine if customers will indeed value the product and they can produce and deliver it at an acceptable cost. They often find different, even better ideas once in the marketplace.”

Check out the video below to learn more about what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more explainer content!

Entrepreneurship Requirements

Do you have dreams of one day becoming an entrepreneur and launching your own company? In addition to a business idea, doing so will require you to possess certain skills and characteristics .

1. Key Entrepreneurship Qualities and Behaviors

Several researchers have tried to pinpoint a specific entrepreneurial personality or profile in an attempt to quantify what makes some more successful than others.

In Entrepreneurship Essentials , it’s explained that there’s no single personality profile that leads someone to success as an entrepreneur. However, there are a number of characteristics shared by some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs.

Some behaviors that are distinct from personality traits and associated with entrepreneurship include curiosity, pattern recognition, team building, structured experimentation, adaptation, decisiveness, and persistence.

While it can be argued that some people are more inclined to exhibit these behaviors than others, each of these qualities can be acquired through proper training and development .

2. Essential Entrepreneurial Skills

Especially in the earliest stages of launching a business, entrepreneurs are responsible for performing a variety of duties—it comes with the territory. Before you have an accounting department, marketing staff, and product development team, you'll likely need to perform some of these critical responsibilities.

Taking the time to develop certain skills before launching your business can drastically improve your chances of success. Here’s a list of some of the most critical skills all entrepreneurs should have:

  • Communication skills , which you’ll leverage daily as you work with vendors, investors, customers, and various members of your growing team
  • Organizational skills , which will empower you to work toward your goals efficiently
  • Time management skills , which will be essential throughout your career, but especially early on, when you have multiple responsibilities
  • Data-driven decision-making , which will enable you to make objective, measurable decisions about your products, services, business, and customers
  • Strategic thinking , which will allow you to discover opportunities and threats that guide business decisions more easily
  • Accounting basics , which will be especially important before you have a person or team dedicated to managing your business’s finances
  • Resilience , because every entrepreneur faces challenges and struggles, and it takes resilience to bounce back

Entrepreneurship Essentials | Succeed in the startup world | Learn More

3. An Opportunity or Business Idea

For a new venture to succeed, the business plan must be centered around a solid opportunity. In Entrepreneurship Essentials , an opportunity is defined as a proposed venture to sell a product or service for which customers are willing to pay more than the required investments and operating costs.

An opportunity is more than a product idea, and it extends well beyond the initial act of getting into business. According to Entrepreneurship Essentials, “it’s a plan that shows how a venture will attract, retain, and reward all stakeholders, including customers, founders, employees, investors, distributors, and suppliers.”

That plan doesn’t end once you’ve identified an innovative business idea . Ideally, your concept should be validated before you commit resources, time, and effort to bring it to life. Once validated and pursued, you must constantly reevaluate your business to determine whether you need to adapt to new opportunities or threats.

4. Resources and Funding

Finally, to launch your business, you’ll need a source of funding to purchase equipment and materials, develop your product or service, iterate upon your offerings, and refine your processes. Exactly what funding looks like will vary depending on the type of business you’re launching and your industry.

For some entrepreneurs, self-funding is possible. In such cases, an entrepreneur might set aside enough money to pay for their living expenses while they get their business off the ground, in addition to the costs associated with the launch.

Self-funding isn’t the only option available. There are many other paths you might take, such as:

  • Securing an SBA loan from the Small Business Administration
  • Raising capital from investors
  • Applying for grants (this may be especially suitable for nonprofit organizations)
  • Crowdfunding from the public
  • Relying on a line of credit

Every form of funding comes with benefits and risks. Self-funding, for example, allows you to retain complete control over your business and potential profits, but also requires you to carry the risk of failure. Raising capital from investors, on the other hand, allows you to spread your risk and, potentially, launch your business quicker—but it forces you to give up a portion of your control. Ultimately, you must decide what makes the most sense for your business.

Which HBS Online Entrepreneurship and Innovation Course is Right for You? | Download Your Free Flowchart

Your Path to Becoming an Entrepreneur

Countless aspiring entrepreneurs have an interesting, innovative, and compelling business idea, but don’t have the skills or qualities to carry it through to fruition. Similarly, many others have the skills and qualities, but lack an idea to pursue. Even those with a brilliant idea and the necessary skills can fail to get their project off the ground if they don’t have access to funding. Successful entrepreneurship requires a blend of all these components.

The good news is: Successful entrepreneurs aren’t born—they’re made. With the right training , instruction, and development, everyone has the potential to become an entrepreneur.

Are you interested in learning the ins and outs of entrepreneurship? Explore our four-week online course Entrepreneurship Essentials and our other entrepreneurship and innovation courses to learn to speak the language of the startup world. If you aren't sure which course is the right fit, download our free course flowchart to determine which best aligns with your goals.

what did you learn about entrepreneurship essay

About the Author

So You Want to Be an Entrepreneur?

by Emily Heyward

what did you learn about entrepreneurship essay

Summary .   

When I graduated from college in 2001, I didn’t have a single friend whose plan was to start his or her own business. Med school, law school, finance, consulting: these were the coveted jobs, the clear paths laid out before us. I took a job in advertising, which was seen as much more rebellious than the reality. I worked in advertising for a few years, and learned an incredible amount about how brands get built and communicated. But I grew restless and bored, tasked with coming up with new campaigns for old and broken products that lacked relevance, unable to influence the products themselves. During that time, I was lucky to have an amazing boss who explained a simple principle that fundamentally altered my path. What she told me was that stress is not about how much you have on your plate; it’s about how much control you have over the outcomes. Suddenly I realized why every Sunday night I was overcome with a feeling of dread. It wasn’t because I had too much going on at work. It was because I had too little power to effect change.

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10 Important Lessons I’ve Learned from Interviewing Top Entrepreneurs

what did you learn about entrepreneurship essay

Starting and growing a business is one of the most exciting and daunting undertakings imaginable. These days, it seems like everybody and their brothers want to pursue careers in entrepreneurship, but only a fraction of these would-be business owners actually succeed.

In fact, the Small Business Administration has found that 543,000 small businesses are started in the United States every month , but less than a half of them will survive for at least five years. These statistics may seem discouraging, but remember that your chances of succeeding are much better if you follow proven strategies and come at things with the right attitude.

As the owner of Growth Everywhere, I’m fortunate to have had the opportunity to interview a number of top entrepreneurs that have defied the odds and developed extremely successful enterprises. Some of their businesses generate tens of millions of dollars in revenue – so why wouldn’t you listen closely to what they have to say?

What Can You Learn from Leading Entrepreneurs?

Many new entrepreneurs follow the same business model as others in their industry. Unfortunately, this is almost always a path to disaster. If the average business is doomed to failure, why would you want to follow in these potentially devastating footsteps? Rather than replicating the processes of the average business owner, it’s best to learn from the few great minds in your industry that have become extraordinarily successful.

Here are some of the takeaways I’ve learned from doing dozens of interviews with these legendary business leaders. The lessons I’ve learned from our conversations should be invaluable for you in your own entrepreneurial endeavors.

1.   Focus on Self-Education

Knowledge is the most valuable asset that you have. Unfortunately, there’s so much misinformation in the world that it’s difficult to know what actually works. The strategies that are taught at the MBA program at your local university aren’t going to teach you how to reach your entrepreneurial goals.

Instead, the most successful experts take the time to learn the necessary skills on their own.

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Spartz’s parents were very supportive of his goals, but had one expectation. He needed to read four short biographies of successful people every day, which helped him generate new ideas to boost his own success (side note – what great parents!).

Spartz read books on all different kinds of subjects, including philosophy, psychology, technology and economics. On the basis of his extensive reading and experience online, he’s since gone on to say that knowledge is the backbone of creating viral content on the Internet:

“The more incentive you give people to share the more likely they are to share. You create a lot of emotion or giving them something of value that incentivizes them to go tell their friends.”

Murray Hidary is another entrepreneur that elaborated on the importance of self-education. He started one of the first dotcom IPOs at a time when most people knew very little about the Internet. As a result, he needed to create a free space to learn and let ideas flow before he could lay the foundation for his business.

Nick Robinson also briefly alluded to the importance of self-education in our interview. “Keep reading,” he told me. “Will Smith said it the best: ‘Anything you ever want to know is in books.’”

2.   Don’t Be Afraid of Transparency

Entrepreneurs tend to have mixed feelings about transparency. Some keep information close to their chests, because they worry that being overly transparent will threaten their trade secrets, expose organizational flaws or send negative branding messages.

And while these are certainly valid concerns, some of my interviewees emphasized the more beneficial aspects of maintaining transparency.

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Being transparent can be difficult at times, because it forces you to reveal the facets of your business model and personality that you’re least proud of. While expressing humility can be difficult, it’s also a great way to earn customer trust.

One of the best ways to come across as more transparent is to discuss your failures openly. Nick Robinson talked at length about some of the mistakes he made in the early stages of his business, saying that the company neared bankruptcy shortly after it was founded, after the team invested a massive amount of money purchasing a piece of equipment that proved to be nearly useless.

It’s a big mistake to own up to, but the transparency Robinson shows makes it more likely that his readers will trust his statements and opinions in the future.

3.    Listen to Subordinates

The authoritarian style of leadership isn’t nearly as effective as it used to be. The most successful entrepreneurs recognize that employees have valuable insights and need to be given the opportunity to share them with the rest of the team.

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Despite the limited attendance, Altschuler made sure that authenticity was at the core of every meeting by giving every speaker the opportunity to voice any concerns that they had – no matter how seemingly-inflammatory they may be.

Ryan Carson , is the founder of Treehouse, a web design educational agency that generates over $8 million in revenue a year, also recognizes the importance of employee feedback. In fact, the company has no managers, which allows Carson and his co-founder to work directly with their team members.

4.   Leaders Should Focus on External Branding First

The company culture is one of the most important elements of its ultimate success or failure. In order to build a thriving culture, executives must communicate their vision and foster an environment that their employees will feel inclined to participate in. However, leaders can’t create a sound organizational culture without first making sure that it will support the company’s overall brand.

Therefore, business leaders must build their brand outside of the organization before they start developing it internally.

Many of the business leaders I’ve spoken with have taken the time to brand themselves as thought leaders at the early stages of their business’s growth. They’ve done so using a number of different approaches to foster their reputation, including guest blogging, video marketing and conducting webinars.

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Jackson Palmer , the founder of Dogecoin, also decided to invest heavily in his company’s brand in order to make it successful. The company faced some monumental branding challenges early on, as it was seen as an Internet joke that nobody believed would ever be a serious contender to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Palmer had to overcome the lack of faith in the currency by highlighting its positive aspects as often as possible. He’s a regular keynote speaker and has participated in a variety of different events to create positive publicity for Dogecoin. And while it still faces some challenges, Dogecoin is slowly – but surely – becoming a legitimate alternative for cryptocurrency users.

There’s a reason that every entrepreneur I interviewed has made it a point to invest in growing their brand. A brand will make or break a company. Take the time to invest in yours if you hope to earn a reputation that will draw the customers and investors needed to make it successful.

5.   Reciprocate Employee Loyalty

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Russell Glass spoke about his company’s employee loyalty strategy at Bizo in our interview, stating that he makes developing trust a priority with every employee from day one. He has always made every effort to look out for his employees throughout the entire relationship, which is one of the chief reasons his firm has been so successful.

6.   Embrace Selfishness Through Generosity

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That said, selfishness can be a double-edged sword, so business leaders must learn to wield it carefully. Savvy business leaders, however, recognize that the line between altruism and selfishness is often more nuanced than most people think.

Of all the entrepreneurs that I have interviewed, Nick Robinson was probably the most blatant about the importance of selfishness . While the term has negative connotations, there are some clear reasons that it can be beneficial for all stakeholders. Entrepreneurs that are driven by a self-serving motive will create more successful businesses, which means that they will provide more security and value to their employees and customers over the long haul.

Robinson also stated that he seeks employees that are also motivated primarily by their own success. People that are driven by their own desire to succeed work harder and invest more in their own education, which creates greater value for the rest of the company.

However, it’s important not to mistake selfishness with Machiavellianism. While placing your own goals first is critical to succeed, you must not do so at the expense of your customers or employees. Most other successful business leaders are presumably motivated by primarily by their own success. However, they recognize that the best way to achieve them is by taking approaches that are mutually beneficial for others.

Here are a few other examples of the ways that entrepreneurs are reaching their personal goals by benefiting others:

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  • Neil Patel also believes in benefiting his audience by educating them. He has been known to spend as much as $30,000 on a single piece of content and give it away for free – just to help his visitors.

Patel’s approach is particularly thought-provoking. I asked him why he would invest so much money on a piece of content, only to give it away. His answer shows that his motive wasn’t driven purely by a philanthropic desire to help his followers. He said that the quickest way to learn which marketing strategies work is through spending money. Giving extremely valuable content away is also a great branding strategy.

“Some of it’s also ego as well,” Patel told us. “I do want to brand myself as a great marketer.”

7.   Think Big

Martha Graham once said that “The only sin is mediocrity” – and that’s something that every entrepreneur should take to heart. The sad reality is that you’ll never become a thought leader unless you’re willing to think big. Every successful entrepreneur that I interviewed reached their goals by daring to have big dreams and taking the risks needed to fulfill them.

Emerson Spartz, mentioned earlier in this article, attributes his success to his ability to think big, which he achieved through his social media campaigns. Spartz had a knack for viral marketing strategies and realized that he could use them to accomplish just about anything.

“I thought if you can make things go viral, that’s the closest that you can get to having an immense superpower. You could tip elections, you could over-throw dictators, you could start movements, you could revolutionize entire industries.”

Spartz attributes a lot of his determination to the biographies that he read, which showed him that potential for success is limitless with the right strategy in place. His ambitious mindset is clearly one of the primary reasons that he’s become so highly successful.

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Snow insisted on taking a different approach. Rather than joining the race to the bottom with mediocre content agencies, he strived to position Contently as the marketing agency of choice to large enterprises. Contently was a startup with a small marketing budget, but that didn’t deter Snow or his two cofounders from branding themselves as a leader in the industry.

After investing some time in content marketing early on, Contently was eventually able to develop the brand exposure needed to attract major brands such as American Express, Coca Cola and Phillips. Snow and the other Contently founders would never have achieved this if they’d opted to pursue the same track as other content marketing firms or if they’d been “more realistic” about the brands they could reasonably attract.

8.   Adapt Quickly

One of the biggest challenges every business faces is the way it responds to change. Entrepreneurs must survive changing demographics, evolving technology and increasingly competitive landscapes – which is impossible if they aren’t capable of quickly adapting and optimizing their strategy.

But in order to execute new ideas quickly, business leaders must have access to reliable and timely data. Jason Pigford recognized that having access to a state-of-the-art analytics platform would be invaluable for both his agency, as well as the clients relying on his survey products. He initially used the Stripe platform for this process, but eventually realized that he needed to make some modifications to procure data more quickly.

As a result, Pigford realized that his Baremetrics analytics platform had more potential than he originally anticipated. Rather than use it for his personal SaaS products, he sold it as a standalone service. In a surprising turn of events, he didn’t even take any time to warm customers up before bringing it to market – Pigford woke up one morning and decided to sell his product, announcing his decision on Twitter later that day.

9.   Focus on Results Over Effort

One of the biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs make is monitoring their progress by the hours they put in on the clock, rather than the milestones they reach. Many fall into the common trap of wasting time doing busywork, just so that they can feel better about themselves. They ultimately feel burnt out and hopeless – which will soon drive them to quit if they don’t make a serious change.

It’s understandable that many entrepreneurs fall into this rut, as well have to make loads of different everyday, be accountable to many different people and weigh multiple variables in considering the growth and futures of our companies. But savvy entrepreneurs are those who are able to discern their top concerns from the more inconsequential ones. This allows them to work efficiently on the tasks that matter most, allowing them to make sure all of their priorities are met.

The business leaders that I’ve had the chance to speak with through the Growth Everywhere podcast all understand the importance of managing their time to reach their top milestones. Through our conversations, they’ve shared some great insights into the different ways that entrepreneurs can boost their efficiency to meet their goals more easily.

Take Ryan Carson, for example, Ryan is a master of operational efficiency – in fact, he and his employees only work four days a week, despite the fact that there are no managers on the team, as mentioned earlier. According to Ryan, leveraging technology and delegation were critical to optimizing the team’s resources.

Here are a few of the different strategies that worked for them:

  • All of the company’s communication is handled through a platform called Convoy, which functions in a similar way as Reddit.
  • Ryan and his partner recognize the expertise of their employees and empower them to make decisions. They rarely offer any input when the company is hiring new employees, because they recognize that the other employees have a better understanding of the skill sets that are needed.
  • All Treehouse employees are encouraged to think like owners, rather than subordinates. They’re all emailed a list of projects to work on every day and asked to provide their input. As a result, Ryan says that they’re able to solve problems much more quickly with roughly 60 people combining their expertise.

You can drastically reduce the amount of time spent on decision-making by leveraging technology and employees. You just need to experiment to find the system that works for you.

10.   Test Rigorously

Unfortunately, nothing that’s worth having in the business world comes easily. Most entrepreneurs are going to encounter one problem or another when they first launch new campaigns. The foundation of their strategy may be solid, but they may not experience the results they were hoping for initially – especially if they failed to do the necessary testing. Even the best strategy will require a lot of testing before you notice any results.

Steve Chou discovered the importance of optimization after launching his website  MyWifeQuitHerJob.com. Email marketing was an important element of Chou’s monetization strategy, so he knew that he needed to grow his subscriber base. Chou initially had a subscriber box at the bottom of his posts, but he found that subscription rates were much lower than he hoped – leading him to believe that people thought it was a banner ad and were tuning it out.

Chou suspected that he needed to embed his subscriber boxes more seamlessly into his content in order to lift subscriptions. His theory proved to be correct when, after performing the necessary tests, his subscriptions increased 100%. He also found that his email subscriptions doubled by switching from a double opt-in to a single opt-in – sign-ups he never would have captured if he hadn’t bothered to do his testing.

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Testing and improving needs to be an ongoing process. It’s easy to become complacent if your business is profitable, but you must constantly identify flaws in your business model to maximize your success. Otherwise, you risk falling victim to your competitors or falling behind the times as new technology eclipses your business.

Follow the Examples of Industry Leaders

Growing a business is a rewarding endeavor, but it’s also extremely challenging. Fortunately, the process is much easier if you take the time to learn from the experiences of top entrepreneurs who have already walked the walk and talked the talk. I’m incredibly grateful that I’ve had the privilege of interviewing so many great business leaders and hope that you’re able to take as much from their words of wisdom as I have.

Agree or disagree with the advice these experts have shared? Voice your opinion by leaving a message in the comment section below!

GB 109: Book Recommendation: The Art of Learning

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9 Reasons Why You Should Study Entrepreneurship and Innovation

what did you learn about entrepreneurship essay

What is one benefit of studying entrepreneurship and innovation?

To help you determine if studying entrepreneurship and innovation is right for you, we asked Eller Alumni and experienced entrepreneurs this question for their best insights. From expanding your entrepreneurial toolbox to leveraging your creativity, there are several reasons why studying entrepreneurship and innovation can benefit your personal development and future careers.

Here are nine reasons you should study entrepreneurship and innovation:

Expand Your Entrepreneurial Toolbox

Live a life you will love, entrepreneurship forces you to continue learning, learn business skills for every aspect of your venture, apply your knowledge to various roles, become more business agile, ability to recognize opportunity , solve daily-life problems , leverage your creativity.

To me, the biggest benefit of studying entrepreneurship and innovation is the chance to expand and enhance what I call your "entrepreneurial toolbox." Being a successful entrepreneur requires a mix of knowledge, strategy, discipline, experience and other things that you aren't just born with. Studying entrepreneurship and ways to innovate can help you develop new ways to solve problems and gain insights on ways to navigate the path to success from ideation to market adoption.

Outside of on-the-job training, the best way to achieve your entrepreneurial aspirations is to learn from others who can impart the necessary knowledge and tools to help you become more well-rounded in whatever endeavor you decide to embark upon. Having a well-rounded toolset has made starting companies, navigating challenges and achieving success a lot easier throughout my career.

Josh Benveniste MBA and BA (Economics), Chief Marketing Officer of Paydala

My parents started their advertising agency in our garage when I was just six years old. Growing up around their business I always felt entrepreneurship was "in my blood."  I love running businesses, wearing many hats and building great teams! The right school will give you the breadth of knowledge needed to run a business, but it is passion and persistence that will make you succeed. This can't be learned in the classroom, rather it comes from being around like-minded, big-thinkers who feed your "energy". While the life of an entrepreneur can feel like a roller coaster, the energy you experience translates into living a life you will love!

Eric Lituchy ‘91 BSBA (Marketing), CEO of Hunter Digital

I spent over a decade at Merrill Lynch in a variety of roles, and I learnt more in my first year as an entrepreneur than my entire time at Merrill combined, and that’s not to say I didn’t learn a lot at Merrill! Entrepreneurship keeps you on your game. You are forced to continue learning and innovating ; by giving you ownership over every aspect of your company, it instills an incredible drive to learn. This continuous learning is not just within one specific area you focus on, but entrepreneurship allows you to learn about all the different divisions within your company and most importantly, learn about yourself—what drives you, what makes you happy! It’s an unbelievable benefit of being an entrepreneur that leads to incredible opportunities in life.

Rishi Ramchandani ‘07 BSBA (MIS/Operations Management), Founder of Cafe Cash Flow

No specific type of person is best suited to become an entrepreneur and launch a successful business venture. It takes determination, perseverance and tenacity. But it also requires that you understand your specific area of focus, such as your major in college, in addition to a wide variety of business skills that will all be leveraged every single day in your business. This includes financial literacy, marketing, leadership, product management, negotiation, strategic thinking, soft skills and so much more. Studying entrepreneurship and innovation gives you a well-rounded training that focuses on all of these areas, and more, to help you become well-versed in all of the areas that will impact your business venture.

Elyse Flynn Meyer ‘07 BSBA (Marketing/International Business), President and Founder of Prism Global Marketing Solutions

The job market is continuously changing, and companies of all sizes have to offer innovative solutions to stay competitive. That's why a professional who studied "entrepreneurship and innovation" will always be needed . A big plus of holding this degree is that you will be able to pursue a career in many different industries and fields, in big companies as well as startups. Or, if you are interested in starting your own business, you will have the right skills and knowledge to do so successfully.

Jessica Ulloa, MyPerfectResume

Develop your business leadership agility skills by studying entrepreneurship and innovation. Knowing the latest trends in entrepreneurial startups and innovations in business planning and implementation refutes ineffective people management and sales and marketing strategies. With a more agile and innovative entrepreneurial mindset, you can take your business to greater heights, thriving, adapting and outperforming others in the competition.

James Parsons, Content Powered

One major benefit of studying entrepreneurship and innovation is the gained ability to recognize opportunity. Entrepreneurial studies focus on the application of one’s knowledge and skills to commercial opportunities. Being able to determine a company’s worth through analysis of their strategies, practices, etc. can be critical for those who want to invest. Being able to describe one’s own vision thereafter becomes priceless when one is ready to leap into business ownership.

Phillip Akhzar, Arka

Educating students about innovation and entrepreneurship can help them develop real-world skills to lead extraordinary lives in this time-paced and fast-changing world.  The future is uncertain, and everyone should be ready to face and conquer. Entrepreneurship and innovation help individuals become independent and channel their creativity into creating something of their own in this competitive world.  Studying entrepreneurship and innovation enhances one's analytical and logical skills that enable one to solve any problem.  Entrepreneurship mainly helps solve daily-life problems and eases pain points with the help of innovative products and services provided. Entrepreneurs secure their futures and secure the world's future by making it a better place with simple solutions to complex problems.

Madhurima Halder, Recruit CRM

Human beings are all born with creativity that can be used to solve many complex problems of life. But to be able to use it takes a certain level of skill. Learning entrepreneurship and innovation helps people learn a lot about using creativity to simplify things in daily life. In entrepreneurship, your creativity and out-of-the-box thinking are used as a necessity. They are seen as the means to function more efficiently. And what is true success if it isn't being able to implement in real life what you learn from the books?

Samantha Odo, Precondo

Expand both your entrepreneurial thinking and the skills to bring your best ideas to fruition. Whether your goal is to launch your own venture or apply your skills in a corporation, nonprofit or public organization, you’ll emerge ready to confidently lead and make a lasting impact.

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14 lessons from entrepreneurs on starting your own business

Have you had your light bulb moment?

Have you had your light bulb moment? Image:  Vera Cho/Unsplash

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  • How can entrepreneurs turn their ideas into successful start-ups?
  • We spoke with 14 entrepreneurs in the World Economic Forum’s Technology Pioneers community.
  • Lessons include testing your assumptions, being open to new opportunities and never stop learning.

Start-ups play an increasingly important role in the global economy, transforming innovative ideas into real-world solutions.

But founding a start-up isn't easy. Less than 1% of start-ups receive funding from external investors. And only a handful of these ever become a unicorn or achieve a successful exit.

So, what's the secret to turning bright ideas into successful start-ups?

We spoke with 14 entrepreneurs in the World Economic Forum’s Technology Pioneers community about how they founded their companies and what they learned.

Start with purpose

Sean Hinton, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, SkyHive

Prior to launching SkyHive, a cloud-based workforce management and reskilling software provider, in 2017 I was a very successful corporate CEO. In 2016, I had no aspirations to become a founder and was perfectly content running the company I had been hired into. In early 2016 I attended a conference in the Middle East, and on day one of that conference a group of Syrian women spoke on a panel. They had escaped Syria and were living in the UN refugee camp in Lebanon. For an hour they spoke to us about the atrocities of the treatment of women during the civil war in Syria.

I had a stream of consciousness during that hour, and when the panel ended I knew right then and there that I had to dedicate the rest of my career to helping the world; that was the genesis of SkyHive. The most important thing I learned from that experience was the true definition of purpose and how important it is to live and work with purpose.

Ensure business is a force for good

Joaquin Villalba, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Nextail

The fashion industry, while beautiful and much beloved, has inherited many operational efficiencies, from a reliance on legacy approaches to aligning supply and demand. Given the complexity of today’s retailing, limited tools make it impossible to meet customer demands and reach business goals, and, worst of all, they often lead to unnecessary waste.

Have you read?

The 3 pillars of china's booming start-up ecosystem, 3 ways to unlock the world-changing power of start-ups, meet the world economic forum's technology pioneers of 2021.

I have a passion for improving complex processes. So, after a few years in fashion as Head of European logistics of Inditex, I identified an opportunity to push the industry forward. By placing tech and data science at the heart of decision-making, I knew we could better meet demand through improved predictions and automated decision-making.

Since founding Nextail, a smart retail platform that empowers fashion merchandisers, in 2014, our mission has been to make the retail world a better, more sustainable place. We help retailers become more agile and predictive so they can use less of the world's resources while maintaining the same, or better, product availability. My greatest lesson has been that business truly can be used as a force for good. In fact, it’s been easy to create a team of like-minded industry professionals with a passion for data and tech that want to make a positive, tangible impact on the world.

Promote human-machine collaboration

Andreas Koenig, Chief Executive Officer, Proglove

Things changed dramatically for ProGlove, a developer of a smart glove designed specifically for industrial applications, when co-founder Paul Günther made several critical observations during a guided tour through BMW’s central plant: Barcode scanning literally happens one million times per day and plant, and almost everybody wears gloves when working.

What if there was a way to connect the barcode scanner with the glove? This would eliminate the time needed to pick up and drop off the scanner. To make a long story short: His answer was ProGlove’s wearable barcode scanner which saves up to 4 seconds per scan. This accounts for 4 million saved seconds per day and plant. In addition, this translates to more than $4 million saved per day because one second is worth a little more than one dollar in the automotive industry. Needless, to say the idea works almost everywhere where barcode scanning is a factor.

So, what are the learning here?

  • Human centered design augments the workforce and delivers immediate results.
  • Micro-efficiencies are extremely powerful because they can scale massively and are more likely to be implemented.
  • Technology is most valuable when it promotes human-machine collaboration.

Learn what you do best. Repeat

Ben Lamm, Founder and Board Member, Hypergiant

I've been a serial entrepreneur now more times than I can count. I knew the day I set foot in my first job that I was never going to be happy unless I was chasing down my vision of the future and building companies that would enable that future to be realized.

My most recent company, Hypergiant, an enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) company focused on critical infrastructure, space and defense, is a clear product of that drive. It was founded because I could see that industries that were foundational to society (space, defense, critical infrastructure) were not scaling like other businesses because they were not employing the latest technology (namely AI). In short, we were nowhere near the future of our dreams because the systems running our worlds didn't have the technology to power those dream ideas of flying cars, living in space and underwater homes.

Building Hypergiant has been an honor but the biggest lesson I've learned is in handing it over to the new CEO. The secret to doing something in a serial fashion is knowing when to step away. Hypergiant has become the realization of my vision - now it's time for it to scale. And scale beyond the initial growth path just isn't as interesting to me as building something new. So my big lesson? Learn what you do best. Repeat that and don't be afraid to let others take over.

Be open to new opportunities

Katrina Donaghy, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Civic Ledger

Mapping the blockchain and bitcoin ecosystem in 2015 was an easy feat. The ecosystem was small, and I could see the networks emerging. I learned so much from Primavera De Fillipi , whose focus on blockchain technology from the governance and regulatory lens was brilliant and so different from the discourse at that time. Vinay Gupta was another person I followed with great interest.

Any opportunity is waiting for you if you are willing to see the path and do something about it.

But it was Leanne Kemp, Founder and CEO of Everledger (Technology Pioneer 2018) who challenged me to do something with blockchain technology. It was because of Leanne that in April 2016 I went to my first Bitcoin meetup , where I met my soon to be co-founder, Lucas Cullen. Civic Ledger, a provider of blockchain solutions for government and industry ecosystems, was founded a few months later. This month Civic Ledger will commence working with Everledger on the Australian Government’s Critical Minerals blockchain project – the largest funded blockchain project to date.

So, the most important learning from my founding experience, is that any opportunity is waiting for you if you are willing to see the path and do something about it.

Solve the problems that matter most to you

Tania Coke, Chief Executive Officer, Tellus You Care

Before Kevin Hsu and I became co-founders of Tellus You Care, which aims to improve eldercare with dignity and privacy by combining advanced sensors with AI, we would meet every month or so and discuss articles, research and technology. From the beginning, we were focused on hardware and health technology, and it's one of the reasons we became fast friends at Stanford. I remember the exact date, time and dining hall we were sitting in when we discussed the idea for Tellus.

What stood out from our other conversations is that we were discussing a problem we both experienced firsthand: how we couldn't find suitable technology to help our aging family members. When I left that conversation, I could not sleep and started writing out a business plan. By the time I spoke with Kevin the next day, he had started an engineering plan. We knew that Tellus is what we'd be working on for the foreseeable future.

Look for the potential of tech

Andre Yoon, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, MakinaRocks

Our company name, MakinaRocks, a start-up specializing in industrial machine intelligence, means to transform technology and the industrial sector. Working in the manufacturing sector as IT and business specialists, my co-founders and I saw the potential of AI and the implications it had for the manufacturing industry and started the company to help transform the industrial sector. In our first venture, we were able to successfully improve anomaly detection performance with our multivariate autoencoder-based approach, and one by one, we tackled various challenges of the industry.

However, we realized that to unlock the unlimited potential of AI, rather than tackling the challenges ourselves, we needed to empower the domain experts of the manufacturing industry with the tools to create and innovate. Thus, our ML platform was born—a platform built incorporating the use cases and expertise we had acquired during the earlier stages of our growth. With our ML platform, we hope to help further advance the industry and continue to make technology intelligent and deliver it as transformative solutions.

Test your assumptions

Audrey Cheng, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Moringa School

Knowledge is constantly evolving and never fully set in stone.

I started Moringa School, a multi-disciplinary learning accelerator committed to closing the skills gap in Africa's job market, in 2014 after being a frustrated recipient of traditional education for more than 15 years. While I worked on supporting entrepreneurs at Savannah Fund, a venture capital firm investing in early-stage tech companies across Africa, I found myself repeatedly brought back to a central challenge they faced around finding ready-to-hire talent. That led to numerous conversations, which converted into a deep-rooted passion for solving a pervasive problem which would lead to catalytic change among individuals and the broader tech ecosystem.

Through Moringa, a key lesson I've taken away is how critical it is to test my assumptions consistently. Knowledge is constantly evolving and never fully set in stone. Our stakeholders were also changing in mindset, behavior and beliefs, and we needed to continuously check in to make sure our solution was solving an important problem in a meaningful way.

Use data to connect the dots

Jeff Katz, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Journera

I don’t know how to describe it other than something was gnawing at me. After a long career in travel as an executive at American Airlines, president of SABRE, CEO of Swissair and an incredible experience as founding CEO of Orbitz Worldwide, it was clear that there was a new problem that needed to be solved and I had to be involved in it.

I saw that the travel industry was still as compartmentalized as ever. Airlines were concerned with flying travellers to a destination. Hotels were concerned with them only once they walked through the lobby door. Ground transportation companies - rail, bus, rental cars and ride sharing - all lived in their own world too.

If I had an initial insight, it was this: travelers are on a journey - all the pieces need to fit together, and no company or technology really makes that happen for them today. I saw that the solution to make seamless travel happen was in the data underlying all those pieces of a journey, knitted together using tools made possible by the Cloud, machine learning and modern cryptographic security tools.

These insights drew me back to the travel industry like a magnet. It started with conversations with the CEOs of three of the world’s largest airlines and several of the CEOs of the world’s leading lodging companies. They sponsored some fundamental research and even a seed investment for the start of a business. I assembled a team of the best and brightest data scientists, developers, and commercial operators I knew. We built a data platform that could weave together all the travel providers that make up the traveler’s journey – from the car to the airport, the parking, the flight, the rental car, the hotel and beyond. Lo and behold, we found that our approach works! And it can scale globally for millions of travelers, thousands of brands and hundreds of millions of journeys.

Hire people who believe in the vision

Maria Fujihara, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Sinai Technologies

If I want to build a successful company, I need to build a team first.

While at Singularity University’s Global Solutions Program, I identified a gap in the climate tech market - bundling carbon accounting and software. Fast forward to 2018, I had solidified an offering for corporate buyers: software to measure, analyze, price and reduce carbon emissions. After dozens of conversations, the world’s largest steel manufacturer, ArcelorMittal, agreed to be SINAI’s first customer. All that was left was to conceptualize and build SINAI, which develops software to cost-effectively measure, analyze, price and reduce emissions.

Through colleagues, I was introduced to two people who made SINAI seem like a possibility - product manager Olena Klivtsova and CTO Alain Rodriguez. Both agreed to take an enormous risk - defer a salary and take all equity, rooted in their belief in the vision for SINAI.

Finding the first few people who believed in the vision as much as I did was what made the product come to life. Conceptualizing SINAI was a daunting and lonely task. Finding Alain and Olena made me realize, if I want to build a successful company, I need to build a team first.

Ignore competitors and focus on value

Amos Haggiag, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Optibus

I grew up with public transit as a major presence in my life because of my father’s work as the CFO of a mass transit company. He explained that fundamental decisions, like how many buses and drivers to allocate, were being made very manually, and he challenged me to use my math and computer science skills to solve the problem with technology. I met my co-founder, Eitan Yanovsky, at university, and we founded Optibus, which develops a high-tech mobility platform to improve mass transportation in cities, in 2014. We developed a working prototype in my basement on weekends and evenings. After we sold it to several major transportation operators, we acquired more funding and began expanding.

Focus on creating the best product and bringing genuine value to the people who will use it, and customers will follow.

What I learned was that bootstrapping can work really well by reducing the risk and enabling you to come to the market much more prepared – as long as you recognize it will take time and you are able to put your efforts into building super-strong technology, without being afraid of how hard the problem is. After all, the harder it is, the lower the chance that someone else will solve it the same way. You have to ignore a lot of the noise, like how big your competitor’s booth is at a trade show. Focus on creating the best product and bringing genuine value to the people who will use it, and customers will follow.

Invest time in building relationships

Kasim Alfalahi, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Avanci

Avanci, which provides one-stop access to essential patented technology for connected devices, was born from a belief that sharing technology through patent licensing could be more efficient. From my time as Chief Intellectual Property Officer at Ericsson, I’d seen the challenges first-hand, including the lengthy and complex negotiations needed to agree licenses between individual companies, and the costly disputes of the so-called smartphone wars. There had to be a better way.

We formed Avanci with the vision of being an independent, solution-driven marketplace. With a small team of experts, we spent months meeting with many of the world’s best-known companies. We worked hard to find solutions that were fair and transparent, and that all companies, large and small, could agree to. In 2017, we welcomed BMW as our first licensee, and since then we’ve grown to 16 auto brands (including Audi, Porsche, Volkswagen and Volvo) and 42 patent owners with portfolios of all sizes (including Ericsson, Nokia, Qualcomm, Sony and Vodafone) as Avanci members.

This continues to be a journey of discovery, one which motivates me every day. It also reinforces lessons learned as a youngster, helping in our family furniture business in Baghdad in the 1970s. Fundamental to success, whatever your industry, is investing time in building relationships, truly understanding what your customers need, then finding compromises that work for all while treating everyone with fairness and respect.

Never stop learning

Karim Engelmark Cassimjee, Chief Executive Officer, Enginzyme

Moving ahead in difficult times requires great teamwork.

As a student at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, I early found a passion for enzymes. They provide a key towards sustainable chemistry but are difficult to use in industrial manufacturing as the processes usually become far too expensive. Large-scale production is then not an option. I realized that I wanted to strive for revolutionizing the chemical engineering sector and develop environment friendly chemical engineering for mass production. EnginZyme was founded in 2014. We enable the production of the chemicals and products that modern society relies on (for example, paints, coatings, plastics and even fuel), in a truly sustainable way.

The learnings I have made during this journey are many. First and foremost, having a good team is crucial. To be inspired and to learn from each other is what it is all about. Moving ahead in difficult times requires great teamwork.

Empower others with your creation

Charles Bark, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Hinounou

Our HiNounou dream is to empower elderly people to have longer, healthier and happier lives at home, which would also bring greater peace of mind to their children who live far from their parents. This dream was born from my pain. I live in Shanghai while my mother lived in France alone. Eight years ago, I called my Mum to ask her how she was doing. She told me she was fine, and not to worry. Afterwards, however, I got a call from my brother and learned that our mother had had a bad fall and had gotten surgery. This shocked me because I realized that I was completely blind about her health status at her home. The second thing I realized was that if my aging mother ever faced any future health issues, finding out after the fact might be too late next time.

As the third generation working in healthcare and as IT system architect, I found that this global world aging issue was a good opportunity to create an integrated health data preventive platform that collects data at home, and use AI algorithms to mitigate main chronic diseases risks to promote healthy longevity.

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Entrepreneurship Essay: Topics & Samples about Entrepreneurship

In the course of your studies for management, marketing, or finance degree, you can be asked to write an entrepreneurship essay. Those who tried it know how challenging it is to compose a convincing and fact-based paper about business.

An entrepreneurship essay requires you to carry out thorough research. You have to arrange the findings to substantiate your opinion wisely. It shall be engaging for the reader. Usually, your purpose is not to inform but to explain your view on an economic phenomenon.

Entrepreneurship is about calculating one’s chances for success. It aims to establish a business opportunity and avail of it. In most cases, it involves product or process innovation. Thus, the goal of an entrepreneurship essay is to train your business thinking. It develops a habit of using subject-specific terminology and theories.

This article is your way to a perfect essay about entrepreneurship. Our team has prepared a guide and a list of topics where you can find an excellent sample essay about entrepreneurship. Yet, we know that the most challenging thing for many students is to come up with specific questions.

You can rely on the following steps while working on your paper:

  • Pick or create a topic. The best essays focus on a narrow problem. Pick an idea that offers solutions or specifies how the reader can relate. Convey it all in your topic.
  • Research thoroughly. Good preliminary research will prevent you from discussing stale news. Look for currently topical issues that many people face.
  • Write an introduction. It is the most “selling” part of your entrepreneurship essay. Provide background information about the problem you are going to explore. Why did it arise, and who was affected?
  • Work out a thesis statement. This sentence contains the central message of your writing. Specify your position on the narrow topic. For example, “Employee turnover is not always a negative thing.”
  • Develop an argumentation. Make a list of all arguments that support your position and a few counterarguments. You will refine it when writing the main body. Include only the vital ideas and examples in your essay on entrepreneurship.
  • Think of a conclusion. Mind that your readers will remember this paragraph most of all. What were the central ideas of your work? Summarize your arguments and restate your thesis with a development.
  • Come up with an engaging title. It should make the readers want to keep on reading your text. An entrepreneurship essay title should reveal the problem you are going to discuss.

15 Entrepreneurship Essay Topics

To write a successful essay, you’ll need engaging topics on entrepreneurship. A good idea inspires you and gives a substantial reason for discussion.

Here we have collected the best entrepreneurship topics for your essay:

  • Is becoming a successful entrepreneur an inborn quality or a developed skill?
  • Is it efficient to unite researchers and entrepreneurs into one organization?
  • Is contemporary entrepreneurship possible without online marketing?
  • How can creativity make your business more identifiable?
  • Does a model of economic development help entrepreneurs to achieve their goals, or does it limit their imagination?
  • What are the psychological causes that urge entrepreneurs to seek profit?
  • What are the reasons that spur the growing expertise of individuals in business issues?
  • Which factors can bring entrepreneurship to bankruptcy?
  • How could governments incentivize individuals to become sole entrepreneurs?
  • What are the leadership characteristics of successful entrepreneurial management?
  • Does gender influence a person’s skills in entrepreneurship as a career?
  • Is it better to have a small enterprise or work for a large corporation, provided that the salary is the same?
  • Compare the approaches entrepreneurs who start only one business and those who invest in multiple enterprises.
  • How can MBA help you to become an entrepreneur?
  • Analyze the path of a successful entrepreneur and suggest what could be improved.

5 Entrepreneurship Essay Questions

Your college or school professors can give you detailed essay questions. They direct your thought to make sure you do not diverge from the central idea.

Here you can check a list of entrepreneurship essay questions:

  • In your opinion, is there a moment when an entrepreneur should stop expanding their business? Small business is easier to manage, but it provides less revenue. Big enterprises earn more but bring their investors to more serious risks and more significant expenses. Substantiate your point of view.
  • What makes a successful business plan? Is it more important to calculate the economic feasibility of the future enterprise or predict the reaction of the target audience? Give examples of both approaches.
  • Explain the concept of entrepreneurship. The essay should synthesize different formulations of prominent economists and sociologists. Make up your explanation of the term based on your synthesis.
  • What can be done to avoid cutting the expenses of an enterprise? Staff reduction, renting smaller premises, and cutting salaries usually have negative aftermath. Are there any universal ways to make your business survive a recession?
  • Imagine you are looking for a business partner. Which questions would you ask the candidates during the interview? Are there any traits you would look for? What kind of behavior would immediately tell you it is the wrong person?

Thanks for reading the article! Below you can find sample essays about entrepreneurship illustrating the structure that we have described above.

377 Best Sample Essays about Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship: interview with small business owner.

  • Words: 1643

Starting a Business: Advantages and Disadvantages

  • Words: 1730

A Clothing Boutique as a Business Idea

  • Words: 1227

Concept of an Entrepreneur in Business

  • Words: 2037

“Drinkworks: Home Bar” by Keurig

Steve jobs as a successful entrepreneur, small business: features and development, entrepreneurship: making a business plan, chinese and japanese business systems comparison.

  • Words: 3387

Entrepreneurs’ Strengths and Weaknesses

Women entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship: history, reasons and roles, case study analysis: opening a coffee shop.

  • Words: 1783

3M Corporation’s Innovation Engine Case

Independent entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, and social entrepreneurship.

  • Words: 1531

Business Failures: Reasons and Recommendations

Personality and values in human services practice, the concept of enterprise “push” and “pull” in a business.

  • Words: 2024

Social Entrepreneurship and Social Change

Entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, and formulated marketing, “how to change the world” by d. bornstein.

  • Words: 1389

The Definition of Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurial Behavior

  • Words: 2683

The Definition of Entrepreneurship

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Starting a Business vs. Working for an Employer

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IMAGES

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COMMENTS

  1. What I learned when I took an entrepreneurship class at age 14

    It's about making other people's lives better while you improve yours as well. It's about giving, receiving, hearing and being heard, and, overall, loving the work you do. I hope you liked my story, and I'd really like to read your opinions on entrepreneurship being taught at school. Thanks for reading!

  2. Entrepreneurship Essay Examples for College Students

    Social entrepreneurship is a transformative approach that merges business principles with social consciousness to address pressing societal challenges. This unique form of entrepreneurship goes beyond profit-seeking and focuses on generating innovative solutions that create positive change in communities. In this essay, we explore the concept...

  3. What Does It Take to Be a Successful Entrepreneur?

    3. An Opportunity or Business Idea. For a new venture to succeed, the business plan must be centered around a solid opportunity. In Entrepreneurship Essentials, an opportunity is defined as a proposed venture to sell a product or service for which customers are willing to pay more than the required investments and operating costs.. An opportunity is more than a product idea, and it extends ...

  4. The Definition of Entrepreneurship

    Introduction. Entrepreneurship is defined from different perspectives depending on the discipline and context where the definition is applied. Here, the general definition of entrepreneurship captures the core elements of "discovery, evaluation, exploitation of opportunities, and the organisation of markets that had not previously existed" (Bruton, Ahlstrom & Li 2010, p.34).

  5. So You Want to Be an Entrepreneur?

    When I graduated from college in 2001, I didn't have a single friend whose plan was to start his or her own business. Med school, law school, finance, consulting: these were the coveted jobs ...

  6. 10 Important Lessons I've Learned from Interviewing Top Entrepreneurs

    "The more incentive you give people to share the more likely they are to share. You create a lot of emotion or giving them something of value that incentivizes them to go tell their friends." Murray Hidary is another entrepreneur that elaborated on the importance of self-education. He started one of the first dotcom IPOs at a time when most ...

  7. What is entrepreneurship?

    Here, we'll help you learn more about what entrepreneurship is, the different forms it can take, and the various challenges that many entrepreneurs face. To develop a more comprehensive understanding of what it takes to become an entrepreneur, consider enrolling in Stanford's Entrepreneurial Leadership Program .

  8. 9 Reasons Why You Should Study Entrepreneurship and Innovation

    You are forced to continue learning and innovating; by giving you ownership over every aspect of your company, it instills an incredible drive to learn. This continuous learning is not just within one specific area you focus on, but entrepreneurship allows you to learn about all the different divisions within your company and most importantly ...

  9. 14 lessons from entrepreneurs on starting your own business

    Entrepreneurs in the Technology Pioneers community share lessons including testing assumptions, being open to new opportunities and focusing on purpose. ... Learn what you do best. Repeat that and don't be afraid to let others take over. Be open to new opportunities. Katrina Donaghy, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Civic Ledger.

  10. Free Entrepreneurship Essay Examples & Topic Ideas

    An entrepreneurship essay title should reveal the problem you are going to discuss. 15 Entrepreneurship Essay Topics. To write a successful essay, you'll need engaging topics on entrepreneurship. A good idea inspires you and gives a substantial reason for discussion. Here we have collected the best entrepreneurship topics for your essay: