With Entrepreneurial Motivations we want to focus on three distinct elements. We will talk about:
- Self-efficacy
- Cognitive motives
- Tolerance of ambiguity
This content is the second component of The Opportunity Canvas Analysis.
Entrepreneurial Motivations
1. Self-efficacy
With self-efficacy, it is similar to confidence, but it focuses on your ability to accomplish a specific task. So this intersects with the thinking and entrepreneurship component of the entrepreneurial drive.
It's related to control, but again about activism you may be a confident person, but you may not have self-efficacy in terms of public speaking for example.
You may have high confidence in yourself in general, but you may not be highly self-sufficient when it comes to developing cash flow statements in an accounting and financial component.
So in this context, what we want to know about self-efficacy, is that it is part of confidence in a specific task and is a good indicator of individual performance in a variety of tasks.
When you think about how to improve your self-efficacy, it is sure to master it well and this builds experience.
There is social persuasion, verbal encouragement from trusted sources from our friends and family, and other psychological cues that play a role as well.
2. Cognitive motives
When we look at some of the great entrepreneurs of our time, such as Thomas Edison, you see a variety of phrases and quotes associated with him, and thus we see an element of perseverance because cognitive motivation plays a role in this.
The people who most need awareness are those who love to search, they love difficult problems, they love trying to find answers.
It is the best indicator of entrepreneurial success. We want to train ourselves in the desire to see, the desire to acquire, and the desire to analyze.
So when we think of higher cognitive stimulation and challenging problem solving, the bag less vacuum cleaner was a tough problem to solve by James Dyson.
Tough In a context that has taken 15 years and 5,126 iterations to solve the problem, how do I make a high-performance bag less vacuum cleaner. Now once this problem is solved it is a huge success.
He is now one of the richest men in Europe, and globally he has huge companies with a global footprint, and has line extensions such as hand dryers, blade less fans, and other technologies that are directed by the wind. And he was persistent in his ability to do so.
3. Tolerance of ambiguity
With a tolerance for ambiguity, what we study here is the element of trying through work and recognizing that things change.
We want to be comfortable with change, and we want to be comfortable with making difficult decisions in the face of change.
In the element of ambiguity there is a principle called the exclusivity principle. A computer will eventually be a machine with humans.
And as you've seen, the path of transition from computers in buildings and rooms to small rooms and offices and laptops to mobile devices.
The track, if you believe Ray Kurzweil et al. Will everyone have a little computer in their head that complements what we do, like our glasses that complement our vision.
This way too, we want to think about the elements of bias and the elements of reasoning which are simply mental shortcuts that happen to entrepreneurs.
Three things I want to emphasize and realize are:
A- Overconfidence
When we look or hear about overconfidence, that's exactly what you think.
It's more confidence than it necessarily is and what we mean by that is that we've become overly optimistic about an imaginary future without any real or graphic verification, research or analysis to support what we expect.
So we want to be confident but we also want to tone down that optimism. The second element we want to realize is acting.
A representation is the element of trying to generalize without proper or logical data.
B- Search
It can be very dangerous for entrepreneurs when building a product that only three people in the world want.
We want to make sure that while doing the research we talk to experts, we talk to potential clients, we talk to enough of them and we talk about the right variety of them to give us some ideas and not draw conclusions prematurely.
C- Counter thinking
The final element we want to point out regarding the principle of bias and heuristics is counter-thinking, what this means for a lot of entrepreneurs, especially young entrepreneurs, is that they often go after bad ideas.
Because they didn't have enough ideas yet to know what was good and what was not. There is a fear that they will miss out on success.
Now we want you to be action-oriented, we want you to make appropriately quick decisions, but we also want to warn you about the element of counter-thinking and don't get too consumed with what might be.
Or you may never get the chance again. So, a degree of patience, and a degree of analysis is definitely a perfect fit and well designed for entrepreneurs.
Summary
With an understanding of the drivers of entrepreneurship you will improve our success as entrepreneurs. We want to think about how to develop and cultivate high self-efficacy.
How can we develop an appreciation for cognitive drive and learn a love of research and analysis. We also want to realize what our tolerance for ambiguity is.
And how can we think about managing this tolerance. And being efficient at running relatively quickly with incomplete information.
See: How to Identify Entrepreneurial Opportunities