Saturday, Rain and a little Entrepreneurship.

Hello,

A happy and exciting weekend to all of you. May you have the time of your lives.

The view from our apartment this morning at 09h00

Life, Cape Town and the weekend .....

On seeing this rainbow from our apartment this morning and being the eternal optimist that I am, I said to myself "Yes, it's a riding day."

Well, the rainbow lasted long enough to capture the photograph. The weather forecast for Cape Town today is a high of 16 degrees and a low of 7 degrees Celsius and rain. Well I am dressed, ready to ride and waiting for that window of opportunity, even if its only for thirty minutes, I will have that ride, even if it means getting a little wet.

You know what, the weather may not be ideal, but we need the rain, our dams are only at seventy percent of capacity. But, there is great sport on the telly this weekend. The finals of the French Open Tennis, the Springboks play rugby today (Go Boks), Isle of Man TT and the Canadian Grand Prix. Oh well, it is going to be tough, the couch and a good bottle of red wine from those wonderful people at Perdeberg Wine Estate.

Right now, the rain is bucketing down.

Entrepreneurship

In a previous post we discussed the underlying dimensions of entrepreneurship, innovativeness, risk-taking and pro-activeness. Different combinations of these dimensions are possible, e.g. highly or nominally innovative, entail significant or limited risk and require considerable or relatively little pro-activeness. The extent that events are innovative, risky and pro-active is referred to as the "degree of entrepreneurship."

Entrepreneurial Intensity is the combination of degree and frequency. Simply put, being entrepreneurial as regards, innovation, risk and pro-activeness and how many entrepreneurial events are taking place within your company over a given period of time.

What can we take away from the above, as regards, needs, products, processes and people proactively seek innovative and new solutions whilst taking calculated risks? Research has shown that companies with strong entrepreneurial orientations perform better than those that are less entrepreneurial.

During my reading I came across an interesting view on entrepreneurship (Timmons):

•  an ability to create and build a vision from practically nothing
• it is a human creative act
• the application of energy to initiate a novel concept, or build an enterprise
• rather than just watching or analysing
• the vision requires a willingness to take calculated risks
• and then to do everything possible to reduce the chance of failure
• coupled with the ability to build a team with complimentary skills and talents
• the knack for seeing opportunity where others see chaos, contradiction and confusion
• the know-how to find, marshall and employ resources - often controlled by others

Good luck, to each and everyone of you and your future success. My thanks to Morris, Kuratko and Covin, from their valuable book, Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

Ciao, until next time

Clive :-)