Three Major Challenges Entrepreneurs Face Because Of Lack Of Entrepreneurship Skills

The story of a determined entrepreneurial spirit is one that nearly everyone enjoys. For a very long period of time, the legendary pursuits of people with inventive techniques aimed at getting a competitive advantage has been the angle of many business success stories. In fact, this has been the case for such a long time that whenever the word entrepreneur pops up, one cannot help but envision a near super-hero-like human being with the ability to juggle all matters business without as much as breaking a sweat.

Unfortunately, serial entrepreneurs have done little to disprove this stereotype. The likes of Elon Musk, Gary Vee, Reed Hastings, Steve Jobs, to name but a few, established the notion that being an entrepreneur means one has immense skills to simultaneously create and manage business ventures almost always successfully.

Admirable as this mastery of entrepreneurial skill may be, it does not paint a comprehensive picture of entrepreneurship. The truth is, many entrepreneurs run single businesses and are responsible for their day-to-day operations but are still grappling with the lack of skills to manage their enterprises. Despite demonstrating some skills such as leadership, goal orientation, and people skills, most budding and sometimes even seasoned ones, find themselves lacking or struggling with some of the most common business skills.

That is why we found it important to discuss why entrepreneurs need to get key entrepreneurship skills and how they can get them. So here goes…

The Skills That Make An Entrepreneur

Bill J. Bonnstetter’s firm decided to conduct a research to help identify the set of skills that were most predictive on an entrepreneurial mindset, and they found what they were looking for. But besides that, they also found out that entrepreneurs, even the serial ones, lacked certain skills that according to Bonnstetter were just as crucial to business success as were the ones that indicated an entrepreneurial mindset.

By comparing entrepreneurs to a control group of 17,000 and analysing both group’s mastery of 23 practical, job-related skills, entrepreneurs surprisingly showed the lack of three critical skills. The three critical skills that most entrepreneurs lack included:

1. personal management
2. time management and
3. analytical problem solving skills.

Having discovered this, we decided to look into how the lack of these skills impacts entrepreneurship and why it is important for entrepreneurs to gain these business skills as well as how entrepreneurship education can help in gaining them. Here’s what we found out.

How The Lack Of Critical Entrepreneurship Skills Affects Entrepreneurship

The world economic forum has recognised high unemployment and underemployment as the second largest global risk. To mitigate it, growing the number of competent and skilled entrepreneurs is suggested as one of the most efficient approaches. Unfortunately, enabling the younger generation to get the right set of business skills has proven to be rather challenging over the years, majorly because the skills needed to thrive in today’s world are very different from what is being taught in many institutions of learning.

As such, the creation of new sources of income, increased experience in business, and the rate of economic development have been nipped in the bud. Besides that, the lack of entrepreneurship skills impact negatively on individual business by:

Making It Difficult To Create Viable Products

As a result of being un or under-skilled, many entrepreneurs find it difficult to come up with a product that satisfies the needs of their various markets. In a CB Insights survey of 101 failed startups 42% of the companies surveyed stated “creating products consumers did not want” as the first reason for their failure.

That said, there is a need for entrepreneurs to be taught from an early age how to study markets, and recognise patterns that can then help them design market-worthy products.

Making It Difficult To Come Up With Sustainable Business Plans

The lack of entrepreneurship skills such as time and personal management often leaves most entrepreneurs blindsided when it comes to planning the trajectory their business should take. The inability of most entrepreneurs to make financial plans, their lack of knowledge on when to scale up or downsize a business, their uncertainty of what to invest in are all factors that stem from the lack of entrepreneurship skills, and they often have a huge negative impact on entrepreneurial ventures.

Hindering Business Growth and Sustainability

Being skilled at making analytical decisions is highly advantageous for anyone wishing to run a successful business. Sadly, most young entrepreneurs have not been taught how to make analytical decisions, and unlike their older competitors, they do not have the benefit of experience to shed some light for them. As such, they rely on utilitarian motivations such as profit margins, trends, and fame, to make crucial business decisions. It goes without saying that this is an approach that often fails, and results in stunted if not collapsing businesses.

So what can be done to help entrepreneurs gain the crucial skills that they lack and in turn avoid the effects caused by the lack of these skills?

How Entrepreneurship Education Bridges The Gap In Skills Among Entrepreneurs.

Teaching entrepreneurship to individuals, especially from an early age could very well seal the gap existing in terms of entrepreneurship skills.Through entrepreneurship education, people receive guidance on how to become better entrepreneurs. They get lessons on how to identify their areas of interest and how to transform their ideas into lucrative businesses. As such, they waste less time fumbling through ideas and using trial-and-error methods to make them work.

Entrepreneurship education also diminishes the extent of financial illiteracy and creates a better understanding of business niches. This helps entrepreneurs develop skills in financial management and ultimately design more relevant and sustainable products and services for their markets

On a personal level, entrepreneurship education sharpens one’s ability to plan, be creative, and to tackle challenges in business and life alike. This boosts personal management and overall shapes individuals to become more confident and organised in what they do.

In Summary

There are a myriad of ways that entrepreneurship learning results in the development of skills needed by individuals who are intent on starting their businesses. That is why at Edventures, we believe in making entrepreneurship learning as simple as possible, so that entrepreneurs can get a head start at building businesses with the potential for success.

We envision a world where no idea is inhibited, and equipping people with entrepreneurship skills to help them realise their ideas is how we intend to achieve this vision. Do you believe entrepreneurship skills can be made accessible to everyone? Do you want to get these skills yourself? Because if you do, join our journey and sign up to our waitlist! 📝