One sign that you’re fit to be an entrepreneur—you always see opportunities to add value. Where most people see problems, roadblocks, questions, and unknowns, a select few see a chance to jump into the fray and build something amazing. This is also known as having an entrepreneurial mindset.
Whether you found a start-up company, lead an established enterprise, or manage people at the operations level, if you are looking to drive innovation and agility within your organization, an entrepreneurial mindset is essential.
In fact, an entrepreneurial mindset is “necessary for a knowledge-based society,” says the Network For Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE). Why? “Entrepreneurial thinkers are prepared to succeed no matter what path they choose.”
Modern business leaders must be visionaries. The world is always changing—and it’s changing fast, accelerated by technological innovation and the interconnected global economy. To keep up, we must be adaptable.
But first—what is an entrepreneurial mindset?
Defining the Entrepreneurial Mindset
“Entrepreneurship,” says the European Union, “is when you act upon opportunities and ideas and transform them into value for others. The value that is created can be financial, cultural, or social.”
The NFTE divides the entrepreneurial mindset into eight key skills: flexibility and adaptability, creativity and innovation, communication and collaboration, comfort with risk, opportunity recognition, critical thinking and problem solving, future orientation, initiation and self-reliance, and future orientation.
As Michael E. Gerber says in his seminal book The E-Myth Revisited, “The entrepreneurial personality turns the most trivial condition into an exceptional opportunity. The Entrepreneur is the visionary in us. The dreamer. The energy behind every human activity. The imagination that sparks the fire of the future. The catalyst for change.”
Often we think of entrepreneurs as those who start new companies or invent new products, but there are opportunities to add value wherever you are.
Core Components of an Entrepreneurial Mindset
Let’s take a look at five core components of an entrepreneurial mindset. We’ll define each and examine how we can further develop these skills and then leverage them to make an impact as business leaders and executives.
Opportunity Recognition
Some people may naturally recognize opportunities wherever they go—but it’s also a habit that can be trained. Harvard Business School professor William Sahlman contends, “Every person can find opportunities, attract necessary resources, and build teams to bring successful products and services to customers.”
The start-up accelerator Y Combinator has kickstarted the success of a number of well-known B2B companies. But many of those companies did not start out where they landed. The business-messaging giant Slack, for instance, originated from a failed video game project. While the developers worked on their game, they created a messaging system to help themselves to work together effectively. Eventually, they realized this was the most popular thing they’d built, and the founders pivoted to focus on their messaging platform.
Develop a habit of looking for opportunities. Ask the questions: What do people want? What do they need? Where can I add value? And how can I capitalize on that? Listen closely and observe well. You never know where the next winning idea will come from.
Resilience in the Face of Failure
That said, not every opportunity will succeed. Many will fail. Often those who are most successful get there because they keep going, keep working hard, and stay consistent even after getting knocked down. They don’t take mistakes as a sign that they should stop trying, but as a lesson to learn along the way. This is called a growth mindset.
In the paper “Students’ Mindsets for Learning and Their Neural Underpinnings,” published in the journal Psychology, researchers Kirsi Tirri and Teija Kujala observe: “It has been shown that individuals with a growth mindset for learning see mistakes as opportunities to learn and improve, whereas for fixed-minded individuals mistakes indicate lack of ability.”
Each day, business leaders model an attitude toward mistakes. A team whose leaders stay frustrated, angry, and stagnant when things go wrong will quickly become demoralized. No one will want to take risks. No one will be willing to innovate when that innovation might fail. For a team to be resilient in the face of failures—which often come with painful consequences—its leaders need to be willing to grow and to learn and to model that mindset for their team.
Calculated Risk-Taking
For a business to grow, its leaders must take data-driven, calculated risks.
Often those risks can be quantified financially: for example, when an investment manager must decide between different assets, some with lower risk and lower returns, others with higher risk and higher returns. Sometimes those risks are more qualitative, a result of accrued actions within the company: how a leader manages people, employees’ attitudes towards customers, the effectiveness (or non-effectiveness) of project management and internal communication, and so on.
What are some ways to assess risk in your own decision-making?
In his book Confessions of a Real Estate Entrepreneur, real estate entrepreneur James A. Randel offers advice that resonates for all business leaders: “Never take anything for granted.”
Work hard, he says. Develop experience. If you have to go into unfamiliar territory, find a partner who has experience. Don’t just follow someone else’s judgment—do your own due diligence. And finally, when you find something that works, a deal that makes sense, take it. Don’t push so hard to get a great deal that you lose out on a good deal.
Agility and Adaptability
The ability to pivot and make fast decisions is critical for leaders in dynamic industries.
The real estate industry, for instance, is highly cyclical, going through phases of growth and stagnation in every market segment. So what happens when the upswing you’ve been chasing evaporates? It’s time to find different opportunities to pursue.
This was the case for the real estate entrepreneur Susan Hewitt, who jumped into the business by buying defaulted loans at a discount, rewriting them with tenant associations, and then reselling individual units. After several successful years, however, this became less profitable. What did Susan do?
As William J. Poorvu observes in his book Creating and Growing Real Estate Wealth, “In searching for deals, Susan discovered that there were many projects that were broken not for economic reasons, but for partnership reasons.” Susan shifted her energies to finding real estate opportunities where she could solve interpersonal problems that other players could not touch, and make a profit by doing so.
Note first that Susan had many years of experience. She had the autonomy to act when needed. And third, because of her stake in her own company and equity in the deals she made, Susan was well-rewarded for her effectiveness and vision.
In order to successfully promote adaptability within a more complicated corporate structure, organizations must make sure that individual players 1) are competent, 2) have the autonomy and authority to make judgment calls, and 3) are rewarded for their success.
Long-Term Vision Paired with Short-Term Execution
It’s also important to balance big-picture thinking with the ability to focus on short-term goals. The entrepreneur envisions the future they want to create and works backward to figure out what it will take to get there. But to actually reach that future, the entrepreneur will need to execute that vision day by day in incremental steps.
This work is not always glamorous. Consistency over many years can be difficult—and boring—to maintain. In the middle of the process, it’s hard to imagine the end. In contrast, when picturing the final outcome, it’s easy to forget about everything that must happen in order to get there.
The key is to set aside intentional time for both kinds of activity. Guard the time set aside for visionary thinking. Then stay focused during the daily grunt work. (For more on staying focused, see our article on how to improve your personal productivity.)
Applying the Entrepreneurial Mindset in Corporate Leadership
Now let’s talk about how business leaders can integrate the entrepreneurial mindset into their management practices. We’ll examine a few real-world examples of mid-sized or large companies that use these concepts to drive their success.
Fostering a Culture of Innovation
How can leaders promote innovation across departments?
No matter what you think of the company or its founder, it’s no question that Tesla is making waves in the automotive world, and has been for quite some time. They uphold a few organizational tenets that allow them to innovate more effectively: flatter corporate structures, empowered employees who are encouraged to think creatively and challenge the status quo, open communication between all departments and levels of hierarchy, and incentive systems that reward responsibility and employee ownership of end results.
Creativity is frequently the result of two seemingly unrelated ideas coming into contact and producing surprising results. When different people with different knowledge sets and ways of thinking communicate openly and often, innovation happens.
Empowering Teams to Take Initiative
Good ideas come from many places. Decentralizing decision-making can build entrepreneurial thinking within teams, allowing unexpected ideas to surface.
Intuit began as a desktop financial management software, but stagnated. In response, the company leadership took action to spark innovation. How? From the decade of 2009-2019, “Employees were given 10 percent of unstructured time to experiment, and good ideas were given funding. Decision making was streamlined and accelerated, with clear responsibilities and processes based on both data and dialogue.”
Embracing Continuous Learning and Growth
Ongoing professional development is essential for workers—and companies—that want to remain at the top of their game.
But ongoing learning doesn’t just happen on its own. Many workers already feel overworked and few have time for extra learning that will not be compensated. It is common to hear of new hires who were told they would receive training for their job but instead were thrown into their role without much support, leaving them frustrated and stressed—and already thinking about the next job.
Some companies offer educational or book stipends, others offer weeks or months of training, and some value mentorship. In 2019, the multinational HR services company Randstad ran a mentorship program for their Netherlands employees. As a result, they increased their employee retention rate and reduced turnover by 49%.
Similar programs can reduce hiring and training costs—but more importantly, help you retain top talent as they grow in experience throughout their career. Satisfied employees who feel they are making strides in their career are much more likely to stick around in the long run.
Leveraging Global Outsourced Talent
In this age of satellite communications, teams are becoming more global than ever before. The talent pool is no longer limited to a single city or region. And business leaders increasingly recognize that, while they can do a few things very well, it’s hard to do everything well.
Leaders with an entrepreneurial mindset see outsourcing not as a cost-cutting measure, but as a strategic lever for growth, agility, and innovation. They—and their company—can focus on what they do best, while delegating routine or specialized tasks.
Wing Assistant connects business leaders with global outsourced talent that can enhance operational efficiency, provide specialized skills, and allow teams to scale rapidly. For Chris Norris, a veteran real estate agent, Wing helped organize twenty years of files and then develop a comprehensive lead nurturing system, so Chris could focus on what he enjoys: selling and finding properties.
Why Every Business Leader Needs an Entrepreneurial Mindset
An entrepreneurial mindset takes risks and turns them into value. Often it’s more comfortable to take the easy road, to stick with the status quo, than to venture into unknown territory. It takes courage and effort to learn to recognize opportunities, remain resilient, take calculated risks, and adapt when the world changes around you.
So why do it? For one, because your work will be more meaningful, more impactful, and more personally satisfying as a result.
Conclusion
In a fast-changing world, cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset is crucial for business leaders. Stagnancy means death. But as you grow, it’s common to face budget constraints, run into problems with scaling, and need access to expertise you don’t have in-house.
Wing Assistant can support you on this journey. We save you time and money—and give you access to experts you don’t have to hire full time. You're an entrepreneur, an innovator. Instead of stressing about daily tasks, let us handle the email list, the sales pipeline, or the CRM database while you cast a vision for the future.
Book a consultation with Wing Assistant today to help grow your business.
Aya is Wing Assistant’s blog manager. When she’s not wrangling content briefs, editing article drafts and handling on-page SEO, she is crafting messages for Wing’s other communication materials. Aya writes about SaaS startups, marketing for startups, search engine optimization, and pop culture.
