Entrepreneurship Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Entrepreneurship - Essay Example Certain personality characteristics can also be very helpful in starting a new business. A study conducted by Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business lists several shared characteristics of more than 200 successful entrepreneurs (those who have been in business more than 5 years and have gross revenues of at least $1 million), including good health, an ability to control, strong self-confidence, high energy and sense of urgency, comprehensive awareness of a situation, a realistic outlook, conceptual ability, a low need for societal status, an objective approach, emotional stability, an attraction to challenges and an ability to describe situations with numbers (Glick-Smith, 1999). Strategic planning is important to any small company that wishes to grow or expand product lines or services. Different from a business plan in which something is started, strategic planning maps out the various practices a company will use to obtain a desired goal, such as increased sales, employee growth or adjusting to new competition (Kautz, 2005). Like running a race, if you don’t know where the course is, you have little chance of arriving at the finish line prior to the competition. A strategic plan should include a business purpose that makes the mission and philosophy of the company clear to employees and others in a concise statement, organizational goals that define the endpoints toward which the plan is striving, mapped out strategies for meeting each of these goals, action plans to implement the various strategies and the implementation of a monitoring plan to ensure the company is on the right path toward meeting these goals (Kautz, 2005). The plan should remain flexible to meet the growth needs of the company as well as the changes within the marketplace. According to Alex Goumakos, there are 5 major factors that should be considered when deciding on the format of ownership: liability protection, taxes, management, ownership transition and