Smart Virtual Office Singapore

Authot: Dr Sheh Seow Wah
The writer is a Lecturer at the School of Business, Singapore Polytechnic

Introduction
In many societies, whether it is in the West or East, great emphasis has been placed on entrepreneurship. In Singapore, in orfer to support entrepreneur activity, the government has offered various incentives and supports through the Economic Development Board (EDB) and International Enterprise(IE). From the economic perspective, the contributions of the top 10 or 20 successful entrepreneurs of a country can be very significant in terms of creating employment opportunities and helping the country to continuously renew itself and moving forward. Entrepreneurs are always driven by the desire to create something new and turning creative ideas into marketable products.
Some of the key characteristics of an entrepreneur include the ability to use innovative ideas to create new value, possesses great execution power with considerable persistency, ability to sustain change and creativity within the enterprise and most essentially, inspiring and exciting oneself and others with great sense of enthusiasm.

Balancing Risk and Return
To an entrepreneur, taking too much risk is as bad as not taking enough risk. Many people see entrepreneur as an intelligent risk taker by possessing the ability to analyse risk and taking calculated risk against the circumstances and his own abilities. However, knowing to take calculated risk is not good enough as the purpose of going into a business is not to take risk but to reap high returns. Entrepreneur knows how to minimise risk and thus increase the business success rate. He is an opportunity seeker and not merely a risk taker. He always focys his attention on optimising the business potential by balancing risk and returns.

Balanacing Innovation and Sustainability
An entrepreneur does not see change as a threat but rather as an opportunity. He is able to see every problem as an opportunity - by turning vulnerabilities into strengths. The ability to solve problem and translate into the ability to create new value for the organisation and new satisfaction for the customer. He is capable of turning a new idea into a marketable product which in turn translates into a new business. In searching and optimising new business opportunity, an entrepreneur makes the future happen by first studying the present that is not sustainable. That is the power of innovation and experiment - in sustaining the business.

Studies in the West have revealed that entrepreneurs are generally highly independent in their thinking and actions and possess great sense of achievement (high achievement needs) and confidence. Thus, entrepreneurs always seek competitive situations in which they can achieve results that require creativity and innovation.

Balancing Change and Continuity
Changing is to face new risk and uncertainties but not changing to face the biggest pain and risk. In order to sustain the continuity of a business, managing change is essential which includes managing new technologies of information. Studies in the West have revealed that entrepreneurs are engaging in creative destruction which involves creating new products and services and prematurely destroy existing products and services. In today's information age, it is inevitable and change is the only constant. In making the future happen, an entrepreneur needs to lead the change by seeing change as an opportunity and anticipate the future.

Change is the basic principle of the Nature and the first law of the Nature. In human evolution of ancient China, one of the most powerful and mystical books discovered is the I-Ching(Known as the Book of Changes). The I-Ching is a sociological study by classifying all natural events into 64 scenarios(commonly known as the 64 hexagrams). According to the natural law, change is always in a spiral; ultimately returning to the preceding position but at a higher level (spiral upwards). So is in business, always spiral to a higher level. In a business, it either spiral upwards or downwards. To be stagnant in business is as good as moving downwards as others are spiralling upwards.

Balancing Execution and Persistency
In order to reanslate a vision into a reality, an entrepreneur needs to possess great execution power. As new business normally has lower success rate, an entrepreneur needs a high level of determination and persistency to see through the initial stage of the business. At this stage, the entrepreneur works long hours (12 to 14 hours per day, 7 days a week) and yet remains enthusiastic.

An entrepreneur need not be a very intelligent person but he is always smart enough in using people who are more talented and intelligent than him to work for him. He is not only sharp at identifying talented people but able to win their hearts through his extra-ordinary high emotional quotient (EQ). He is capable of organising people from different backgrounds and expertise and put them to work towards a common objective. In implementation, he is able to mobilise committment of his employees.

Conclusion
If you want to be an entrepreneur, you must have dreams. But, remember to wake up from your dreams to execute them. If you are not doing well in your business, it is because you have a poor plan. Learn to plan your work and work your plan. Force yourself to plan well. Success is not an accident, it is a planned effort.

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