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Entrepreneurial motivations
are those factors that propel individuals to become entrepreneurs
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Some scholars have adopted the trait approach and come up with certain traits and
characteristics that they believe entrepreneurs possess
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However, the
problem with this school of thought is that the scholars do not agree on the special characteristics that the
entrepreneur possess; also it has been discovered that there are some successful entrepreneurs that do not
possess some or all of the special characteristics identified
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They argue that human motivations influence entrepreneurial decisions
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They
identify several human motivations that influence the entrepreneurial process and conclude that
entrepreneurship is not solely the result of human action, (external factors also play a role e
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, the status of
the economy, the availability of venture capital, the actions of competitors, and government regulations)
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They also stress that motivational differences such as the need for
achievement, risk-taking, tolerance for ambiguity, and locus of control, self-efficacy and desire for
independence, drive and egoistic passion also influence the entrepreneurial process
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Other non-motivational factors that influence entrepreneurship are life-path circumstances (such as
unsatisfactory work environment, negative displacement, career transition and positive pull influences) and
background characteristics (such as childhood, family environment, education, age and work history)
(Unilag, 2007)
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Some of these factors are briefly discussed in the following sections
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2 Motivational Influences on Entrepreneurship or Bright Side of Entrepreneurs Bright side refers to the
positively energizing influence of each of the issues listed below
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(2010) identified the
motivational influences on entrepreneurship as:
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1 Need for Achievement David C
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This is because such individuals tend to engage in activities or tasks that have a high
degree of individual responsibility for outcomes, require individual skill and effort, have a moderate degree
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of risk, and include clear feedback on performance
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2 Risk taking Propensity Risk-taking propensity has been defined in the entrepreneurship literature as
the willingness to take moderate risks (Begley, 1995)
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This is because activities with moderate risk are challenging
and at the same time appear to be attainable (Atkinson, 1957)
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And Teoh and Foo (1997) define tolerance of ambiguity as for the ability to respond positively to ambiguous
situations
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4 Locus of Control This refers to the extent to which an individual believes in fate and their ability to
control fate
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On the other hand,
individuals with an internal locus of control believe that their personal actions directly affect the outcome
of an event
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5 Self-efficacy This is conceptualized as the belief in one’s ability to muster and implement the
necessary personal resources, skills, and competencies to attain a certain level of achievement on a given
task
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, 2010)
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6 Desire for Independence This could be in terms of financial or job independence
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It also involves taking responsibility for one’s own life rather than living off the efforts of others
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The entrepreneur gives the order, while others follow! Thus, once an individual desire to be independent
and take total control of his/her life, then that person is propelled to become an entrepreneur
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(2003) used this concept to refer to the willingness to put forth effort (i
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both the
effort of thinking and the effort involved in bringing one’s ideas into reality)
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Thus,
once an individual has the drive, he will be propelled to become an entrepreneur
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(2003) viewed egoistic passion as a passionate, selfish love of the work
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Thus,
once an individual has egoistic passion, then he/she is propelled to become an entrepreneur
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Independence entails
taking the responsibility to use one’s own judgment as opposed to blindly following the assertions of others
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Non-Motivational Influences on Entrepreneurs or the Dark Side of entrepreneur Non-motivational
influences or the dark side is used with reference to the stress producing tendency of each of the issues
discussed below
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, (2009) entrepreneurs are more likely to
undertake entrepreneurial activities when their opportunity costs are lower
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e
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2 Stocks of Financial Capital: This refers to the amount of money an individual is able to accumulate
or stock
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And
older workers tend to have the propensity to become entrepreneurs because they would have had time to
build up the capital needed to start a business, unlike younger workers
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Aldrich and Zimmer (1986) note that entrepreneurs are
highly social actors and they actively embed themselves in social contexts
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Thus, given these
conditions, an individual will be propelled to become an entrepreneur
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If an individual is not happy with his/her job and
has acquired a great deal of experience on the job and possesses entrepreneurial abilities, then there is the
tendency for the person to become an entrepreneur
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Life-Path Circumstances
This refers to individual circumstances within the life-path of individuals that propel them to become
entrepreneurs
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However, if the individual in question is an entrepreneur, then he is likely going to start his
own business
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Negative Displacement This arises when unforeseen circumstances in an individual’s life-path cause
the person to make major changes in lifestyle
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When such occurrences happen, the individual is forced to undergo a drastic change in the lifestyle and
as such may become an entrepreneur
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For instance, when an individual who was initially a copy typist goes to Secretarial School and
obtains a certificate, then there is a career transition which can necessitate the creation of a new business
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That is individuals
whom people look up to as mentors encourage a person to become an entrepreneur
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It is believed that position in the family, i
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whether first born, last born,
an only child, upbringing, educational level and age influence the propensity of the individual to become
an entrepreneur
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Other scholars argue that individuals are more likely to become
entrepreneurs when they are between the ages of 25 and 40 years, while some other scholars contend that
individuals are more likely to become entrepreneurs when they are between the ages of 22 and 55 years
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Opportunity is the possibility to
become self-employed if one wants to
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The
degree to which the spirit of enterprise exists or can be initiated in the individual is through the society, by
the society and culture in which he is embedded (Morrison, 1998)
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One of the primary determinants of the supply of
entrepreneurship is the willingness of an individual to become an entrepreneur
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It goes beyond intentions and/or new idea conceptualization
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It also involves the relative evaluation of work
in self-employment compared with one’s other options for employment (Praag et al, 1995)
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To encourage entrepreneurship, policymakers can improve the economic factors that face entrepreneur by
initiating reforms that increase both the market incentives and availability of credit and capital to
entrepreneurs (Wilken, 1972)
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The second major determinant of the
supply of the entrepreneurship is an opportunity
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Policymakers can
encourage the supply of entrepreneurship by creating programmes and institutions such as SMEDAN to
encourage and assist entrepreneurs to find capital, draw-up business plans, and comply with the various
business and tax regulations
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By
equipping more people with the skills’ attitudes and characteristics to become entrepreneurs; by promoting
and developing entrepreneurial spirit within the society, a country can effectively increase its supply
entrepreneurs
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5 Creativity

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The terms creativity and innovation are often used to mean the same thing, but each has a unique
connotation
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”This emphasizes the
“ability,” not the “activity,” of bringing something new into existence
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Innovation is the process of doing new things
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This distinction is significant
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Innovation, therefore, is the
transformation of creative ideas into useful applications but creativity is prerequisite to innovation (Holt,
1992;)
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1 Stages of creativity
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For most entrepreneurs, ideas begin with interest in a subject or curiosity
about finding a solution to a particular problem
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Preparation Once a seed of curiosity has taken form as a focused idea, creative people embark on a
conscious search for answers
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Inventors will set
up laboratory experiments, designers will begin engineering new product ideas, and marketers will study
consumer buying behaviour
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Incubation The idea, once seeded and given substance through preparation, is put on a back burner, the
subconscious mind is allowed time to assimilate information
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When an individual has consciously worked to resolve a problem without success, allowing it to incubate
in the subconscious will often lead to a resolution
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Illumination Illumination occurs when the idea
surfaces as a realistic creation
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Reaching the illumination stage separates daydreamers and tinkerers from creative people
who find a way to transmute values
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Preparation: Conscious search for knowledge rationalization Idea Germination: The seeding stage of a
new idea recognition Illumination: Recognition of idea as being feasible realization Verification:
Application or test to prove idea has value validation
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Thus, verification is the development stage of refining knowledge into application
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2) Thinking: a strong ability to generate novel ideas by combining previously disparate elements
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3) Personal motivation: the appropriate levels of intrinsic motivation and passion for one’s work combined
with appropriate synergistic motivators and self-confidence
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5) An explicit decision to be creative along with a meta-cognitive awareness of the creative process can
go a long way in enhancing long-term creative results
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As
a dimension of corporate entrepreneurship, innovation is a firm’s commitment to creating and introducing
products, production processes, and organizational systems (Covin and Slevin, 1991; Lumpkin and Dess,
1996; Zahra, 1996)
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According to Knight (1997) and Kreiser, Marino and Weaver (2002) in Scheepers (2007), innovativeness
refers to the capability, capacity, and willingness of an enterprise to support creativity and experimentation
to solve recurring customer problems
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It is arguably
the essential component of corporate entrepreneurship (Fitzsimmons, Douglas, Antoncic, and Hisrich
(2005)
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For a firm to be innovative, it needs to have a free-wheeling, “boundaryless” brainstorming culture to
engender creative ideas (Khandwalla and Mehta, 2004)
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Its
attribute describes a firm’s imperative to initiate newness with added value (Aloulou and Fayolle, 2005)
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Innovative firms develop strong, positive market reputations
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Innovative firms also adapt to market changes and exploit market or opportunity
gaps
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1 Forms of Innovations
According to Hamel (1997) in Dess and Lumpkin (2005), innovations come in different forms:
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Innovation can also be classified in terms of whether it is incremental, modular, architectural or radical
(Henderson and Clark, 1990 in Hager, 2006):
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Incremental Innovation: This comprises relatively small modifications to pre-existing solutions
(Scheepers, 2007)
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Improvement takes place in individual
components, but the basic core design concepts and the linkage between them remain the same
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Modular Innovation: This kind of innovation changes the core design of one or more components
but does not change the entire product architecture
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A good
example is a digital phone which replaced the analog phone, without changing the phone itself
(Henderson and Clark, 1990 in Hager, 2006)
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According to the authors, architectural innovation does not mean that the
components remain unchanged but they are changed in a manner that there are new ways of linkage
between the components
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An example is the technologies where architectural innovations reduced the size of the hard drives
from 14-inches diameter disks to diameter of 3
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5-inches to 1
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Radical Innovation: This type of innovation brings about a new dominant design and consequently,
a new set of core design concepts embodied in components that are linked together in a new
architecture (Hager, 2006)
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In the view of O’Connor and Ayers (2005) in
Lassen (2007), radical innovation is the commercialization of products or technologies that have a
strong impact on the market, in terms of offering wholly new benefits; and the firms, in terms of
generating new business
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It tends to have its roots in
technological discontinuities, such as the one that enabled Motorola’s rise to prominence with the
first generation of cell phones
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Product Innovation: Takes established offers in established markets to the next level, as when Intel
releases a new processor or Toyota a new car
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Process Innovation: Makes processes for established offers in established markets more effective
or efficient
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Experiential Innovation: Makes surface modifications that improve customer’s experience of
established products or processes
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Marketing Innovation: Improves customer-touching processes be they marketing communications
or consumer transactions
Business Model Innovation: Reframes an established value proposition to the customer or a
company’s established role in the value chain or both
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Structural Innovation: Capitalizes on disruption to restructure industry relationships
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2 Phases of Successful Innovation
Following five essential phases of successful innovation:
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Idea Generation and Mobilisation
This phase is the starting point for new ideas
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Once a new idea is generated, it is conveyed
to the mobilization phase, wherein the idea travels to a different physical or logical location
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This phase is crucially important to the progression of a new idea, and
omitting it can delay or even sabotage the innovation process (Desouza et al
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Advocacy and Screening According to the authors, this phase is the period for weighing an idea’s
costs and benefits
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Firms will have more success when the evaluation process is transparent and
standardized because employees feel more comfortable contributing when they could anticipate
how their ideas would be judged
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In this phase, it is essential to determine
who the customer will be and what he or she will use the innovation for
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However, it is important not to interpret these kinds of discoveries as
failures – they could actually be the catalysts of new and better ideas (Desouza et al
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Commercialisation In this phase, the firm should look to its customers to verify that innovation
actually solves their problems and they should analyze the costs and benefits of rolling out the
innovation
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Therefore, the commercialization phase is a significant one
similar to advocacy in that it takes the right people to progress the idea to the next developmental
phase
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Implementation is the process of setting up the
structures, maintenance, and resources needed to produce it
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This helps ensure that the new ideas generated are not simply a repeat
of what has been done before
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This enables the company to avoid "gambling the farm" on one
idea without first learning about the larger opportunities at hand

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