Is entrepreneurship in your DNA?

The world around us is full of stories about how entrepreneurs succeed. Most of those stories assure us that if there is a will, there is a way to success. It also speaks of hard work and commitment, just to get the formula right. But there is more; being at the right place at the right time is also vital to ensure success as an entrepreneur. Which leads us to ask ourselves –is entrepreneurship in our DNA?
For every story of a successful business owner, there are many others who have failed. They may have the formula together – capacity to work hard, the resources and the will but somehow, something goes wrong and they are not able to emulate the success of others. Why some excel at entrepreneurship and others fail is not rocket science but more of being finely tuned to what is happening around us.
The best of the world’s entrepreneurs were not just lucky; they were shrewd enough or should we say savvy enough to know what was going on at the time of their success. They were attuned to changing patterns, emerging needs and wants that empowered their quest for business success.
Ask an entrepreneur and he or she will tell you that it takes more than a gut feeling to get the formula right. Having paper qualifications may also not be the clue; although an MBA certainly helps, it may not guarantee success. Sometimes those with fewer qualifications but more business insights do well in the entrepreneurship stakes.
Entrepreneurship is more about building on a concept than just getting into what they call a business. It is about successfully meeting needs, in the process adding value to the service you provide. Some of Silicon Valley’s big shots found their fame doing the simplest of things yet ones that provided the keenest insights. Take Facebook – an otherwise simplified social network that initially targeted campus students. It grew into a global phenomenon in no time – because it principally addressed a need for social connections.
Another key factor in successful entrepreneurship is simplicity – the simpler the idea, the more powerful it is. Simple solutions work best in building a business, as opposed to complex ideas that involve time and effort. Thanks to technology and smartphones, people are hooked on simple ideas that work its magic. Even otherwise, as the saying goes, nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come.
Entrepreneurship is also about reinventing the wheel. It is about possessing a talent to bring a concept around full circle with new appeal and a fresh sense of expressed need. If you can reinvent, you have a knack for entrepreneurship – add value, package and you are set to go.
So what lessons can entrepreneurs-to-be pick up from the world around them? Who is good at doing what – and what looks like the formula they used for success? Can it be emulated and is there room for improvement? While every market does offer scope for a second operator, it seldom has scope for many also-rans. 
Sometimes in Sri Lanka, we see hundreds copy the same brilliant concept of one but such copycats rarely last. Keep in mind that what it takes for success is doing what someone else is doing but with more value added or something extra thrown in. That is your own unique entrepreneurial code.
Yet, there are others who have improved upon, added value and enhanced the appeal of something others take for granted. Such ideas offer tremendous scope for entrepreneurship. 
It helps to focus on an industry and look at how the simplest of systems, taken so often for granted, can be improved upon, built upon and relaunched to mean something new and exciting. 
Such is the scope of entrepreneurship that often means talent combining with business insights to produce outstanding results. 
So does entrepreneurship have to be present in your DNA? Yes, but it helps to be able to think differently (outside the box or sideways it doesn’t matter) and be able to visualize change. Be driven by a vision of success yes but also be able to draw from experiences, gain insights and develop it all into a thriving effort that can prove to the world that you are indeed one successful entrepreneur. 
(Nayomini Weerasooriya, a senior journalist, writer and a PR professional, can be contacted at [email protected])