ASSIGNMENT 2 FRONT SHEET

Qualification BTEC Level 4 HND Diploma in Business

Unit number and title Unit 9: Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management

Submission date April 22th, 2021 st

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Student name Nguyen Ngoc Long Student ID GBH190072

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 Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................6
Give examples and link them with the characteristics of entrepreneur.................................................6
 Local Entrepreneur- Nguyen Hai Ninh, founder of the Coffee House..............................................6
 Global Entrepreneur – Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook......................................................6
 Social Entrepreneurial – Mary Gordon, founder of Roots of Empathy............................................6
1. The characteristic traits and skills of successful entrepreneurs that differentiate them from other
business managers.................................................................................................................................6
a. Differences between managers and entrpreneurs.......................................................................6
 Differences between managers and entrepreneurs.....................................................................7
Characteristics and traits of entrepreneurs........................................................................................8
 Risk-taking...................................................................................................................................8
 Passionate....................................................................................................................................9
 Empathetic................................................................................................................................10
2. Examine, using relevant examples, how background and experience can hinder or foster
entrepreneurship.................................................................................................................................11
 Educational Background...........................................................................................................11
 Experience................................................................................................................................12
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................................13
Reference list............................................................................................................................................13
Slides for Presentation.........................................................................................................................16
Introduction
The success of individual entrepreneurs is assessed in this assignment using the theory of business
personality characteristics and competencies. Furthermore, this academic study examines how
educational background and experience can influence entrepreneurial motivation and attitude, as well
as offering important explanations for the relationship between these characteristics and performance.

Give examples and link them with the characteristics of

entrepreneur
 Local Entrepreneur- Nguyen Hai Ninh, founder of the Coffee House

Nguyen Hai Ninh, who also founded Urban Station, was a co-founder of The Coffee House. However, he
had abandoned the latter to focus on establishing The Coffee House chain. Ninh realized that the aim of
opening a coffee shop is not to sell tea, coffee, or other drinks, but to bring people together in a
comfortable environment. The Coffee House brand was born out of this need. Nguyen Hai Ninh was
named to Forbes' Asia "30 under 30" list in 2015 for his accomplishments and as an inspiration to young
people (Luong, 2018).

 Global Entrepreneur – Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook

From his Harvard University dorm space, Mark Zuckerberg co-founded the social-networking website
Facebook. Zuckerberg dropped out of college after his sophomore year to focus on the web, which now
has a user base of over two billion people, making him a multibillionaire and also the youngest
billionaire since the birth of Facebook (Biography, 2019).

 Social Entrepreneurial – Mary Gordon, founder of Roots of Empathy

Mary Gordon is a social entrepreneur, educator, best-selling author, parenting specialist, and child
advocate who founded Roots of Empathy, a global children's charity (ROE). Ms. Gordon is a well-known
social entrepreneur. She established Canada's first and largest school-based Parenting Centres in 1981,
which are still used as best practice models around the world. In 1996, she set out to break the cycle of
violence by teaching empathy to children, based on her conviction that the lack of empathy underpins
all forms of violence. As a result, she founded the ROE program and, shortly after, the ROE organization
(Roots of Empathy, 2020).

1. The characteristic traits and skills of successful entrepreneurs that differentiate

them from other business managers
a. Differences between managers and entrpreneurs

To begin with, a manager is a leader of a well-established company who supervises the work of
other workers in a department or, in some cases, a broader section of the company. They
delegate tasks, provide advice, troubleshoot issues, and make sure deadlines are met. They are
still employees of the company and must report to a supervisor or the company owner, despite
being granted more responsibilities and therefore higher pay.
 Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, are individuals who identify a
market issue, develop a solution, and launch a company to make the solution accessible to the
general public. They come up with a product or service concept, grow it, build a company
around its sales and marketing, and take on the financial risks of starting and running a
business. They will almost certainly recruit additional staff to assist them in various aspects of
the company's growth, but they will essentially serve several positions as owner, manager, and
entrepreneur, ensuring that the company adheres to their design and purpose.
 Differences between managers and entrepreneurs

In a management role, business management skills refer to a person's expertise and ability to
carry out complex management activities or tasks. This is an ability that can be mastered and
practiced. They could, however, be achieved by implementing the activities and tasks required
in action. Individual learning and practical experience are the only ways to develop any skill.

Entrepreneurship allows a business owner to see the "big picture" of his company, which
includes market research, networking, and potential expansion plans. Furthermore,
entrepreneurship does not necessitate extensive knowledge of a particular industry. An
entrepreneur may be able to identify excellent market opportunities in order to launch a
company, but he or she may lack real management skills. However, in order to run a business
effectively, an entrepreneur must have a thorough understanding of the company. Depending
on the size and scope of the small company, different managers with specific experience in
areas such as accounting or marketing may be needed (Shaik, 2020).

Part of why people become entrepreneurs is that they have a natural ability to see challenges
and come up with ideas, or in other words, perceivable. They are very inspired to see their
ideas through to completion and exude a high level of self-assurance in their abilities. They are
not afraid to take chances, both financial and otherwise, and they are unfazed by failure.
Challenges they face are often seen as a learning opportunity, with the potential to lead to even
better solutions. As a result, these astute businesspeople are able to admit when they need
additional information and are still eager to learn. Entrepreneurs are often devoted to their
businesses and able to put in long hours. They excel at networking with other business people
and developing sales skills for their firm's goods and services.

Entrepreneurial competencies include factors such as risk-taking, new opportunities, and

innovation, which are to some extent associated with management competencies, but they
differ in a number of ways. As someone who used to run an international organization that
taught young people how to start businesses, I understand his point of view. The confusion
between running a company and being an entrepreneur is real and disadvantages both skills.
Although business skills are definitely helpful instruments, they differ from what should be the
focus of the business.
 In short, Entrepreneur is the owner of his/her own business while
manager is a type of servant of the employer. An entrepreneur earns profits from his business
which is uncertain and unlimited, whereas a manager earns salary which is generally certain
and limited. On top of that, an entrepreneur has to look after all the functions of his
organisation; in contrast, a manager looks after selective functions of an organisation. When it
comes to Risk Bearing, an entrepreneur is a person who has to take high risks for starting and
running venture, but in a totally different perspective, a manager takes less or no risk while
performing his job, Lat but not the least, an entrepreneur is always an innovator, in the lookout
for new products and services while a manager is simply an executor who is responsible for
executing the decisions of the owner and entrepreneur. Sometimes, these two are go along as
entrepreneur mostly a manager to personally operate a small business.

Characteristics and traits of entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurial characteristics are qualities that assist entrepreneurs in achieving their
objectives. An entrepreneur is a person who starts, organizes, and manages their own
company. Entrepreneurship entails coming up with fresh concepts, putting them into motion,
and persevering in the face of obstacles in any event (Indeed, 2021). Some entrepreneur
characteristics are innate personality traits, but others can be learned by practice.
 Risk-taking

Risk-taking is particularly intriguing and always exists in the context of entrepreneurship,

which is characterized by high levels of ambiguity. As a result that is why they choose the risky
direction of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs may be expected to be risk-takers. This
characteristic is commonly mentioned in entrepreneurship studies (Ernst, 2012).

Mark did take risk as of his early years at university. He created Synapse, a "smart" music player
that could analyze the songs a user listened to, match them to the time of day, and then predict the
song a user would want to listen to at that time. Microsoft was willing to pay him a large sum of
money for that software. They also made him an offer of employment. Mark, on the other hand,
took a risk to reject the deal as Microsoft is a very big techonological corporation at that moment,
and people from all over the world wanted to work for this company and gain reputation and
decent salary. As a result, rejecting an opportunity lifetime could be considered as risky for Mark.
However, his mindset is to create something that had never existed, and if he decided to work for
Microsoft, those idea would be curbed forever. Mark had a desire to become the pioneer in
creating social network, and he believed Facebook is going to be ranked as one of the biggest
corporation on entire world, so taking risk to Mark is the reasonable option and this
demonstrated he is a great entrepreneur (PaySpace Magazine, 2020).

Nguyen Hai Ninh is also regarded as a true risk-taker. When his initial coffee shop, The Urban
Station, is on its way to achieve a rapid growth in terms of both scale and profit, he decided to
 drop out of the business and do it once again to follow his passion. As
he reckoned that making money was no longer his desires anymore. And he did take risk by
quiting the profitable business to follow his desire. However, with this infamous exit, which has
paved the way for the establishment of The Coffee House, Nguyen Hai Ninh once again showed
every one that he is an expert in Coffee and now it has become one of the biggest coffee brand
in Vietnam. His mindset showing up as the desire to serve people decent customers’ service
but the taste of coffee, so he did take risk by founding The Coffee House is totally rational,
and with the mindset of entrepreneur, he took risk by noticing the customers’ desires is
utmost important rather than the quality of the drinks he served.
 Passionate

Entrepreneurs are also known for their passion. Although a good payday at the end of the
tunnel can be motivating, entrepreneurs are more likely to be motivated by a passion for their
product and a desire to make a difference. This passion often helps entrepreneurs stay
motivated at times when they might otherwise become discouraged (Rojas, 2016).

A strong inclination toward an activity that people enjoy, love, or worship, that they find
essential to their ego, desire, and in which they invest their time and energy is described as
passion (Gilliland, Steiner and Skarlicki, 2003).

Zuckerberg strongly believes in the fact that passion is what drives you to keep trying despite all the
failures you come across. We all know that Mark Zuckerberg’s passion is using technology to bring
people together. Since he was a teenager, he has been really passionate about creating applications
and writing softwares and IT-related stuffs. Whatever he used to build, it was usually a product he
wanted for himself (Tanwar and Singla, 2016). Mark Zuckerberg's personality allows him to remain
devoted to the development of Facebook in all of his endeavors. Since people know that Facebook
is an online social media platform, which requires a lot of work on creating softwares. His desire to
make the world a more open place has aided him in overcoming all of the challenges he has
encountered. As a result, Facebook places a premium on passion. Since Facebook's leaders
recognize that great work comes from doing what you love, the organization encourages its
employees to build teams around projects they are passionate about. Passion is also a motivation
for Mark as he focuses most of his time and efforts to create and develop Facebook on purpose of
making the world a better place to live by connecting people. He kept continue writing new
softwares for Facebook and updating it on a daily basis to further enhance the social network as he
believes that radical openness is essential in modern society, and that any online information or
ideas should not be hampered in any way. He believes in the creation, consumption, and sharing of
online knowledge. (Allen, 2019).

When it comes to Nguyen Hai Ninh, his passion is not coffee but serving customers a decent service.
As a result, he has provided the best facilities for customers who visit THE COFFEE HOUSE, and as a
result, they will become loyal customers, allowing THE COFFEE HOUSE to continue to exist. This is
also a distinguishing feature of Nguyen Hai Ninh because his passion differs from
 that of others; most people are passionate about the business in
which they work, but Nguyen Hai Ninh is obsessed with customer satisfaction (Lu Y, 2018). All of
these factors have prepared him to become a successful entrepreneur in the coffee industry,
with over 100 locations across the country were marked to be established in order to serve
Vietnamese people the best service they can have.

As similarly to Mark, Nguyen Hai Ninh is also paying his part in developing THE COFFEE
HOUSE as his passion is a source of motivation allowing him to keep maintaining and
enhancing the wonderful customers’ services, which is a core of a business.

 Empathetic

Empathy is at the heart of all prosocial personality constellations. The term comes from social
psychology and refers to a person's willingness to put themselves in another's shoes. Affective
and cognitive empathy are often distinguished. Affective empathy refers to actual emotional
compassion for another person, while cognitive empathy refers to the ability to understand
other people's emotional states (Ernst, 2012).

Mark Zuckerberg is an extremely empathetic person. Facebook is created with the aim of
sharing and connect people all over the world, especially for those who are lonely and being
alone all of the the time, which has been clarified as identical to Mark when he started his first
few years at Harvard University. This demonstrates of how he grasped the feeling and emotion
of others and willing to show his empathy to people from all over the worlds (Staff, 2017).
Facebook is created on the mindset of helping people to be connected, and Mark’s mindset is
also derived from this factor, since his thoughts was driven by his goal-oriented motivation to
connect people from all over the world, he would likely optimize Fcebook to better itself with
users. And with over 2.7 billion monthly active users as of the second quarter of 2020,
Facebook is the biggest social network worldwide (Clement, 2020).

As for social entrepreneur, Based on a deep understanding of these factors and drawing from her
experience as an early childhood educator, Mary Gordon was inspired by her empathy, which help
her emotionally comprehend others’ feelings. She decided to work to give vulnerable children a
second chance at a healthy emotional life by developing a curriculum for teaching empathy in
public schools. If children are actively taught empathy, the brain can be re-sculpted, giving abused
or neglected children the necessary emotional skills they need to form successful relationships (SEE
Change Magazine, 2017). Her mindset and motivtion of spreading empathies
has greatly contributed to her decision to establish and develop such educational institution
like Roots of Empathy (Roots of Empathy, 2020).

To conclude, entrepreneurs and managers are different in many ways. However, sometimes,
entrepreneur could be a manager especially in a small business operation, and in order to bring
out thr optimal outcomes for the business, they should cooperate. Additionally, risk-taking,
passionate and empathetic are three among many characteristics that allow entrepreneurs to
 thrive in business environment as they mainly form the mindset and
motivation of entrepreneurs at the early days of starting up.

2. Examine, using relevant examples, how background and experience can hinder or
foster entrepreneurship.

Background and experience can be a hindrance to entrepreneurship, since experience is most

useful for entrepreneurship in terms of company growth or working strategy. There's the
example of the context and experience. They had no prior entrepreneurship experience, but
they were successful in business and are now recognised as business magnates.

 Educational Background

Educational backgroubnd gives entrepreneurs the opportunity to learn technical knowledge

that helps people start businesses effectively (Dewald, 2014). Education is the most important
aspect because it motivates people to develop and produce new goods, which leads to the
creation of a company or a new business venture. A person's natural abilities and experience
gained over time motivates him or her to become a successful entrepreneur (Trivikram, 2020).

Mark Zuckerberg has a tremendously wonderful educational background and experience that
foster him to create and develop Facebook as it is nowadays. Zuckerberg went to Ardsley High
School for two years before transferring to Phillips Exeter Academy, where he excelled in
classical studies and chemistry. He received awards in math, astronomy, and physics. However,
these subjects only showed Mark’s great ability in academic subjects but not the success he got
in Facebook. Later on, Mark Zuckerberg went to Harvard University and majored in psychology
and computer science (Bellis, 2019). This is where he has learned about customers’ behaviors,
psychology and demands when it comes to business, which allowed him to figure out what
the users’ wants and needs. Some of the must-learn subject with computing-related tasks are
pursued simultaneously as these helped him to foster his capability of creating Facebook with
softwares writing and computer sciences.

Nguyen Hai Ninh is a student at Nguyen Huu Cau High School, Hoc Mon, HCM City. Following
the trend, he entered the Chemistry Department of the University of Science and Technology
and graduated in 2010. While studying at the university, he gained the foundation knowledge
regarding coffee and applied it to brewing coffee, which is a job he passionate about and
associated with entrepreneurship. Around the sophomore and junior year at the university,
Nguyen Hai Ninh took part in social activities and worked in various coffee shop (Nhà Sáng
Nghiệp, 2017). This process has helped Ninh to gain more knowledge and experience in terms
of making coffee and running a business model which has been his passion for years. Therefore,
 educational background of Nguyen Hai Ninh implies his motivation
with coffee, and he decided to live with it, and Educational background is literally set to
foster entrepreneurship.

 Experience

Experience is knowledge or skill in a specific job or activity that people or individuals have learned
and gained of doing that job or activity for a certain amount of time (Collins Dictionary, 2021).

And Mark’s experience on creating and developing online software had greatly contributed to
foster the success of Facebook. Zuckerberg wrote the Synapse Media Player as his senior project at
Exeter, which used artificial intelligence to learn the user's listening habits and suggest other songs
(Bellis, 2019). This helps Mark to further improve an Artificial Intelligence system of Facebook, this
update helps Facebook to identify all of its users’ habits, hobbies, interests and give them
suggestion following the orders detected by the A.I system. As he soon realised
Synapse, which had been indicated to derive from his passion of making applications in his
senior years in Exeter, is worth creating and worth selling for Microsoft for a large sum of
cash. And right at this moment, he reckoned his opportunity of making something better, and
set his motivation for creating a series of digital foundations that could be able to combine
into only an application, Facebook, which is believed to be much worthy than Synapse. This is
also an explanation why Mark dis take risk at Microsoft, but his mindset of creating Facebook
truly fostered him in his choice of pathway. He also wrote a software called Course Match in
his sophomore year that allowed users to make class selection decisions based on the choices
of other students and also assisted them in forming study groups. He also created Facemash, a
software whose stated goal was to determine who on campus was the most attractive. Users
would choose the “hottest” of two pictures of people of the same sex, and the program would
compile and rate the results (Bellis, 2019). And therefore, when it comes to Facebook, except
Facemash, utilizing Synapse and Coursematch with his previous experience on developing
softwares. He did utilize his experience in writing softwares to start his very first steps

in creating Facebooks, mark can easily develop and update this kind of social media platform
with Facebook Dating, Facebook Marketplace or Facebook Poll as epitomes.

Mary Gordon is regarded a serial social entrepreneur. In 1981 she created Canada’s first and largest
school-based Parenting Centres which have been used as best practice models internationally. She
has also presented to, collaborated with, and advised governments, educational organizations, and
international bodies including: World Health organisation, United Nation, Skoll World Forum, UBS
Global Philanthropy Forum and so on. She has gained a variety of experience relating to the field of
education and charity (Roots of Empathy, 2020). As a result, in 1996, based on her belief that the
absence of empathy underscored violence of all kinds, she set out to break this cycle by developing
empathy in children with the establishment of Roots of
 Empathy. As a matter of fact, with all of her experience in working
under social-caring conditions, which allowed her to pursue on opening ROE since she has
gained pegodogic-related skills and equip herself knowledge of empathy and compassion to
help children with empathy and that is why experience truly foster entrepreneur. On top of
that, she hold a classroom program, which later on stimulates her ability in forming a school
and how to run it effectively.

In a nutshell for this sections, educational background and experience of entrepreneurs in the
past has greatly contributed and fostered entrepreneurs’ business in a variety of ways

Conclusion
To sum up, despite the fact that there are differences between managers and entrepreneurs,
they should cooperate in order to obtain optimal business outcomes. Apart from that, with
relevant examples given, the characteristics and traits of three entrepreneurs has been clarified
so as to examine the motivation and mindset of entrepreneurs as well as educational
background and experience can greatly be beneficial for them to thrive in their upcoming
entrepreneurship plans.

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Slides for Presentation