Qualities in Businesses that foster Entrepreneurship

By nature Entrepreneurs are individuals who are bubbling with energy and ready to pounce towards an opportunity when it arises. However, one thing that that can seemingly limit the way one takes advantage of their inherit qualities and external opportunities in business is the influence of the leadership style they exist with. One could be extremely creative, innovative and energetic however if they were under the strict guidelines and policies of a business, that did not empower employees in expressing themselves but had their own way of doing things, these assets the business possess would simply be at unexploited thus limiting the business in achieving it's goals.

 On the contrary; when a business has a flat structure, employees are empowered, voices are heard and recognized and the corporation culture is inviting and laid back employees feel much more liberated and at ease which would allow them to be themselves which is believed that their  inherit qualities will shine thus benefiting the business with good. Think of Google employees, they are offered heaps of on campus activities that make work fun and inviting and their management structure is very laid back - as long as you get your assigned tasks done - that's all that matters. 

On way managers can also foster entrepreneurship is to be honest with their staff, and be forthcoming from day one with the team. The team sources their decisions and guidelines from the manager so one needs to be transparent to get the best out of their employees. This is important because you're not guessing what people might think of you or the tasks, you just do what you do best and give them confidence to tell you if you're right or wrong and if there's a better way. 

Another way of management is to always be optimistic. Doing business, especially being an entrepreneur, it is full of ups and downs which will sometimes shake and even break you. But seeing this is all normal and perhaps a passage of rite - that is the more errors one makes, the better they come out in the end and even more ready to pounce upon the next opportunity - the employees feel at ease in times of difficulty and use this as their motivation to be even better. This attitude inevitably always has employees performing at their pinnacle and thus avoids situations where they are still recovering from a previous failure. 

Entrepreneurship in China

In the last 40 years, China has experienced rapid economic and social development. With a 9 trillion US dollar GDP economy and a hard working and dilligent population of 1.5billion people, it holds economic growth averaging about 10 percent a year, which has lifted more than 500 million people out of poverty and has easily placed itself as one of the most thriving economies in the world today. 

China is also one of the most entrepreneurial countries on earth. In accordance with Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), this commentary is based upon on a range of dimensions, such as fear of failures and entrepreneurial intentions. Although, China is not yet an innovative economy, as said by GEM,  it is an efficiency-driven economy that is a cut above factor-driven economies that are a norm among developing countries.
This is where rural China fits in a place where 50-60% of China's population is. It is not over spoken that the history of Entrepreneurship in China has been written by the people living in rural areas. One interesting fact to note about the economy of China is that some of its most competitive manufacturing operations are not located in the highly urbanized regions of the country but they are found in some of the historically urbanized regions of the nation such as Hunan, Sichuan and Anhui.Some of the best manufacturing firms in China, such as Wanxiang, an automobile supplier and Geely, the firm that just acquired Volvo, were all started by rural entrepreneurs. 

One is that most of the analysts—outside of China and even inside the country—do not associate China’s economic success with entrepreneurship. This is because China's economy is not yet innovative with much of it's economic surge in recent times attributed towards the government, foreign direct investment and massive infrastructural construction. 

In China entrepreneurship is also defined quite differently.
When the western world think of entrepreneurship, they think of people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, technical geniuses who created huge business empires based on science and technology. But in a context of a poor country, technical entrepreneurship is almost by definition less relevant as all the most dynamic entrepreneurship in China is rural in terms of geography and setting.


Moreover, there are two facets of Entrepreneurship - the catch up and frontier both which are different in nature. Catch up entrepreneurship  engages in activities which are already an active force within the economy but are being copied and proposed at much lower costs. E.g. Establishment of a new mobile phone that is cheaper and has differentiated features than the product it was inspired by. With that being said, the majority of Chinese are the catch up kind and this further substantiates as to why China's economy is not an innovative one as of yet.