Entrepreneurship is the process of adding something new [creativity] and something different [innovation] for the purpose of creating wealth for the individual and adding value to society. An entrepreneur has to be creative and innovative in order to have a sustainable growing business. In fact, entrepreneurs are considered as one of the main contributors to country economy growth. Entrepreneurial activity benefit community and society as it creates job opportunity, income, products and services with his creativity and innovation to us.
Important Factors of Entrepreneurial Motivation
Motivation is one of the elements in influencing the process of entrepreneurship. The general entrepreneurial motivation factors, including need for achievement, locus of control, vision, desire for independence, passion, and drive.
- Need for Achievement: Individuals who have higher level in need for achievement are will have higher desire to involve in activities or tasks that have a high degree of individual responsibility for outcomes. Entrepreneurial activity involves high responsibility and high risk. In order to have great achievement, entrepreneurs will like to take the challenge to start up and grow their business successfully. Hence, entrepreneurial roles are characterized as having greater degree of risk, skill and effort, as well as feedback on performance. From the Maslow’s hierarchy, entrepreneurs are individuals who are in the level of self-esteem or self-actualization. They desire for self-fulfillment as to be successful entrepreneurs.
- Locus of Control: Locus of control is the belief in the degree which individuals believe their actions or personal characteristics decide the consequences. Individuals who have an external locus of control believe that the outcome of an extent is out of their control, while individual with an internal locus of control believe that their personal actions directly affect the outcome of an event. Individuals with internal locus of control will like to play entrepreneurial roles because they desire positions in which their actions have a direct impact on results.
- Vision: An individual with the vision of creating a profitable firm can be motivated to be an entrepreneur. Vision is influenced and affected by cognitive factors such as knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs). The combination or integration of motivation and cognition will further create visionary action. Firstly, the entrepreneurs will need to have the knowledge regarding the sector or industry they want to invent into. Next, they will need to have the skills such as leaderships, bargaining and purchasing, market analysis, decision making, team building, planning as well as problem solving. Furthermore, the entrepreneurs need to have the abilities such as financial abilities and intelligence, too. Aligned with the KSAs, the entrepreneurs will have a realistic and achievable vision, including the strategy for the organization and manage it well.
- Desire for Independence: Individuals choose to start up their own business because they don’t like to work for other people. They desire independence whereby they make decision by themselves, they choose their own path and life rather than living off the efforts of others. Many studies have found that the entrepreneurial role necessitates independence. First the entrepreneur takes responsibility for pursuing an opportunity did not exist before. Second, entrepreneurs are, in the end, responsible for results, whether achieved or not achieved. Further, individuals may pursue entrepreneurial careers because they desire independence. For example, in interviews with U.S. female firm founders, its found that one of the prime motivations for starting a business was a desire for independence.
- Passion: Passion is a feeling of an individual which will be converted later into action in order to show they are enthusiastic people. Passion is a central motive rather than motive to serve their employees and society. An entrepreneur will be passion for their work, love their work and the process of establishing an organization by their efforts and make it profitable yet successful. The reason of putting so much effort by entrepreneurs on the organization is actually come from their own interest. Passion is hardly to be measured in quantitative but can be observed and come out with qualitative analysis. Passion has a direct impact in firm growth.
- Drive: There is some relation between drive and Need for Achievement. However, the term drive is referring to broader aspect than Need for Achievement. The authors have further explained the variables for drive which includes ambition, goals, energy and stamina, and persistence. Ambition affects the level of desire for entrepreneurs to create something great, eventful and meaningful. An entrepreneur is the one with great ambition such as to be successful in life, to be the one who have great influence on others, to create something new and others. Ambition will drive entrepreneurs to set high goals for one and others. Better performance will be driven by high goals comparing to the result of low goals. When a goal is being persuading consistently, we can say it is the persistence of the entrepreneur to realize their dream.