What is the Entrepreneurial Mindset?

By Joanna Liu, LaunchX Alum

What is the Entrepreneurial Mindset?

What do Walt Disney and Steve Jobs have in common? While they seem disparate at first — one is the creator of Mickey Mouse and beloved Disney characters; the other is a pioneer of minimalist tech and the creator of the world's largest cell phone company — it's not hard to pinpoint their similarities. Both were incredibly successful entrepreneurs who built meaningful products and services that still serve us today. Entrepreneurship isn't just in Walt Disney and Steve Jobs, either. We see it everywhere: in students, family members, and our local, regional, and international communities. It's the tech giants like Alphabet and Microsoft, the local Indian Mom-and-Pop Curry Restaurant, and even your neighbor's dog-walking business. However, since there are so many examples of entrepreneurship, it may be difficult for us to define what it means. So let's start at the basics: what is Entrepreneurship?

Entrepreneurship Defined

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, an entrepreneur is "one who organizes, manages and assumes the risk of a business or enterprise."However, is this definition beneficial to students looking to create their own businesses? I've always looked at it otherwise: rather than an action, Entrepreneurship is a mindset, a set of tools that successful Entrepreneurs consistently implement. We’ll cover these skills in detail throughout the following blog posts.

Skills of Entrepreneurship: The Three R’s

• Research: As LaunchX instructors emphasize… DATA DRIVES DECISIONS! To understand a customer’s needs, you must understand them and the current market within which you are selling. Who are your competitors? How are their products meeting or failing to meet customer standards? This knowledge will help you significantly when you’re designing your products.
• Relationship Building: You’ll want more than just your startup idea. While building your business, you should build a team, talk to mentors and potential investors for feedback, and even partner with other startups! Relationship building is also associated with other skills, like communication, leadership, and management, which are crucial to an entrepreneur.
• Resilience: As cheesy as this sounds, the ability to overcome struggles is essential for any entrepreneur. It’s a long and twisty road, and you’ll face many challenges before reaching success, and even then, will need to continue hard work to maintain it. What’s essential is persisting with challenges and adapting to new circumstances!

If this breakdown of Entrepreneurship is somewhat confusing, don’t worry. We’ll clarify everything in this series, collaborating with past LaunchX alumni and established entrepreneurs to help you learn the Entrepreneurial mindset! We want to help you explore the basics of the Entrepreneurial Mindset, how it's applied, and how students can use it to produce meaningful products and services.

Why should you learn about the Entrepreneurial Mindset?

If you want to pursue Entrepreneurship, this series will provide an excellent opportunity to learn about it, especially if you're unsure how to start. We aim to simplify the process so you'll feel confident in creating the startup you've always wanted to create.Even if you don't plan on becoming an Entrepreneur, learning about Entrepreneurship can have tangible positive impacts on your life. By helping students develop problem-solving skills, cultivate a growth mindset, and enhance their leadership and management abilities, Entrepreneurship can effectively prepare high schoolers to succeed in social, academic, or work environments. Either way, we hope you follow along with our series to learn more about the unique skills involved with the process. This series will span several articles including a combination of content (how-to) and how to apply the mindset (tips from experienced entrepreneurs and where to go from here). In the first few articles, we'll touch upon some basics of Entrepreneurship — topics may include idea generation, branding, and marketing. Then, we'll talk with experienced entrepreneurs and LaunchX alums who have applied the Entrepreneurial Mindset and three R’s to build their startups and businesses. Finally, we'll provide you with different methods of pursuing Entrepreneurship to provide you with helpful tools and resources. Join us next week to continue the series here on the LaunchX blog