ET BureauLast week we looked at the evolution of the Indian entrepreneur, from Dhirubhai Ambani to Sachin Bansal. In this ET Magazine-Jombay study, we look at how entrepreneurial behaviour has changed over the years.
As the number of startups being founded increases by the day, and the average age of their founders reduces, entrepreneur behaviour on a number of fronts — from risk-taking ability to strategic thinking — is witnessing a change.
To measure entrepreneur behaviour, Jombay, a talent assessment & analytics firm, conducted a psychometric assessment amongst 90 entrepreneurs from different sectors (from ecommerce to education to healthcare) across seven cities. The entrepreneurs had various tenures of experience — more than 10 years (22%), 5 to 10 years (32%), 0 to 2 years (18%) and 2 to 5 years (28%).
The entrepreneurs rated themselves on a pool of traits on a scale of 1 to 10. They were asked to pick three traits that mattered in the following three phases of their journey: survival phase; scaling-up phase; and consolidation phase.
The sample was divided into entrepreneurs who started up before 2008; and those who founded their startups after 2008.
The results differ starkly for each phase. For instance, the pre-2008 bunch feels their primary strength is foresight.
The post-2008 brigade it would seem relies most on its street-smartness (the post-2008 startup founders also put streetsmartness as the second most important trait for survival). And, as for traits like humility and self-awareness that you were taught in school matter a lot in the journey of life, well in the journey of entrepreneurship they seem to matter the least, if at all. A recent brashly worded resignation letter (which was duly withdrawn hours later) may be testimony to that.
As the number of startups being founded increases by the day, and the average age of their founders reduces, entrepreneur behaviour on a number of fronts — from risk-taking ability to strategic thinking — is witnessing a change.
To measure entrepreneur behaviour, Jombay, a talent assessment & analytics firm, conducted a psychometric assessment amongst 90 entrepreneurs from different sectors (from ecommerce to education to healthcare) across seven cities. The entrepreneurs had various tenures of experience — more than 10 years (22%), 5 to 10 years (32%), 0 to 2 years (18%) and 2 to 5 years (28%).
The entrepreneurs rated themselves on a pool of traits on a scale of 1 to 10. They were asked to pick three traits that mattered in the following three phases of their journey: survival phase; scaling-up phase; and consolidation phase.
The sample was divided into entrepreneurs who started up before 2008; and those who founded their startups after 2008.
The results differ starkly for each phase. For instance, the pre-2008 bunch feels their primary strength is foresight.
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The post-2008 brigade it would seem relies most on its street-smartness (the post-2008 startup founders also put streetsmartness as the second most important trait for survival). And, as for traits like humility and self-awareness that you were taught in school matter a lot in the journey of life, well in the journey of entrepreneurship they seem to matter the least, if at all. A recent brashly worded resignation letter (which was duly withdrawn hours later) may be testimony to that.
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