by Ronald Claiborne

Created on: December 02, 2009

Innovation, self awareness, and knowledge management are among the top characteristics of successful entrepreneurs (Protocan & Mulej, 2009). Tichy (1990) and Karakas (2007) both agree leaders need to make changes on the personal level to meet the challenges that lie ahead for business in the 21st century. The challenges of the turbulent times in the global economy calls for innovation, keen awareness of self, and the ability to manage the vast array of information caused by the technological revolution.

Before an individual can obtain what it takes to be an entrepreneur he or she must first understand what qualifies a person as an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur is an individual who leads an organization who is a creative, innovative, visionary, risk taker, and a transformational leader (Protocan & Mulej, 2009). Miller (1983) believes entrepreneurship is closely related to variables of the environment, structure, strategy, and the leader's personality. Therefore, the ability to manage innovation, manage emotions, and manage information represents critical success factors for the entrepreneur.

What is innovation? According to Richardson (2004), innovation needs is one of the most severe challenges facing the global community in the 21st Century. Innovation is finding new ways of solving problems (Protocan & Mulej, 2009). Entrepreneurs think outside of the box. Therefore, innovation occurs when the individual look at old problems in new ways. He or she looks at every aspect of business through the eyes of an entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur, the individual seek to do the untried or the unpopular while leading the organization into a future much different than the organization's past. Innovators are visionary risk takers.

Risk taking is a lonely endeavor that requires mental toughness. The second critical success factor for the individual who would become an entrepreneur is self awareness. The budding entrepreneur must have emotional intelligence to become an effective leader in the 21st century. Samad (2009) believes emotional awareness is an essential ingredient to achieve effectiveness in leadership. Entrepreneurs lead business systems and business systems, according to Protocan and Mulej (2009) are very influential institutions in the 21st Century. Emotional intelligence involves having the ability to work well with people and people's emotion (Samad, 2009). Therefore, to be successful every leader needs emotional intelligence. The attributes

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