Presentasi Lisan

PRESENTASI LISAN
Seperti pula aktivitas bisnis lainnya, kunci terpenting untuk presentasi lisan yang efektif adalah perencanaan dan persiapan yang baik. Mengapa hal ini penting? Seperti saat anda memasak, tentunya untuk menyajikan suatu masakan yang lezat, anda perlu catat tentang banyaknya bahan dan saat yang tepat bahan-bahan tersebut dicampur. Cara-cara memasak dan jumlahnya bahan disajikan dalam bentuk resep masakan, dengan resep tersebut anda dapat mengetahui banyaknya bahan yang diperlukan, cara mencampurnya dan saat yang tepat bahan-bahan tersebut diolah.
Demikian pula dengan presentasi lisan, suatu perencanaan tentang susunan materi yang akan disampaikan, saat penyampaian informasi, metode yang digunakan, sehingga tujuan akan tercapai dengan baik. Dengan demikian, pertama kali anda harus mempersiapkan perencanaan, yang memikirkan tentang, tujuan pembicaraan anda, cara anda menyampaikan dan saat anda mengakhiri pembicaraan.
Dengan perencanaan yang baik anda dapat mengantisipasi masalah yang mungkin timbul saat presentasi, mengantisipasi bahan dan peralatan yang dibutuhkan, memberikan kepercayaan diri dan memberikan arah tujuan presentasi anda.
Di bawah ini diuraikan beberapa pertimbangan yang diperlukan dengan jelas saat persiapan dilakukan

· Menetapkan tujuan
· Memilih topik presentasi
· Menganalisa pendengar
· Menetapkan metoda
· Menyusun bahan
· Mempersiapkan alat bantu
· Latihan oral

1. Menetapkan Tujuan
Sering kita mendengar komentar dari pendengar setelah seseorang selesai presentasi, yaitu seperti ini: “Saya tidak mengerti apa yang baru ia katakan” atau “Apa maksud presentasi tadi?” Komentar tersebut menunjukkan bahwa tidaklah mudah menentukan tujuan presentasi lisan seperti yang kita bayangkan. Banyak para pembicara yang tidak mampu atau bahkan tidak mau menentukan tujuan pidatonya.
Menentukan tujuan presentasi lisan akan memberikan petunjuk bagi anda mengenai: materi yang akan disajikan dan cara menyajikannya. Salah satu cara untuk memusatkan tujuan adalah: pertama dengan membuat keputusan secara umum, kemudian diikuti dengan analisa yang spesifik untuk tiap keadaan.
Pada umumnya terdapat beberapa tujuan presentasi lisan antara lain:
a. Memberikan Informasi
Saat seorang manajer memberitahukan perubahan tingkat gaji pada seluruh karyawan dan perubahan prosedur pemesanan barang. Atau seorang dosen yang sedang menjelaskan teori permintaan barang pada mahasiswa. Maka tujuan presentasi lisan tersebut adalah untuk memberitahukan atau memberikan informasi.
b. Membujuk
Tujuan presentasi lisan adalah membujuk pendengar agar melakukan apa yang anda ingatkan. Contohnya seorang penyuluh Keluarga Berencana yang sedang berpidato di depan sekelompok ibu pedesaan. Tujuan pidatonya adalah membujuk para ibu agar mempunyai dua anak saja sesuai dengan program pemerintah.
c. Meyakinkan
Tujan presentasi lisan disini adalah berusaha untuk mengubah jalan pikiran, kepercayaan, keyakinan dan pendapat sekelompok pendengar. Kita ambil contoh diatas seorang penyuluh Keluarga Bencana yang sedang berpidato di depan sekelompok idu pedesaan.
Tujuan pidatonya disini adalah meyakinkan para ibu bahwa dengan mempunyai dua anak akan lebih baik daripada keluarga besar tetapi tidak terjamin masa depannya. Dalam hal ini penyuluh berusaha untuk mengubahh jala pikiran, kepercayaan para ibu pedessan yang percaya bahwa “banyak anak banyak rejeki”.
d. Menghibur
Tujuan pidato disini adalah untuk memberikan kegembiraan, hiburan kepada pendengar. Contohnya adalah seorang yang menyajikan humor, lawak di depan sekelompok orang.
Pada kenyataannya hampir tidak ada pidato yang benar-benar hanya mempunyai satu tujuan saja, misalnya memberitahu atau hanya membujuk saja. Biasanya keempat tujuan tersebut digunakan bersama-sama sebagai suatu kombinasi. Yang terpenting bagi anda adalah menentukan tujuan utamnya, kemudian menyusun bahan-bahan yang sesuai dengan tujuan utama tersebut. Apabila ini tidak dilakukan, maka anda berpresentasi dengan tidak teratur/kacau.

2. Menganalisa Pendengar
Bila menganalisa pendengar dilakukan jauh sebelum pidato disampaikan, maka pidato anda akan lebih baik dan juga anda akan merasa lebih dekat dengan pendengar. Biasanya pendengar tidak senang mendengarkan pidato dari seseorang yang tidak mempertimbangkan kebutuhan, pengetahuan dan pengalaman mereka.
Untuk mendapatkan gambaran mengenai calon pendengar, dapat dilakukan dengan berbagai cara. Misalnya: bertanya kepada teman yang pernah berpidato pada kelempok pendengar tersebut, bertanya pada panitia penyelenggara atau bila kedua hal tersebut tidak mungkin, anda dapat membuat pertimbangan berdasarkan asumsi sendiri.

3. Menetapkan Metoda
Berdasarkan analisa pendengar yang telah disusun, kemudian ditetapkan metode yang tepat untuk situasi tersebut. Biasanya pembicaraan merasa siap berpidato, setelah mengadakan penelitian, tetapi mereka tidak menyadari betapa pentingnya pola penyusunan pidato. Akibatnya pidato tersebut tidak jelas tujuannya, tidak konsisten dan tidak disesuaikan dengan keadaan pendengar.
Ada empat macam metode presentasi yaitu:
a. Metode Impromtu
Pembicaraan berpresentasi tanpa persiapan karena diminta secara tiba-tiba. Pembicara berpresentasi berdasarkan pengetahuan dan pengalamannya. Metode ini membutuhkan kemahiran berbicara yang tinggi dan pengetahuan dan pengalaman yang tinggi.
b. Metode Menghafal
Dengan metode ini, pembicara merencanakan, menulis secara lengkap dan kemudian menghafalkan kata demi kata. Pada saat presentasi dia berbicara atas dasar hafalan tersebut. Presentasi dengan metoda ini biasanya kurang menarik, menjemukan, berbicara cepat dan kaku. Pembicaraan akan selalu tergantung pada naskah yang telah dihafalnya. Karena itu bila ada hal yang terlupa, dia akan merasa gugup dan kehilangan kontrol. Metoda ini lebih tepat bagi pembicara yang kurang berpengalaman, tetapi dia harus benar-benar mempersiapkannya dengan matang.
c. Metode Naskah
Pembicara membaca naskah yang sudah dipersiapkan jauh sebelumnya. Walaupun demikian tidak berarti pembicaraan berbicara sendiri tanpa kontak langsung dengan pendengar. Ia harus dapat menciptakan suasana sedemikian rupa agar pendengar merasa bahwa ia sedang berbicara dengan mereka. Kontak mata harus tetap dipertahankan walaupun ia sedang membaca naskah. Misalnya sesekali melihat pendengar, tersenyum atau dengan gerakan-gerakan tangan yang dapat menciptakan suasana hidup. Karena itu diperlukan latihan-latihan yang cukup sebelum pembicara berpresentasi, sehingga ia tahu dengan pasti sampai dimana berbicara saat ia menebarkan pandangan ke arah pendengar.
d. Metode Ekstemporan
Pada metode ini pembicara mempersiapkan kerangka presentasinya dengan cermat yang berisi tentang urutan-urutan ide. Saat ini berpresentasi menggunakan kata-kata sendiri yang bervariasi, dan mungkin sesekali ia mengubah pembicaraan sesuai dengan reaksi yang timbul saat itu. Diperlukan persiapan yang cermat, latihan, pengalaman, pengetahuan yang cukup dan juga keterampilan berbicara yang baik.

Pada dasarnya tidak ada metode yang paling baik diantara keempat metoda diatas. Hal ini tergantung pada banyak faktor yaitu: kemampuan berbicara, keadaan pendengar, materi yang disajikan, situasi dan faktor-faktor lainnya. Mungkin saja salah satu metoda lebih tepat untuk digunakan dibanding dengan metoda lainnya, karena situasi mendukung.
Terdapat tiga bagian utama dalam penyajian pidato yaitu:
· Pendahuluan (introduction)
· Isi (Body)
· Kesimpulan (conclusion)

4. Mempersiapkan Alat Bantu
Setelah anda mempersiapkan kerangka berdasarkan penelitian pertama dan setelah menyusun bahan, maka sekarang anda perlu menyiapkan ilustrasi visual atau alat bantu yang akan mendukung penyajian presentasi anda. Termasuk penggunaan catatan dan media visual lainnya.
Banyak pembicara merasakan manfaat dengan membuat catatan-catatan bila mereka menyajikan informasi kepada pendengar secara lisan. Bahakan suatu uraian garis besar yang ringkas akan dapat membimbing anda. Namun, anda mungkin memerlukan keterangan yang lebih terperinci, bergantung kepada tipe dan kualitas informasi yang sedang anda sajikan.
Metode yang paling mudah diterapkan adalah dengan menggunakan kartu yang berisi poin-poin utama. Anda dapat dengan mudah melihat ide utama tesebut tanpa harus membacanya kata per kata.

Alat bantu visual
Banyak presentasi lisan dalam bisnis yang menggunakan alat bantu visual yang bentuknya bermacam-macam.seperti ada pernyataan yang menyatakan: “suatu gambar lebih bernilai daripada seribu kata”. Kalau pernyataan ini tidak benar, maka tidak mungkin oarang terus menerus mengembangkan alat bantu elektronik seperti komputer dan televisi.
Funsi alat bantu visual adalah untuk memperkuat pesan yang sedang anda sampaikan, bukan merupakan pengganti dari isi ceramah tersebut. Peranan utama tetap berada pada anda sebagai pembicara.

5. Latihan Oral
Setelah anada mempersiapkan pidato atau ceramah, sebaiknya beberapa hari sebelumnya anda melatih suara, termasuk latihan memperagakan pidato atau ceramah tersebut. Sehingga bila saatnya tiba anda telah betul-betul siap di depan publik.

Microcredit

Microcredit
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This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (August 2008)
This article is specific to small loans. For financial services to the poor, see Microfinance. For small payments, see Micropayment.
Microcredit is the extension of very small loans (microloans) to those in poverty designed to spur entrepreneurship. These individuals lack collateral, steady employment and a verifiable credit history and therefore cannot meet even the most minimal qualifications to gain access to traditional credit. Microcredit is a part of microfinance, which is the provision of a wider range of financial services to the very poor.
Microcredit is a financial innovation that is generally considered to have originated with the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh.[1] In that country, it has successfully enabled extremely impoverished people to engage in self-employment projects that allow them to generate an income and, in many cases, begin to build wealth and exit poverty. Due to the success of microcredit, many in the traditional banking industry have begun to realize that these microcredit borrowers should more correctly be categorized as pre-bankable; thus, microcredit is increasingly gaining credibility in the mainstream finance industry, and many traditional large finance organizations are contemplating microcredit projects as a source of future growth, even though almost everyone in larger development organizations discounted the likelihood of success of microcredit when it was begun. The United Nations declared 2005 the International Year of Microcredit.
Contents[hide]
1 History
2 Principles
3 Strengths
4 Microcredit and the Web
5 In the developed world
6 Criticism
7 Role of developing countries—a recent Forbes ranking
8 See also
9 References
10 Bibliography
11 External links
//

[edit] History
Microcredit has been practiced at various times in modern history; Jonathan Swift inspired the Irish Loan Funds of the 18th and 19th centuries [1], in the mid-1800s, Individualist anarchist Lysander Spooner wrote about the benefits of numerous small loans for entrepreneurial activities to the poor as a way to alleviate poverty [2], and microcredit was included in portions of the Marshall Plan at the end of World War II. However, in its most recent incarnation, with attention paid by economists and politicians worldwide, it can be linked to several organizations starting in Bangladesh in the 1970s and onward.

[edit] Principles
Microcredit is based on a separate set of principles, which are distinguished from general financing or credit. [3] Microcredit emphasizes building capacity of a micro-entrepreneur, [4] employment generation, trust building [5] and help to the micro-entrepreneur on initiation and during difficult times. Microcredit is a tool for socioeconomic development [2][3]

[edit] Strengths
In the past few years, savings-led microfinance has gained recognition as an effective way to bring very poor families low-cost financial services. For example, in India, the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) finances more than 500 banks that on-lend funds to self-help groups (SHGs). SHGs comprise twenty or fewer members, of whom the majority are women from the poorest castes and tribes. Members save small amounts of money, as little as a few rupees a month in a group fund. Members may borrow from the group fund for a variety of purposes ranging from household emergencies to school fees. As SHGs prove capable of managing their funds well, they may borrow from a local bank to invest in small business or farm activities. Banks typically lend up to four rupees for every rupee in the group fund. Groups generally pay interest rates that range from 12% to 24% a year, based on the flat calculation method. Nearly 1.4 million SHGs comprising approximately 20 million women now borrow from banks, which makes the Indian SHG-Bank Linkage model the largest microfinance program in the world. Similar programs are evolving in Africa and Southeast Asia with the assistance of organizations like Opportunity International, Catholic Relief Services, CARE, APMAS and Oxfam. Microfinancing also helps in the development of an economy by giving everyday people the chance to establish a sustainable means of income. Eventual increases in disposable income will lead to economic development and growth.
Jason Cons and Kasia Paprocki of the Goldin Institute, while quite critical of some unintended side-effects of microcredit, nonetheless acknowledge its "enormous potential as a tool for poverty alleviation."[1]

[edit] Microcredit and the Web
The principles of microcredit have also been applied in attempting to address several non-poverty-related issues. Among these, multiple Internet-based organizations have developed platforms that facilitate a modified form of peer-to-peer lending where a loan is not made in the form of a single, direct loan, but as the aggregation of a number of smaller loans—often at a negligible interest rate. There are several ways by which the general public can participate in alleviating poverty using Web platforms.
Lend to micro-entrepreneurs:
Kiva.org is the first micro-lending website that enables an individual to lend money to a micro-entrepreneur in the developing world through a microfinance institution. As of November 2008, over 100 field partners have collaborated with Kiva, dramatically extending its scope and reach.
New platforms that connect lenders to micro-entrepreneurs are emerging on the Web, such as Rang De (India) [6], dhanaX (India) and http://www.babyloan.org or http://www.veecus.com (France).
Invest in microcredit securities:
MicroPlace.com, a wholly-owned subsidiary of eBay, was launched in October 2007. With Microplace, retail investors in the US can buy securities issued by security issuers. Therefore, MicroPlace is tapping into the socially responsible investment world and can attract larger capital to microcredit. Deutsche Bank estimates that $250 billion [7]is needed to raise enough capital to get it into the hands of the one billion working poor who could benefit from microcredit. While the US gave $303 billion [8] in charity to all causes, they invested $2.4 trillion in socially responsible investments. [9]
Guarantee loans to micro-entrepreneurs:
United Prosperity will enable an individual to guarantee a loan to the micro-entrepreneur they choose to connect and support. The guarantee allows the microfinance institution to raise funds in local currency from local banks and make a loan to micro-entrepreneurs. Since the guarantee is only for a part of the loan amount, the guarantee allows the guarantors to multiply the impact of their money.
Contribute to micro-entrepreneurs:
Wokai(lending to China) allows contributors to contribute towards micro-entrepreneurs they choose to connect and support. Since the contribution is a donation, contributors in the United States may also get a tax deduction.

[edit] In the developed world
Microcredit is not only provided in poor countries, but also in one of the world's richest countries, the USA, where 37 million people (12.6%) live below the poverty line. [10] Among other organizations that provide microloans in the US [11][12], Grameen Bank started their operation in New York in April 2008. According to economist Jonathan Morduch of New York University, microloans have less appeal in the US, because people think it too difficult to escape poverty through private enterprise.
Efforts to replicate Grameen-style solidarity lending in developed countries have generally not succeeded. For example, the Calmeadow Foundation tested an analogous peer-lending model in three locations in Canada, rural Nova Scotia and urban Toronto and Vancouver, during the 1990s. It concluded that a variety of factors—including difficulties in reaching the target market, the high risk profile of clients, their general distaste for the joint liability requirement, and high overhead costs—made solidarity lending unviable without subsidies. [4] However, debates have continued about whether the required subsidies may be justified as an alternative to other subsidies targeted to the entrepreneurial poor, and VanCity Credit Union, which took over Calmeadow's Vancouver operations, continues to use peer lending.

[edit] Criticism
Gina Neff of the Left Business Observer has described the microcredit movement as a privatization of public safety-net programs.[5] Enthusiasm for microcredit among government officials as an anti-poverty program can motivate cuts in public health, welfare, and education spending.[citation needed] Neff maintains that the success of the microcredit model has been judged disproportionately from a lender's perspective (repayment rates, financial viability) and not from that of the borrowers. For example, the Grameen Bank's high repayment rate does not reflect the number of women who are repeat borrowers that have become dependent on loans for household expenditures rather than capital investments.[citation needed] Studies of microcredit programs have found that women often act merely as collection agents for their husbands and sons, such that the men spend the money themselves while women are saddled with the credit risk.[6][1] As a result, borrowers are kept out of waged work and pushed into the informal economy.[citation needed]
Many studies in recent years have shown that risks like sickness, natural disaster and overindebtedness are a critical dimension of poverty and that very poor people rely heavily on informal savings to manage these risks (see, for example, The Microfinance Revolution: Sustainable Finance for the Poor by Marguerite Robinson). It might be expected that microfinance institutions would provide safe, flexible savings services to this population, but—with notable exceptions like Grameen II—they have been very slow to do so. Some experts argue that most microcredit institutions are overly dependent on external capital. A study of microcredit institutions in Bolivia in 2003, for example, found that they were very slow to deliver quality microsavings services because of easy access to cheaper forms of external capital.[7] Global data tables from The Microbanking Bulletin show that savings represent a small source of funds for microcredit institutions in most developing nations.
Because field officers are in a position of power locally and are judged on repayment rates as the primary metric of their success, they sometimes use coercive and even violent tactics to collect installments on the microcredit loans. Some loan recipients sink into a cycle of debt, using a microcredit loan from one organization to meet interest obligations from another. [1] Also, counter to the original intention of the microcredit system to empower women, one of the effects of an infusion of cash into local economies has been to increase dowries, with women forced at times to take microcredit loans as the only means to pay these increased dowries for their daughters.[1]
Bangladesh's former Finance and Planning Minister M. Saifur Rahman charges that some microfinance institutions use excessive interest rates.[8] In recent years, there has been increasing attention paid to the problem of interest rate disclosure, as many suppliers of microcredit quote their rates to clients using the flat calculation method, which significantly understates the true Annual Percentage Rate.

Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

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This article may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (November 2008)
For the person who starts a new organization, see Entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurship according to Onuoha (2007) is the practice of starting new organizations or revitalizing mature organizations, particularly new businesses generally in response to identified opportunities. Entrepreneurship is often a difficult undertaking, as a vast majority of new businesses fail. Entrepreneurial activities are substantially different depending on the type of organization that is being started. Entrepreneurship ranges in scale from solo projects (even involving the entrepreneur only part-time) to major undertakings creating many job opportunities. Many "high-profile" entrepreneurial ventures seek venture capital or angel funding in order to raise capital to build the business. Angel investors generally seek returns of 20-30% and more extensive involvement in the business.[1] Many kinds of organizations now exist to support would-be entrepreneurs, including specialized government agencies, business incubators, science parks, and some NGOs.
Contents[hide]
1 History of entrepreneurship
2 Characteristics of an entrepreneur
3 Advantages of entrepreneurship
4 Promotion of entrepreneurship
5 Notes
6 See also
7 References and external articles
8 External links
//

[edit] History of entrepreneurship
The understanding of entrepreneurship owes much to the work of economist Joseph Schumpeter and the Austrian economists such as Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek. In Schumpeter (1950), an entrepreneur is a person who is willing and able to convert a new idea or invention into a successful innovation. Entrepreneurship forces "creative destruction" across markets and industries, simultaneously creating new products and business models. In this way, creative destruction is largely responsible for the dynamism of industries and long-run economic growth. Despite Schumpeter's early 20th-century contributions, the traditional microeconomic theory of economics has had little room for entrepreneurs in its theoretical frameworks (instead assuming that resources would find each other through a price system.)

Some notable persons and their works in entrepreneurship history.
For Frank H. Knight (1921) and Peter Drucker (1970) entrepreneurship is about taking risk. The behavior of the entrepreneur reflects a kind of person willing to put his or her career and financial security on the line and take risks in the name of an idea, spending much time as well as capital on an uncertain venture. Knight classified three types of uncertainty.
Risk, which is measurable statistically (such as the probability of drawing a red colour ball from a jar containing 5 red balls and 5 white balls).
Ambiguity, which is hard to measure statistically (such as the probability of drawing a red ball from a jar containing 5 red balls but with an unknown number of white balls).
True Uncertainty or Knightian Uncertainty, which is impossible to estimate or predict statistically (such as the probability of drawing a red ball from a jar whose number of red balls is unknown as well as the number of other coloured balls).
The acts of entrepreneurship is often associated with true uncertainty, particularly when it involves bringing something really novel to the world, whose market never exists. Before the Internet, nobody knew the market for Internet related businesses such as Amazon, Google, YouTube, Yahoo etc. Only after the Internet emerged did people begin to see opportunities and market in that technology. However, even if a market already exists, such as the market for cola drinks (which has been created by Coca Cola), there is no guarantee that a market exists for a particular new player in the cola category. The question is: whether a market exists and if it exists for you.
The place of the disharmony-creating and idiosyncratic entrepreneur in traditional economic theory (which describes many efficiency-based ratios assuming uniform outputs) presents theoretic quandaries. William Baumol has added greatly to this area of economic theory and was recently honored for it at the 2006 annual meeting of the American Economic Association.[2]
Entrepreneurship is widely regarded as an integral player in the business culture of American life, and particularly as an engine for job creation and economic growth. Robert Sobel published The Entrepreneurs: Explorations Within the American Business Tradition in 1974. Zoltan Acs and David B. Audrestch have produced an edited volume surveying Entrepreneurship as an academic field of research in the Handbook of Entrepreneurship Research: An Interdisciplinary Survey and Introduction.

[edit] Characteristics of an entrepreneur

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Entrepreneurs have many of the same character traits as leaders, similar to the early great man theories of leadership; however trait-based theories of entrepreneurship are increasingly being called into question. Entrepreneurs are often contrasted with managers and administrators who are said to be more methodical and less prone to risk-taking. Such person-centric models of entrepreneurship have shown to be of questionable validity, not least as many real-life entrepreneurs operate in teams rather than as single individuals. Still, a vast literature studying the entrepreneurial personality found that certain traits seem to be associated with entrepreneurs:
David McClelland - primarily motivated by an overwhelming need for achievement and strong urge to build.
Collins and Moore - tough, pragmatic people driven by needs of independence and achievement. They seldom are willing to submit to authority.
Bird - mercurial, that is, prone to insights, brainstorms, deceptions, ingeniousness and resourcefulness. they are cunning, opportunistic, creative, and unsentimental.
Cooper, Woo, & Dunkelberg - argue that entrepreneurs exhibit extreme optimism in their decision-making processes.
Busenitz and Barney - prone to overconfidence and over generalisations.
Cole - found there are four types of entrepreneur: the innovator, the calculating inventor, the over-optimistic promoter, and the organization builder. These types are not related to the personality but to the type of opportunity the entrepreneur faces.
Zhao & Seibert - meta-analysis (a statistical synthesis of previous research) showed that compared to managers, entrepreneurs score higher on Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience and lower on Neuroticism and Agreeableness. No difference was found for Extraversion.
John Howkins - focused specifically on creative entrepreneurship. He found that entrepreneurs in the creative industries needed a specific set of traits including the ability to prioritise ideas over data, to be nomadic and to learn endlessly. [3]
Other characteristics include
The entrepreneur has an enthusiastic vision, the driving force of an enterprise.
The entrepreneur's vision is usually supported by an interlocked collection of specific ideas not available to the marketplace.
The overall blueprint to realize the vision is clear, however details may be incomplete, flexible, and evolving.
The entrepreneur promotes the vision with enthusiastic passion.
With persistence and determination, the entrepreneur develops strategies to change the vision into reality.
The entrepreneur takes the initial responsibility to cause a vision to become a success.
Entrepreneurs take prudent risks. They assess costs, market/customer needs and persuade others to join and help.
An entrepreneur is usually a positive thinker and a decision maker.
An entrepreneur has inspiration, motivation and sensibility.

[edit] Advantages of entrepreneurship

This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (April 2009)
Every successful entrepreneur brings about benefits not only for himself/ herself but for the municipality, region or country as a whole. The benefits that can be derived from entrepreneurial activities are as follows:
Enormous personal financial gain
Self-employment, own bossing, offering more job satisfaction and flexibility of the work force
Employment for others, often in better jobs
Development of more industries, especially in rural areas or regions disadvantaged by economic changes, for example due to globalisation effects
Encouragement of the processing of local materials into finished goods for domestic consumption as well as for export
Income generation and increased economic growth
Healthy competition thus encourages higher quality products
More goods and services available
Development of new markets
Promotion of the use of modern technology in small-scale manufacturing to enhance higher productivity
Encouragement of more researches/ studies and development of modern machines and equipment for domestic consumption
Development of entrepreneurial qualities and attitudes among potential entrepreneurs to bring about significant changes in the rural areas
Freedom from the dependency on the jobs offered by others
Ability to have great accomplishments
Reduction of the informal economy
Emigration of talent may be stopped by a better domestic entrepreneurship climate
Serious tax advantages

[edit] Promotion of entrepreneurship
Given entrepreneurship's potential to support economic growth and social cohesion, it is the policy goal of many governments to develop a culture of entrepreneurial thinking. This can be done in a number of ways: by integrating entrepreneurship into education systems, legislating to encourage risk-taking, and national campaigns. An example of the latter is the United Kingdom's Enterprise Week, which launched in 2004.
Outside of the political world, research has been conducted on the presence of entrepreneurial theories in doctoral economics programs. Dan Johansson, fellow at the Ratio Institute in Sweden, finds such content to be sparse. He fears this will dilute doctoral programs and fail to train young economists to analyze problems in a relevant way.[4]
Many of these initiatives have been brought together under the umbrella of Global Entrepreneurship Week, a worldwide celebration and promotion of youth entrepreneurship, which started in 2008.

[edit] Notes
^ Angel Investing, Mark Van Osnabrugge and Robert J. Robinson
^ "Searching for the invisible man", The Economist (The Economist Newspaper Limited): pp. 67, 2006-03-11, http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_VGDTRJD, retrieved on 2008-03-05.
^ Howkins, John, “The Creative Economy: How People Make Money From Ideas”, Penguin, 2001, p.155-158
^ Johansson, Dan. "Economics Without Entrepreneurship or Institutions: A Vocabulary Analysis of Graduate Textbooks" (December 2004). [1]

[edit] See also
General
Business
Business opportunity
Junior enterprise
Educational
Master of Enterprise
Lists
List of management topics, List of social entrepreneurs
Other

balanced scorecard

Balanced scorecard
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The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is a performance management tool for measuring whether the smaller-scale operational activities of a company are aligned with its larger-scale objectives in terms of vision and strategy.
By focusing not only on financial outcomes but also on the operational, marketing and developmental inputs to these, the Balanced Scorecard helps provide a more comprehensive view of a business, which in turn helps organizations act in their best long-term interests. This tool is also being used to address business response to climate change and greenhouse gas emissions.
Organizations were encouraged to measure, in addition to financial outputs, those factors which influenced the financial outputs. For example, process performance, market share / penetration, long term learning and skills development, and so on.
The underlying rationale is that organizations cannot directly influence financial outcomes, as these are "lag" measures, and that the use of financial measures alone to inform the strategic control of the firm is unwise. Organizations should instead also measure those areas where direct management intervention is possible. In so doing, the early versions of the Balanced Scorecard helped organizations achieve a degree of "balance" in selection of performance measures. In practice, early Scorecards achieved this balance by encouraging managers to select measures from three additional categories or perspectives: "Customer," "Internal Business Processes" and "Learning and Growth."
Contents[hide]
1 History
2 Use
2.1 Original methodology
2.2 Improved methodology
2.3 Popularity
2.4 Variants, alternatives and criticisms
3 The four perspectives
4 Key performance indicators
4.1 Financial
4.2 Internal business processes
4.3 Learning and growth
5 Software tools
6 See also
7 References
8 Sources
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[edit] History
In 1992, Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton began publicizing the Balanced Scorecard through a series of journal articles. In 1996, they published the book The Balanced Scorecard.
Since the original concept was introduced, Balanced Scorecards have become a fertile field of theory, research and consulting practice. The Balanced Scorecard has evolved considerably from its roots as a measure selection framework. While the underlying principles were sound, many aspects of Kaplan & Norton's original approach were unworkable in practice. Both in firms associated with Kaplan & Norton and elsewhere, the Balanced Scorecard has changed so that there is now much greater emphasis on the design process than previously. There has also been a rapid growth in consulting offerings linked to Balanced Scorecards at the level of branding only. Kaplan & Norton themselves revisited Balanced Scorecards with the benefit of a decade's experience since the original article.

[edit] Use
Implementing Balanced Scorecards typically includes four processes:
Translating the vision into operational goals;
Communicating the vision and link it to individual performance;
Business planning;index Setting
Feedback and learning, and adjusting the strategy accordingly.
The Balanced Scorecard is a framework, or what can be best characterized as a “strategic management system” that claims to incorporate all quantitative and abstract measures of true importance to the enterprise. According to Kaplan and Norton, “The Balanced Scorecard provides managers with the instrumentation they need to navigate to future competitive success”.
Many books and articles referring to Balanced Scorecards confuse the design process elements and the Balanced Scorecard itself. In particular, it is common for people to refer to a “strategic linkage model” or “strategy map” as being a Balanced Scorecard.
Although it helps focus managers' attention on strategic issues and the management of the implementation of strategy, it is important to remember that the Balanced Scorecard itself has no role in the formation of strategy. In fact, Balanced Scorecards can comfortably co-exist with strategic planning systems and other tools.

[edit] Original methodology
The earliest Balanced Scorecards comprised simple tables broken into four sections - typically these "perspectives" were labeled "Financial", "Customer", "Internal Business Processes", and "Learning & Growth". Designing the Balanced Scorecard required selecting five or six good measures for each perspective.
Many authors have since suggested alternative headings for these perspectives, and also suggested using either additional or fewer perspectives. These suggestions were notably triggered by a recognition that different but equivalent headings would yield alternative sets of measures. The major design challenge faced with this type of Balanced Scorecard is justifying the choice of measures made. "Of all the measures you could have chosen, why did you choose these?" This common question is hard to ask using this type of design process. If users are not confident that the measures within the Balanced Scorecard are well chosen, they will have less confidence in the information it provides. Although less common, these early-style Balanced Scorecards are still designed and used today.
In short, early-style Balanced Scorecards are hard to design in a way that builds confidence that they are well designed. Because of this, many are abandoned soon after completion.