Entrepreneurship: international trends and hot areas

Andreas Antonopoulos, Rector of the University of New York in Prague, spoke to the Management Faculty at the University of Salvador (USAL), on the personal, cyclical, financial and business conditions that must be taken into account when undertaking business ventures.

Argentina is one of the top 10 entrepreneurial countries in the world, implementing quality and innovative projects despite “unfriendly” development contexts and limited access to funding.

Entrepreneurs who manage new high-growth companies in Argentina must contend with numerous local challenges, which include forming teams, growth management, compensation and risk perception, and engaging with investors and shareholders.

While it is assumed that entrepreneurs have no boss, the truth is that they must satisfy the interests of multiple active players: investors, shareholders and of course customers.

The ‘International Trends in Entrepreneurship’ seminar highlighted several points for potential entrepreneurs developing new high-performance ventures to consider: access to financing, consumer satisfaction, team composition, the scale of the project, the potential sale of the undertaking, and risk tolerance.

An entrepreneur must therefore be comfortable with the uncertainty associated with starting a business. Keep in mind that it is very common to fail before you succeed. For this reason, failure is one of the aspects that shareholders and investors scrutinize when considering an entrepreneur’s experience.

Moreover, qualities such as commitment, determination, leadership, creativity, self-confidence, ability to adapt, persuasion, and resilience are essential to accomplish success with this type of enterprise.

Antonopoulos also emphasized the importance of identifying opportunities. While ideas exist everywhere, viable opportunities must be created and built using great ideas and entrepreneurial creativity. Entrepreneurial ideas must be attractive, fluid and based around a product or service that adds value to your buyer or user. The opportunity is thus the heart of the entrepreneurial process.

Experience is also a key factor. Investors highly value relevant experience, so an entrepreneur must be familiar with the industry in which she will work.

Antonopoulos highlighted the “hot” areas for high-return projects. Investors are particularly interested in projects that are: technology-driven, easy to expand, unlimited by geographical barriers (and therefore scalable) and readily able to add value to users and consumers. He listed technology-leveraged financial, educational and human resources projects as examples.

Finally, he warned about the changes that technology brings to our lives and the future of work. It is entirely possible that motorization and mechanization could cause many current jobs to disappear entirely, as has frequently happened in the past. For this reason, we must always be aware of what is happening globally.