INTRODUCTION
Entrepreneur is derived from the French word, ‘entreprendre’, meaning to begin something or undertake. Entrepreneur is a person who is developing an enterprise. Entrepreneur also can be defined as people who control the company and take risk in their respective field. McClelland (1961) expressed entrepreneur as a person with innovative power and high need for achievement. A successful entrepreneur tends to take risk that has been calculated. Schumpeter (1934), defines that an entrepreneur as an individual that make a new form or innovation for the advantage of an organization such as explore new market, introduce new production method. Entrepreneur plays an important role in economic development of the country. Entrepreneur can improve country income and then change the country economic condition indirectly.
The objective of this assignment is to provide an understanding and importance of the enhancement of entrepreneurial skills and personal qualities with supportive evidence by linking to successful entrepreneurs in Malaysia and the world. Furthermore, this assignment will enable a student to identify and analyze embodied entrepreneurial skill by entrepreneurs.
Therefore, in task A, 9 entrepreneurs are selected by us to match with the 9 entrepreneurial traits that help the entrepreneurs to be successful in their entrepreneurship journey which are open risk taker, networked, proactive, failure is an option, visionary, observant, outcome oriented, team oriented and open culture.
In task B, a successful entrepreneur, that is Tan Sri Robert Kuok Hock Nien is selected and we have explained how 5 entrepreneurial traits had assist him to be successful in his venture.
ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAIT: NETWORKED
In business world, having adequate human resources is one of the key factor to achieve any business goals. Networking is a process of building mutually beneficial relationships that lead to business opportunities. In order to become an expert at networking, an entrepreneur must equipped with good social skills so that he or she is able to build a good relationships with potential business partners, investors and customers. As a successful entrepreneur, he or she should meet and interact with other business owners to exchange experiences, problems, opportunities, woes and news. This could help an entrepreneur to develop new business opportunities, enhance knowledge and expand the sphere of influence.
Ian Chua as a co-founder and the CEO of Hermo, a Malaysia’s leading online cosmetics retailer has shown the entrepreneurial trait of networked. Hermo is one of the top Malaysia-based e-commerce website with 150,000 active users. Ian Chua together with his secondary school classmate, P.S. Chong started their online business by selling shoes on Lowyat forum before Hermo was founded. The success of online beauty businesses in China inspired them to quit their full-time jobs in order to become a full-time entrepreneur when they were both 25 years old.
In February 2012, Hermo started with just an open-source shopping cart system. After three months of trial period, upon positive responses, Hermo was officially relaunched in June 2012. The rapid growth and successful achievements of this beauty e-commerce company made Ian Chua to be listed in Forbes Asia 30 under 30 2016 (Retail & E-commerce).
The trait of networking of Ian Chua brought them their very first investor, Tan Swee Yeong. Tan Swee Yeong came to Hermo as an angel investor in June 2013. Besides from investing funds, Tan Swee Yeong who was also a successful entrepreneur himself, always gave Ian Chua his full support and advices based on his own business experience. Hermo also received investments from Singapore-based Crystal Horse Investments. With these fundings which totalled RM450 000 from investors, Hermo was able to strengthen their products and expand their market.
In 2015, Ian Chua had a bigger vision where he wanted to expand the market to the outside of Malaysia. At that point, they were lack of capital to do so. Ian Chua has showed the trait of networking to successfully acquire funding from a Shanghai-based venture capital firm, Gobi Partners. Gobi Partners had led a Series A investment of 2 million USD into Hermo. The money will be used for hiring, strengthening product and expansion, especially for market growth in Singapore and Indonesia. Thus, with the financial support from investors, Hermo was successfully expanded the market to Singapore and Indonesia.
In conclusion, the entrepreneurial trait of networking is important in order to be a successful entrepreneur like Ian Chua. Entrepreneurship journey is never easy and we always need support and advice from others. Just like Ian Chua, we should never limit our social circle so that we are able to seek for more business opportunities.
ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAIT: OPEN RISK TAKER
Open risk taker refers to the entrepreneur who has the courage and faith to take every risk in developing a business. A business can behave in a way that can potentially cause physical harm or financial loss, but might also present an opportunity for a rewarding outcome. However, entrepreneurs are not risk takers, to be more accurately, they are calculated risk takers. Most of the business types that thrive on innovation will encourage a risk taker mentality to support the creative process in other staff members. Entrepreneurs are the driving force and catalyst for the economy because they are the backbone and lifeblood of the country's economic drive. A smart and successful entrepreneurs, they are willing to take the risk in order to gain a rewarding outcome. A successful entrepreneur must has the courage to believe in every decision he or she makes.
One example of entrepreneurs who meet the entrepreneurial trait of open risk taker is Donald Trump. Donald Trump is a real estate mogul and reality television personality. In 2016, he became the Republican presidential nominee.
Donald Trump had been around his father Fred's real-estate company, Elizabeth Trump and Son, for most of his life. But after he graduated in 1968, he began working there all the time. After a few years working directly with his father,Donald took control of the company in 1971, renaming it The Trump Organization. His father’s business focused on building and renting mid-market apartments and when he took over, he set his sights on Manhattan. What makes it he a risk taker is when he immediately sought out building projects that were larger and which he saw huge profit margins, modern architectural designs and public appeal than his father’s outer-borough apartment blocks.
Trump’s biggest early deal was rescuing the once-grand Commodore Hotel from bankruptcy and transforming it into the Grand Hyatt. In 1986, he also bought out The Holiday Inn Corporation renaming the property Trump Plaza Hotel. It was around this time that Trump also bought a Hilton Hotel owned resort when they failed to be granted a gambling license, renaming the $320 Million facility Trump’s Castle. Not stopping there, Trump progressed to purchase the largest casino-hotel complex in the world, the Atlantic City Taj Mahal which opened its doors in 1990. He never calculated the cost to be incurred by him if he made a decision. This shows he is an open risk taker.
Next, with bankruptcy looming, Trump’s creditors agreed to restructure his debt, taking half-ownership of the casino that will forced him to sell his airline, the Trump Shuttle airline, and his 282-foot Trump Princess yacht. From this nadir, Trump gradually restored The Trump Organization’s finances. As the century turned, Donald Trump continued to buy and construct Manhattan real estate. In 2001, he completed the 72-story Trump World Tower, across the avenue from the United Nations building, and began construction on Trump Place, a series of luxury high-rises along the Hudson River. Another bold move that paid off was Trump’s $73-million purchase of the Chicago Sun-Times building. In its place, he planned to build the tallest building in the world, Trump International Tower, Chicago. But the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks convinced him to scale back, ultimately building the second-tallest tower in Chicago. Since it opened in 2009, the tower has been a success, especially the hotel at that location, which is regularly ranked as one of the best in the country.
It may seem like a cliché that to become a successful entrepreneur you have to take calculated risks and be able to bounce back even when times get extremely tough but Donald Trump is living proof of these attributes. Trump is an amazing man who really has always done whatever it takes to make his visions a reality and has never taken no for answer even when a recovery was seemingly impossible. From this, we can see that he never gave in despite about obstacles faced, he remained willing to take risks to keep going his career.
ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAIT: OBSERVANT
Observant means to notice things quickly. However, as an entrepreneur, being observant is only to see things quick but also to analyse and take every opportunity surroundings us quickly. In the competitive business world, only the people who always stay ahead of others will get the chance. Hence, being alert to the market and economic trend is essential for an entrepreneur to grow his or her business.
The entrepreneurial trait of observant can be found on Evan Spiegel, the co-founder and CEO of the mobile app Snapchat. Evan Spiegel is an American Internet entrepreneur. He created Snapchat together with Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown. When they were students at Stanford University, Reggie Brown approached Spiegel to discuss about his desire to delete an image permanently from the web, which he once shared.
At that point, three of them started working together to develop the basic idea of Snapchat. It was named as Picaboo at first, but it couldn’t attract any investors. Brown then decided to part his ways upon the failing of their project. After this, Spiegel and Murphy renamed the project to Snapchat and introduced some new features. Then, Snapchat began to attract some response from young users.
By observing and noticing the obsession of people nowadays with social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, Spiegel as an observant entrepreneur saw that as an opportunity. However, did not want to build the next Facebook or Twitter. In fact, he was driven by the idea that people were looking for something different which was not a social site, but a communication app with large dose of entertainment on the side. Hence, Snapchat, a photo-video-messaging app was launched in 2011. Snapchat allows users to take a photo or video, which is called as snap, then add a caption, doodle or filter and send it to their friends. The most unique feature of Snapchat is that all the snaps will only last for a few seconds. In other words, your friends can view your photos or videos for up to few seconds before they disappear forever. Snapchat then gained instant popularity among teenagers and adults. As of May 2014, the Snapchat’s users were sending 700 million snaps per day.Meanwhile, Facebook failed twice to replicate Snapchat’s disappearing photo product. Besides that, Facebook reportedly offered to acquire Snapchat for 3 billion USD, yet Spiegel declined that offer.
Evan Spiegel has created a popular and profitable mobile app with the aid of his entrepreneurial trait of observant. As an entrepreneur, he never stop to grow and develop his company. Still, he is desire to create new technology and product by observing the market needs. We should see him as our role model in order to achieve success in the entrepreneurship journey.
ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAIT: VISIONARY
Visionary is defined as having a definite concept of knowing what should happen or plans in the future. A successful life must always begin with a vision to show a clear idea of our future plans and hold firmly to the chance that enables us to achieve the goals. Thus, a visionary entrepreneur is the one who is able to see what others are not able to see and has a clear vision of how his or her business is going to work in every detail to achieve business goals. In other words, vision is important to the success of a business. As a visionary entrepreneur, it is very important to always make an effort to put workable and right systems in place in order to turn their vision into reality.
Tan Sri Robert Kuok Hock Nien is a Malaysian Chinese billionaire businessman that meets the entrepreneurial trait of visionary. According to the Forbes list, Robert Kuok was the Richest Man of Malaysia and the Second Richest in South-East Asia. He was also ranked at 103th place in the Forbes list of the World’s Billionaires of 2016. Before he inherited the legacy business from his father, Robert Kuok had a short working experience with Japanese industrial conglomerate Mitsubishi, a conglomerate which with the help of Japanese military unit monopolized the rice trade in Malaya during the occupation period upon his graduation in Raffles Institution in Singapore. Therefore, he had learned the skills of trading business after three years working with the Japanese.
In 1959, he founded Malayan Sugar Manufacturing Co. Bhd. together with two prominent Japanese partners, where he ventured into being a sugar merchant. Before long, Robert Kuok is well known as the first person to have a massive involvement in the sugar industry. As he believed sugar is important in food sector and a man can be rich by started a simple business which with the cheapest raw sugar. This show that Robert Kuok is visionary, after that the Malayan Sugar Manufacturing Co. Bhd. went on to become a monopoly in sugar production space in Malaysia where they controlled 80% of the Malaysian sugar market with production of 1.5 million tonnes, equivalent to 10% of world production. This is exactly how Robert Kuok got his nickname, “Sugar King of Asia”. In a nutshell, entrepreneurs with the trait visionary can be said he or she able to see what others are not able to see as they can look forwards to their future to far away from others.
Naturally, this ambitious businessman did not just stop there but he had started growing another sector of business after being encouraged by the success of his sugar business. Robert Kuok, who is now 93 years old has a lot of investments in huge businesses in nearly all the Asian countries and a lot of other non-Asian countries. The high-level and long-term visionary of Robert Kuok has helped him to grow and develop his multinational business ventures until today. His exceptional achievements in business world will continue to inspire a lot of entrepreneurs throughout the globe.
ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAIT: FAILURE IS AN OPTION
Failure is an option refers to an individual or business that tends to behave in a way that can potentially cause big chance in failure, but might also present an opportunity for a rewarding outcome. Failure is an option, but fear not. Nobody wants to fail, but failure to do so cannot be avoided on your own to success. For people succeed in business, he/she must have experienced a lot of failures and dare to challenge it. After starting a entrepreneur career, many obstacles and percent of impending failure. Failure is not an obstacle for us to continue our career as an entrepreneur. Many things need to be fixed after failure. But in every failure we face, there will be rewards and better benefits. Example entrepreneurs can be attributed to the failure is an option Colonel Harland Sanders- Founder, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC).
Colonel Harland Sanders is the founder of KFC. He had established a KFC restaurant in the 60’s. He had spent the next nine years to improve the quality of the grind recipe of 11 herbs and spices. He traveled door to door to the house and restaurants all over his local area. He wanted to partner with someone to help promote his chicken recipe in exchange of certain percentage of profit but he was met with little enthusiasm. He was turned down by almost everybody. He was humiliated, mocked & ridiculed at. However, these things never broke his spirit to continue to improve the quality of recipes. He believes that in every failure there is success in itself. He started travelling by car to different restaurants and cooked his fried chicken on the spot for restaurant owners. If the owner liked the chicken, they would enter into a handshake agreement to sell the Colonel’s chicken. He used two years travelling across the nation, sleeping on the back of his car, being rejected time after time after time. Legend has it that Colonel Sanders heard 1009 “no”s before he heard his first “yes”. He was turned down one-thousand and nine times before his chicken recipe was accepted. To him, the failure is just an option. He keep trying until get success in his career. He was rejected several times but he had the ability of sensory acuity. He paid attention to his present and results he was getting and kept on changing his approach. He kept on refining his approach. Before he become successful entrepreneur, he always upgrade the recipes over and over. He never look the failure that he has facing. He keep move forward until he found the way to get success.
As a result of his diligence and always assume failure is an option, he is now successfully developed his branches all over the word. A total of 18,000 KFC outlets in 115 total countries. From the story of Colonel Harland Sanders had shown a very good role model for the trait failure is an option. Success is not necessarily a positive, failure is not necessarily a negative. What key to being a success entrepreneur is to address failure, learn from it, and continue to move on. KFC is now the 11th largest fast food company in the world.
ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAIT: OPEN CULTURE
Open culture is a concept that the knowledge should be spread freely and its growth should come from developing, altering or enriching already existing works based on sharing and collaboration, without being restricted by rules linked to the legal protection.
In Malaysia food and beverage industry, a new drinking culture was created by a young entrepreneur, Byran Loo Woi Lip. He is master franchisor for the Chatime brand in Malaysia and managing director of Loob Holding Sdn Bhd.
Chatime is a good example in creating a new business market in Malaysia, that is a trend of bubble tea, also known as Pearl Milk Tea. It was originated from Taiwan, Bryan Loo went Taiwan and bought the Chatime franchise into Malaysia when he was 24 years old. Bryan Loo had chose to involve in F&B industry because he knew it will be accepted by Malaysian consumers easily, and the bubble tea market was still low at that moment. Loo and his father went Taiwan to observe the tea market. They had chose the top five brands among 180 bubble tea brands in Taiwan. At the beginning, the journey to persuade those directions are not going well, all his proposal was rejected by them. After he went back Malaysia, he met his cousin which introduce Chatime to him. Loo contacted the director of Chatime, his business plan accepted by the director. After few months, the first outlet of Chatime soft launching in Pavillion Kuala Lumpur on September 2010. Bryan Loo brings this new lifestyle of bubble tea chains in our country. Nowadays, most of the Malaysian will know about this tea brand, because it is the most famous tea shop in Malaysia. Bryan Loo is the one who recognized a void in the culture of drinking bubble tea in Malaysia.
After 6 years of entrepreneurial journey, Chatime have more than a 160 Chatime outlets with over 880 staff, nationwide. Chatime became No.1 lifestyle tea beverage brand in Malaysia, serving over millions of Malaysian every month. Not only that, Bryan Loo also create other new culture of F&B industry in Malaysia including Chatime, Tino’s Pizza, Soda Xpress, llaollao frozen yogurt, and Gindaco Takoyaki in current years. Example like Llao Llao is the fastest-growing natural yoghurt brand from Spain, that made its Malaysian debut last October, and Gindaco is Japan’s No.1 premium takoyaki brand was only introduced to Malaysia shores in April this year.
Other than that, he also had his hands full last year even with the launch of Malaysia’s first sparkling water machine, SodaXpress, which will forever change the way how people consume water hence their drinking lifestyle. As can be seen, Bryan Loo always alert and open minded toward the cultures in doing a business.
ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAIT: OUTCOME ORIENTED
Outcome oriented used to describe an individual or organization know what they want and set the targets or goals to achieve, and focuses on final outcome or result rather than rather that going through a process, quality of products or services are important than everything.
One of famous entrepreneur in Malaysia, Jimmy Choo who has the traits of outcome oriented. Datuk Jimmy Choo Yeang Keat was born on 15 November Penang, Malaysia. Jimmy Choo is a fashion designer for women shoes in our country. He learns how to make shoes from his father and he had made his very first pair of shoe at 11years old. When he was in study period, he does a part-time job to earn the fees for his study and living cost, he worked as a cleaner in the restaurant and shoes factory. Start from childhood, Jimmy Choo has passion in making shoes and he only focus on what he wants to achieve. It shows the Jimmy Choo has very strong desires to be success in this career. In 1983, Choo graduated from Cordwainers Technical College in London. After that, Jimmy Choo rent a building that was an abandoned hospital to open a shoes store. He had been passed through a tough period before his reputation build up.
In 1988, Jimmy Choo became famous when his design being published in the Vogue magazine which is a famous magazine in United Kingdom and his name got known by many people after that. Soon, Jimmy Choo intends to launch shoes manufacturing company in Italy. Princess Diana likes his design and has bought his design around the year 1990, she started fall in love to Choo’s design and she donned Choo's footwear seemingly everywhere she went. Therefore, he has worked with Tamara Mellon who is a British fashion designer and Vogue accessories editor, who often hired Jimmy Choo to make shoes for fashion shoots, sensed a larger market for Choo's creations. Jimmy Choo also start to expand the range of product, for example accessories such as designer women's shoes as their main product and handbags, small leather goods, eyewear, fragrance and men's shoes.
Finally, he was awarded the title ‘Datuk’ by Sultan Pahang on his success as a fashion designer, this is the desired result he wanted. Jimmy Choo also awarded the title of ‘Professor’ by the University of the Arts London for his contribution in the fashion field. He was the first Malaysian to be awarded the ‘Order of the British Empire’ OBE (Knighthood) by the Queen of England, Queen Elizabeth II in the 2002. Nowadays, Jimmy Choo brand not only in Malaysia but also in the global brand. For Jimmy Choo, shoes are a very important part of our wardrobe. Shoes must be elegant and comfortable, he believes shoes can change a woman's beauty and personality, a pair of good shoes can bring out the confidence to a person. It shows how Jimmy Choo care about his work.
ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAIT: TEAM ORIENTED
Teamwork is a spirit of doing business. Team oriented is the process of a group people working together to reach the goal. The ability of a person is very limited, in order to run and develop the company needs more people that excel from different sector. Like management, design, planning and so on. The idea contributed by teammate is useful to expand the business. Different people have different mindset, different idea, can use all of the idea to form a best idea. There are many solution contributed by team when facing problem in business. Work together nicely can be more effective in business.
The example that have the trait of team oriented is Jonney Shih. Jonney Shih is a successful entrepreneur in Taiwan. He was the vise president of Acer. In 1992, Jonney Shih leave Acer and joined Asus founded by four engineers which is Ted Hsu, M.T. Liao, Wayne Tsiah and T.H. Tung. He became the CEO of the company. He was founding the team of management of Asus with four engineers. He as the leader to lead the team and rest of them take part on different department. To make a decision, every member have a discussion to make an approvement. It show the spirit of teamwork within them.
However, some conflict appear inside the team. Wayne Tsiah wanted quit the team and Asus. Jonney Shih didn’t trying to restrain Wayne Tsiah although Jonney Shih know Wayne Tsiah is a good partner and also a good leader. Jonney Shih know it will bring a lot of problem to the team if trying to restrain him. M.T. Liao was retirement on year 1997. Nowadays, the team only left Jonney Shih Ted Hsu and T.H. Tung.
Jonney Shih is a leader, we can see that he lead the company ASUSTeK Computer Inc. to become the most popular in globe with aspect computer. Jonney Shih was also founding Da Vinci Innovation Lab. Under Da Vinci Innovation Lab. there are two group.One group is responsible for disruptive innovation and another group is responsible for continuous innovation. The reason of Jonney Shih to create two different group because he know that innovation can divide by two which is innovation and continuous innovation. Asus EeePC was the successful product research been Da Vinci Innovation Lab. Form all the evidence, we can see that Jonney Shih have the entrepreneur trait of team oriented.
ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAIT: PROACTIVE
The person who are active in development of their business and never stop their step while get a small success for one purpose that is gain profit is an entrepreneur who have the trait of proactive. Successful entrepreneur are expert in doing planning and make sure every situation under their control to reach their goal, vision and always moving forward. Therefore, entrepreneurs who have an attitude of proactive will be able to prepare the solution for any possible problem that will happen in future and also will be more advanced and positive thinking towards to an action that to be taken. The example that have this characteristics is Mr. Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong.
As we known, Mr. Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong is the founder of Genting Highland Resort which is the world’s most successful casino resort and also he was once the 3rd richest man in Malaysia. Mr. Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong definitely is a proactive person. He was proactive in development of Genting Highland Resort. He take all the opportunity for developing his business. The idea of a hilltop resort was when Mr. Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong was having dinner in Cameron Highland. He found that Gunung Ulu Kali is the place is suitable for him to build the hill resort. The reason for him to choose Gunung Ulu Kali because it near the capital city Kuala Lumpur which have the potential business to the hilltop resort. He did many research before start build the hill resort such as topography, electricity supply, water supply, transportation, drainage, soil conditions and so on. After get the approvals from the governments, Mr. Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong start build up the road to the hilltop within 3 years. And also water and electricity supplies by building the water collection stations and electricity supplied through a central electricity generation system, sewerage system and fire safety. Before build the Genting Highland Resort, people think that this was an impossible idea. To achieve this idea, Mr. Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong pay a lot of hard work in planning, research, organizing, leading and controlling.
In 31th march 1969, our first Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman bring a surprise to Mr. Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong that government are considering giving the licence of casino to Genting to operate the first casino in Malaysia. At the same time, Mr. Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong went to Macau and Korea’s casino to make survey and also invite the people who have the experience of operating casino to invest the first casino in Malaysia. After return from Macau, Mr. Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong summit the application of the licence casino to the government and get approved from government. Finally he get the licence of casino which can gain the big profit to Genting Highland.
Base on the story of Mr. Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong, we have found that he is an entrepreneur who are proactive. Mr. Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong spend his whole life active in developing Genting Highlands and gain a great success. He took all the opportunity to when he join the business and that make him become an successful person.
TAN SRI ROBERT KUOK HOCK NIEN
Tan Sri Robert Kuok Hock Nien who is better known as the “Sugar King of Asia” is a successful entrepreneur and business investor. Robert Kuok was born on 6th October 1923 in Johor Bahru. According to Forbes, he was placed 103th in The World’s Billionaires list and was the richest man in Malaysia in 2016. He has a lot of investments in huge businesses such as sugarcane plantations, sugar refineries, flour milling, animal feed, oil, mining, finance, hotels, properties, trading, freight and publishing. The biggest source of his wealth is a stake in the world’s largest listed palm oil company, Wilmar International.
Entrepreneurial Trait: Networked
In business world, having adequate human resources is one of the key factor to achieve any business goals. Networking is a process of building mutually beneficial relationships that lead to business opportunities.
Tan Sri Robert Kuok has showed the entrepreneurial trait of networked through his business venture. He always kept a interdependence and mutually beneficial relationship with the government and politicians to ensure the smooth running of his businesses. He got to know the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Hussein bin Dato' Onn and the former Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew during his study life in Raffles Institution in Singapore. Besides that, he also kept a good relationship with the fourth Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Dato' Seri Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad and the former President of Indonesia, Suharto. Through these relationships, Robert Kuok was able to insight into the political changes to ensure his standing in the society and the smooth running of his businesses.
Sudono Salim, an Indonesian businessman also used to be Robert Kuok’s business partner. They were close friends and business partners since 1960s. After Robert Kuok had monopoly the sugar market in Malaysia, Sudono Salim helped him to export the sugar to Indonesia. As a result, 30% of sugar in Indonesia market was imported from Robert Kuok’s company. Besides that, Robert Kuok also owned shares in Sudono Salim’s company whereas Sudono Salim was a shareholder of Hong Kong Shangri-La Hotel.
Robert Kuok has showed us that in order to become a successful entrepreneur, it is essential for us to build mutually beneficial relationships with friends, schoolmates, potential customers and business partners. Through effective networking, we are able to seek for support and help from others to expand and develop our business.
Entrepreneurial Trait: Open risk taker
Open risk taker refers to the entrepreneur who has the courage and faith to take every risk in developing a business. A business can behave in a way that can potentially cause physical harm or financial loss, but might also present an opportunity for a rewarding outcome. However, entrepreneurs are not risk takers, to be more accurately, they are calculated risk takers.“There are risk in every business; if you are not brave enough to grab on the first or next opportunities, then you shall be a poor person forever”, said by Robert Kuok.
Before independent of Malaya, sugar is an important sector of food always import from foreign country and Robert Kuok realize that it is a good chance to be participate in. Therefore, he went to Britain for do a specialist market research and started learn about the business knowledge that relate with sugar production.Not only that, he also spent almost two years on investigation of sugar refining before he start his sugar business. After that, Robert Kuok made a big decision that investment all the capital of Kuok Group into sugar industry. Robert Kuok act like put all eggs in one basket is very venture especially one with an uncertain outcome. This show Robert Kuok relate with the entrepreneur traits which able to open risk taker. As there is not any guarantee the sugar business will success or failure, but Robert Kuok still put all capital for expand that market. Of course, chance always given to people who are prepared as Robert Kuok work up rapidly on sugar industry in malaya that form a incorporate operate system which within raw material to process sugar then supplies the other. Thus, large scale capital investment had been change the trend of business and Robert Kuok had establish monopoly sugar in Malaya.
Entrepreneurial Trait: Observant
Observant means to notice things quickly. However, as an entrepreneur, being observant is only to see things quick but also to analyse and take every opportunity surroundings us quickly.
Tan Sri Robert Kuok is a very observant entrepreneur. In the 80s, when the majority of foreign investor had decreased their investments in China due to political issues in China, Robert Kuok had chosen to invest more. He had been very observant to see China as a land that was filled with business opportunities. He always believed that behind every crisis, there was an opportunity.
Thus, in 1977, he built his second hotel, the Kowloon Shangri-La in Hong Kong. Then in 1983, he built another Shangri-La hotel in Beijing. In 1985, Robert Kuok invested 5.3 billion USD to establish China World Trade Center (CWTC) in Beijing. After these, he decided to continue his investments in China where he had invest up to 10 billion USD. In the year 2000, Robert Kuok again showed his trait of observant when he invested in China real estate market.
Now, Shangri-La Group has 54 hotels in China while Kerry Properties which was founded by Robert Kuok has 40 real estate projects in China. Without a doubt, the decision of Robert Kuok to invest the large amount of money into China had brought him huge profits in various sectors. He has shown us that as an entrepreneur, we must always observe and being alert to the market and economy trend in order to seek for business opportunities.
Entrepreneurial Trait: Failure is an option
Failure is an option, but as a successful entrepreneur, we should learn from our failures.
Although Tan Sri Robert Kuok Hock Nien has suceed and gained huge profits in various sectors such as sugarcane plantations, sugar refineries, flour milling, animal feed, oil, hotels and properties, but he also has encountered failures in his entrepreneurship journey.
In 1970s, Shangri-La Hotels and Kerry Shipping Company became the focus of Robert Kuok’s investment. However, by the 1980s, these two industries experienced a historic downturn due to the global economic downturn. As a result, Kerry Shipping Company suffered a continuous financial deficit while the newly-opened Shangri-La Hotels in Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur also suffered heavy losses.
While facing those losses, instead of investing more money, Robert Kuok had admit his failure immediately. After the loss of billions dollars, he chose to give up and get out from the shipping industry. However, for the hotel industry, he was convinced that hotel industry still held great potential and opportunities in the future. Hence, he focused his investment in hotel industry.
He was right, the downturn in the world shipping industry had continue for many years while the hotel industry had grow and rise after a short period of time. From this, we can learn that failure is an option, but failure will never stop us to achieve our goals. Just like Robert Kuok, he was not afraid to admit his failure when he was facing losses. His decision to give up on shipping industry had save him from further losses. We should learn from him to see failure as a lesson for us to learn from our mistakes.
Entrepreneurial Trait: Proactive
Proactive means someone create a solution or take action to control the situation by causing something to happen rather than reacting to it after it has occurred. Tan Sri Robert Kuok is an entrepreneur who has proactive trait. He would plan everything well before he starts a business.
Before independence, Malaysia had been relying on the imports of sugar supply. In late 1950s, there was a Japanese friend invited Tan Sri Robert Kuok to invest in sugar refining in Malaysia, although he did not agree the suggestion immediately, but the proposal had inspired him. After that, he had spent two years to study about the sugar industry. After all the planning and preparation, he had decided to involve in the sugar business. Tan Sri Robert Kuok had made well preparations to convince the whole family to agree on his plan. This had showed the trait of proactive in Robert Kuok. Soon, Robert Kuok had cooperated with Malaysia Federal Land Development Authority to established the first sugar refinery in Malaysia. He used the cheapest raw material and this sugar business had made he a successful entrepreneur.
Then, he had realised that although there were sugar refineries in Malaysia, but they still imported the raw materials from other countries, so the sugar prices were influenced and controlled by foreign merchants. Thus, in 1968, Robert Kuok had cooperated with the government to established the Perlis Plantations Berhad, which focused in sugar cane plantations. As can be seen, the initiatives to start the sugar business had gave him the opportunity to build a business empire. After that, Tan Sri Robert Kuok had continued to expand his sugar business to Indonesia in 1960. From here, we can see that Robert Kuok had showed his entrepreneurial trait of proactive through his efforts on the development of sugar industry.
CONCLUSION
At the end of the assignment, we know that an understanding and importance of the enhancement of entrepreneurial skills and personal qualities in different entrepreneur. As shown in task A and task B, the entrepreneurial traits are needed to the entrepreneur to enhance their skill and network to start and continue their business.
In task A, there are 9 different entrepreneur contain with 9 different entrepreneurial trait. Each of the trait that own by entrepreneur enhance their skill to growing up their business. In task B, it shows that one entrepreneur can own many trait in one time in order to growing up their business. It is clearly show that the importance of the enhancement of entrepreneurial skills and personal qualities in every entrepreneur.
In conclusion, this assignment had successfully prove that the importance of the enhancement of entrepreneurial skills and personal qualities to ensure the growing in business.
