CREATED BY

This blog had been created by us;

1. Syahirah Aqilah
2. Habiba Radhiah
3. Siti Zaharah
4. Zahirah
5. Siti Atikah
6. Rabiatul Adawiyah

and we are from Group K, conducted by Dr Azizi.

OBSERVANT

Tan Sri Dato’ Sri Dr. Tony Fernandes

Observant is one of the importance trait that needed to be a successful entrepreneur. According to Oxford Dictionary, the word “observant” can be define as the ability to predict or the action of predicting what will happen or be needed in future. In business perspective, an observant is the one of the key to success because the entrepreneurs should aware of the world around them, environment of business, their competitors and the risk will take before make any decision. Therefore, entrepreneurs can quickly identify the problems and find out the opportunities in business.

In Malaysia, the successful leader, Tan Sri Dato’ Sri Dr. Tony Fernandes as the founder of Air Asia is well-explained example for observant trait entrepreneur. Tan Sri Anthony Francis or Tony Fernandes was born on 30 April 1964 and he is the one who introduced the first budget no-frills airline, AirAsia, to Malaysians with the tagline "Now everyone can fly". He was educated at The Alice Smith School in Kuala Lumpur. Starting at age 12, from 1977 to 1983, he studied at Epsom College boarding school in England in Bachelor of Arts and Science and then matriculated to the London School of Economics. Thus, he was graduated with a degree in accounting.

This successful leader’s story began when he is the one who managed to turn a heavily indebted Air Asia to a profitable airline. Tony Fernandes paid RM 40 million to acquire the Air Asia’s debt only one year after he purchased the airline from the goverment (Teoh, 2014). Besides that, Tony Fernandes also observed the people who are unable to travel by air because of the price of flight ticket are so expensive. According to Interview with Tony Fernandes by CNN in 2007, Tony said that the cost of a flight ticket is almost someone’s one-month salary. Therefore he was launching the no-frills airline is to provide the low fare flight service to the Malaysian with the tagline "Now everyone can fly”.

OPEN RISK TAKER

Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary

This type of entrepreneur trait is referring to an individual who are willing to do something that will cause financial loss in order to achieve his objective or mission. For example, Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar Shah bin Syed Nor Al - Bukhary, businessman and the richest Malay entrepreneurs in Malaysia. According to the Utusan Malaysia, he had property worth RM10.44 billion in 2016, thus becoming the eighth richest man in Malaysia.

Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary was born in Alor Setar, Kedah in 1951 at middle class family. His family hailed from Hadhramaut, ‎Yemen. Before deciding to live in Kedah, his father traveled as far as Central Asia to ‎trade. Then, his father went to Thailand, before finally deciding to live in Alor Setar, ‎Kedah in the mid 1940’s. He has seven siblings and he is the third child.

This leader story in business began when he helps his parents in cattle business around 1960. Unfortunately, the outbreak of disease hit his parent’s cattle livestock. Hence, Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary took other initiative by applying for MARA’s assistance to start a lorry business in 1967s. He began to take the risk to start another business in order to improve his family income.

Furthermore, Bukhari Co.Ltd. is the first company founded by Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary. He develops the company in order to establish a contract for supply of rice, tea, powdered chocolate, powdered milk and ghee to the government. This shows he has a substantial financial capital and willing to take risks to carry on its business.

FAILURE IS AN OPTION

Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong

           Failure always is an option. When come to the world of business, the variability exists everywhere. So, the way of dealing is the key of success. What would you choose when failure is an option? As an entrepreneur, the spirit to be success is always higher than other people. It seems like success is the only way out for them.

           His full name is Lim Goh Tong. He was born in 1918 at An Xi, Fu Jian, China. He has six siblings. He is married to Lee Kee Hua and he has only one child namely Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay. He is the founder of Genting Highlands, Genting Groups and Star Cruises.

           The idea of a hill resort was chanced upon by late Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong amidst the crisp air of Cameron Highlands in 1964. Tan Sri Lim was then working on a hydro-electric power project at the popular hill resort, patronised mostly by British colonials seeking cool refuge from the tropical heat, when he foresaw a prosperous Malaysia of the future desiring a cool mountain holiday resort within the reach of all Malaysians. He face a lot of challenges during the construction of Genting Highlands. The situation putting his physical ability to the limit for managed both projects. However, it doesn’t direct the Genting Highlands project to the failure side. In the middle of the project, Lim Goh Tong faced financial troubles. He seeks the financial help from his friends, but again they suggested dropping the entire project and turning him down. The whole Genting Highlands project had been completed in the year 1971, even though all of these issues had blocked him towards the success path. The entrepreneur trait of failure is an option shown on how successful of the project by Lim Goh Tong.

PROACTIVE

Tan Sri Robert Kuok

Proactive is a person who gets things done before you make things happen, instead of waiting for them to happen to you. Proactive is creating or controlling a situation rather than just responding to it after it has happened (Oxford University Press, 2016). From the business view, proactive strategic approach is involves anticipating markets and competition changes in advance of their actual occurrence and making appropriate organizational shifts in response. Business operators need to take a proactive strategy to deal with the rapidly changing marketplace for their company's products. (Web Finance, 2016).

Proactive not only includes creativity, innovation and risk-taking, but also to plan, in order to manage the project's ability to achieve the objectives. The entrepreneur can supports individual’s specific skills and knowledge needed by contributing to social or commercial activity by being proactive. Proactive must come together with an awareness and high ethical value.

The best example of entrepreneurs that have proactive characteristic is Tan Sri Robert Kuok. Robert Kuok Hock Nien, a Malaysian businessman of Chinese origin, he is the richest man in Malaysia and also known as Asian Sugar King, Tan Sri Robert Kuok Hock Nien courage to seize opportunity at home and abroad, and used his excellent connections with government and industry to rapidly scale up his empire. Tan Sri Robert Kuok has the ability to identify opportunities on good timing. Everyone can find difficult opportunity if we use a thoughtful and deliberate approach, but he was able to find and seize an opportunity when they appear.

 The proactive action that takes by Tan Sri Robert Kuok is where he was the first people that engaged in the sugar business in Malaysia. One of the reasons he wants to start sugar industry because no one has been engaged in this business before. Tan Sri Robert Kuok can see that sugar was very important in the food sector. He takes this opportunity because he believed that sugar business was a simple business and cheapest raw sugar that can give benefit to him as an entrepreneur. Tan Sri Robert Kuok effort expands his internationally in the sugar business started in the late 1960s, he expanded his business in Indonesia, he buys cheap sugar from India before the prices soared.

TEAM ORIENTED

Howard Schultz

Team oriented is one of the entrepreneurial traits that needed by the entrepreneurs. Based on business dictionary team oriented is the process of working collaboratively with a group of people in order to achieve a goal. Teamwork is often a crucial part of a business, as it is often necessary for colleagues to work well together, trying their best in any circumstance. Teamwork means that people will try to cooperate, using their individual skills and providing constructive feedback, despite any personal conflict between individuals.  (Web Finance, 2016)

There are many benefits of a team-oriented approach. One of the benefits is competitive, working as a team can greater opportunity in the creation, strategy, research, and overall support. The larger the number of active participants, the greater the opportunities for generative interaction. A second benefit is about education, learning together has been found to increase critical thinking, foster the development of interpersonal relationships, and improve overall psychological health (Hendrix, 1999; Mills & Durden, 1992; Slavin, 1996). Cooperative learning promotes the development of interpersonal relationships and interpersonal skills because it exposes students to perspectives that are different than their own (Johnson & Johnson, & Smith, 1995).

Team oriented have been practiced by Howard Schultz. Howard Schultz is an American entrepreneur and the chairman, president and CEO of Starbucks Coffee Company, which is well-known as one of the largest coffee store chains of the world. Starbucks enjoys a reputation for its focus on people.

He practices team-oriented to his workers. Schultz promises to himself to respect if he ever gained a position of responsibility. When Starbucks became the first American corporation to offer stock options and other benefits to part-timers, the move initially drew poor shareholder reviews. But Schultz did not mind taking the heat. Schultz advises other would-be CEOs to lower employee attrition and create passion in the workplace.

OUTCOME ORIENTED

Irfan Khairi

Cole (1969) defines entrepreneurship as activities that bring benefits through the development of outcome-oriented business. Outcome oriented is the actions of mind focuses on result and impact. An entrepreneur will start a business to get maximum profit. In fact, an entrepreneur will strive to achieve a continuous manner to further develop businesses and will market their business abroad. In addition, entrepreneurs will strive to produce the new products.

In the business, an entrepreneur with outcome oriented analysis, labour productivity based on the number of tasks that had been set up within the prescribed and the quality of products or services provided by him. Employees are free to use a private process in order to achieve the targets set by the organisation. The main goal of outcome oriented individual or organisation is to meet the objectives and realise positive growth. The successful entrepreneurs are always looking forward regarding the opportunities might present themselves in the future and how to take advantage towards opportunities.

Moreover, the entrepreneurs are always looking for ways to do something with a lower cost and the period shorter time than usual. Plus, they are always concerned about the estimated costs and benefits of a renewal, amendment or an action and use the information business or management methods to improve the efficiency of self and businesses.

One of Malaysian’s young entrepreneurs who has this trait is Irfan Khairi. He received a title as The Young Millionaire at 28 years old. He was born in Perak but raised in Singapore and now resident in Seremban. He received a Bachelor of Multimedia Design from Staffordshire University, United Kingdom. After graduating, Irfan was offered work at one company The Birmingham IT, Netmedia (UK) Ltd. As the investors of multimedia systems and internet consultant, he was responsible for designing learning system currently, more than 5,000 schools in the United Kingdom use Learning Grid System.

Drawing upon the interests and deep knowledge towards the internet and business. He starts playing in this business as part-time work in the year 1999. He decided to quit from his job after concerned about the income increased by two fold and want to devote full attention of the business. Then, he began working full-time from home by using a laptop and internet. Only after three years of operation, one of the business’s net profit is RM 1 million without employees and advanced computer equipment. Now, Irfan is working full-time at home by using the internet as a source of income.

As the inspiration that has been shown, he was awarded Young Innovation Award 2006 from Oxford Association of Management, United Kingdom. It is awarded for his efforts in educating and inspiring as the new generation of Malaysia in the field of internet and success.

In a nutshell, Irfan Khairi shows that an entrepreneur is a person with outcome-oriented since he willing to quit from his job after gain a higher profit.