Which skills are required to be an entrepreneur?

Luigi is excited to start a music shop. He goes to the local shopping mall and rents a location.

Mario also decides to start a music business, but he’s focused on digital media.

Luigi is passionately decorating his retail shop, while Mario is also passionately working on a smartphone app.

Luigi buys inventory for his shop. He gets hundreds of music CDs and diverse CD players for his customers to choose from.

Meanwhile, Mario is negotiating agreements with music distributors to stream music through his digital app.

By the time Luigi opens his store, he has invested thousands of dollars and tons of hard work into his shop.

Luigi buys dozens of balloons to decorate his grand opening event. People are excited to visit his beautiful store. Everyone congratulates Luigi on his new venture — yet, few make a purchase.

Mario quietly launches his app: no balloons, no grand opening event. Mario and his small team only celebrate with a simple dinner, yet thousands of people download the free app and subscribe to their free trial. People who love it stick with it.

Who will achieve success?

This story above is dramatically obvious, but the reality is that disruption is deceiving. This is the reason many companies are surprised by a disruption like the one experienced by ToysRUs, which recently declared bankruptcy.

We may have the passion, the discipline, and the unstoppable determination to execute our dream, but if we ignore the changing market, our efforts will be in vain. We will fail. Guaranteed.

The Digital Age is changing every industry on Earth. No matter how hard you work, ignoring these changes will result in worthless results.

So, to answer your question, which skills are required to be an entrepreneur?

It’s more critical than ever before to have a deep understanding of trends in technology that are affecting your industry.
This is not only for entrepreneurs but for people in their jobs as well.

In a world of accelerating change, success is NOT guaranteed by just having executive or technical skills anymore.
Success will result from effectively aligning our skills with the changing market trends.

It’s not just how to climb a mountain, but which mountain to climb.

~ Hector Quintanilla