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The following article was published in the Charleston Post & Courier's Business Major, a featured monthly column in the Business Review Section on November 8, 1999. Path is rarely well-marked for female entrepreneursBy DOROTHY P. MOORE Special to the Post and Courier During the past three years I have spent considerable time in individual interviews and focus group sessions with successful women entrepreneurs. Many are members of The Committee 200 or have been recognized as outstanding by Working Woman, Ernst & Young, the National Association of Women Business Owners and the Small Business Administration, designated as Entrepreneur of the Year for their city or state, listed in Newsweek, Time, Entrepreneurial Edge, Inc or other publications, or received other prestigious awards or special recognition. Both individually and as a group, these entrepreneurs are impressive. They exhibit creativity, risk-taking, vision, and courage. They are intelligent and independent. They stand out from the crowd. As individuals, they are goal oriented and willing to take on challenges. They continually re-examine their aspirations and business endeavors. They are socially conscious to a remarkable degree. In their focus interviews, these women shared experiences, doubts and fears, their metaphorical "cuts and bruises." As expected, their stories provided an insight into what it takes to build a business. As the number of interviews accumulated, however, I began realizing that collectively these women were explaining something more important and fundamental taking place in today's society. Women are building careers in entrepreneurial ways. Owning and operating a business becomes an important part of many of these careers. Some business owners began their entrepreneurial careers early, capitalizing on a talent or skill, and worked in their own business from then on. For others, establishment of a firm came after a usually lengthy period of organizational life, and was built on the bedrock of accumulated business skills. Still others tracked back and forth in unprecedented ways between working for others and owing and operating businesses of their own. There were numerous patterns and fascinating variations in each. Diverse in origins, the lives and careers of these businesswomen have a number of characteristics in common. Early on they came to appreciate the indispensable value of a good education. Some had to struggle to get one. Most, but not all, worked in corporate environments where they acquired the training and specialized knowledge that would serve them well. They became good managers, learned to plan well, to readily identify the key elements that related to operations under their control, and to adapt quickly. As managers, they did not operate through traditional organizational hierarchies in authoritarian fashion but tended to prefer to work through networks and teams. Hard work, busy lives, and sacrifices were the norm. While success seldom came easily, the road to it usually began with spotting an opportunity. Many of these women founded their businesses in search of new challenges, to make money, to be in charge, and to accomplish something. Those that left their previous organizational environments, mostly large companies, did so for a variety of reasons. Some saw business possibilities where the managers in their corporate environments did not, and left to pursue them. Others sought to escape stifling workplaces, looked for new horizons in fields where they had gained experience, calculated a new path, and then left. Some were influenced in their decisions by the special effects that gender still confers: work environments hostile to women, lingering discrimination, inequitable compensation, and differential treatment. Several were caught in mergers, downsizing, or other changes and had to reorder their lives in a hurry. Some exhibited great creativity in jumping from one field to another entirely unrelated to what they had been doing. In future columns, I will be expanding on some of these stories. The origins of nearly all the firms of these entrepreneurs have an important plot line in common. At a critical time in their career, someone with whom she had connected offered encouragement, pointed out an opportunity, provided financial backing or in some other important way lent a hand. The commonality of such incidents cannot be dismissed as good luck, unless in the terms of the old saying that chance favors the well prepared. A two-part explanation is both simpler and sounder. Up to the crucial decision point, through their own efforts these women had continually reached out, constructing extensive business and personal networks. Connected to many people, they had multiplied many times the possibilities they might obtain assistance at the propitious moment when they decided to take the plunge into something new, Networking and independent judgement together make up an important part of their career stories. The real story is that women did not think of career planning in terms of a straight line. No one should. A career today is likely to be a weaving path filled with many unexpected twists along the way. Career planing in the new work environment requires rethinking old assumptions. Until recently, people tended to think of the world of work in distinct categories. Most people either worked in someone else's business or in their own. The distinction between being an employee and being an entrepreneur was clear. For those who worked in large organizations, there was a well understood implied contract that if you did your work well you would remain employed and be rewarded because the company was a near permanent fixture in the landscape. The rapid changes in the economy in the past two decades have called this contract into question. People learned that the meaning of the word employment has irrevocably changed. While a pattern still remains, one simply cannot depend on the traditional arrangements of lifetime jobs and corporate or professional advancement. What counts now are portable skills and knowledge, meaningful work, on-the-job learning, and contacts. In such a world, the lines between working for others and running your own business have become blurred. For example, the pattern of working for someone else prior to starting a business, a trend now well established, appears to be the shortest road to owning your own business. But operating that business may not be the capstone of your career. Instead, it may be only the beginning of a whole new set of challenges. For Questions/Comments about this site, contact moored@citadel.edu. Site designed by Jackye Cocoros. |