Word Count: 1444 words

Paper 1
Entrepreneurship can come in many forms and shapes. This also means to be successful in
launching a revolutionary business idea, one should look into the four characteristics: personality
facets, grit, divergence in thinking and level of expertise. Whatever the business idea is, I find
grit and perseverance, the heart in contributing to a teams success compared to the rest three.
The main reason grit weighs even more is because with creative ideas and solutions, one could
still fail depending on the circumstances. Without putting words into action, creative ideas would
be just mere hallucinations. It is the unending grit of an entrepreneur that enables him or her to
solidify their dreams into reality.
Taking a look into Walt Disneys case, there were many times his ideas were shot down, stolen
and scoffed at. One of such instances was when his first animation company in Kansas City
made a deal with a distribution company in New York, but was forced to dissolve his company
and at one point he had to survive by eating dog food.1 In another case, Disney tried to get MGM
studios to distribute Mickey Mouse in 1927 but was told that his idea would never worka giant
mouse on the screen would terrify women.2 However, the Walt Disney today is not just failures
anymore. His grit and perseverance combined with wisdom has allowed him to overcome his
obstacles and turn Disney into what we are witnessing as one of the greatest animation creators
on the planet.
After grit comes the divergent thinking; the brain to an entrepreneurs trail of success. If
entrepreneurs are to tackle a common problem that persists in everyones life, and come up with
1 Cornwall, T. (n.d.). In a nutshell... Retrieved October 16, 2016, from http://temperaments.fighunter.com/?page=choleric
2 Cornwall, T. (n.d.). In a nutshell... Retrieved October 16, 2016, from http://temperaments.fighunter.com/?page=choleric

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a creative solution, his or her ability to think creatively would essentially be the business idea
itself. It is just like in 1800s when people wanted to travel faster, they created automobiles
instead of looking for faster horses to draw carts faster. Similarly, an entrepreneurs ability to
think divergently greatly helps differentiate ones products amongst others, while making it
unique.
Proving that divergent thinking results in creativity, it best supported within the book Where
good ideas come from, where Steven Johnson, a psychologist looks into various background
and platforms that could cultivate a persons way of thinking to develop their creative ideas.3 To
achieve this, Johnson traced back the history of first cities, media environments like world wide
web and even to biological environments like coral reefs and rainforests. All his sources pointed
him to one thing: connections and networks of ideas. Johnson exemplifies a caf as a perfect
environment for development of ideas in England as a place where ideas have sex resulting in
marvelous creations.4 Similar to divergent thinking, Johnson defines creative ideas as an
expanding, collected network of ideas like Youtube and Google.
Combined with grit, divergent thinking becomes the power house for a revolutionary business
startup. Mainly because, grit will allow the entrepreneur to stick along his or her own idea
throughout the journey while divergent way of thinking will allow the entrepreneur to morph the
idea, differentiate and beautifully overcome their obstacles.

3 Johnson, S. (n.d.). Transcript of "Where good ideas come from" Retrieved October 16, 2016, from
http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_where_good_ideas_come_from/transcript?language=en#t-349672

4 Johnson, S. (n.d.). Transcript of "Where good ideas come from" Retrieved October 16, 2016, from
http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_where_good_ideas_come_from/transcript?language=en#t-349672

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With a brain and a heart, an entrepreneur cannot fully function just yet. He still needs some tools
like skills of expertise to help implement his ideas into a business. Most often, absence in skills
of expertise is viewed as a barrier rather than a dead-end compared to the first two
characteristics. It is just like trying to solve a Rubiks cube without any mathematical techniques
or tricks, but that does not mean one cant solve it. It is just harder to solve it through only grit
and thinking. Hence, I view skills of expertise as a helping tool to expand our possible pathways
of reaching a designated target.
Lastly comes the compatibility of the personality facet of different team members within the
team. The reason why I believe personality facet makes onto the list as the last characteristic is
because a good team dynamic allows the team to achieve objectives faster, better quality, with
higher motivation and creativity compared to the one with poor team dynamics. This also implies
that the team members know what he or she is doing and is even more compatible with working
one another.
Whether a teams dynamics or coordination would be good or not, its future performance could
be predicted by using 5 dimensions of personality facets to decipher its group dynamics. These
include conscientiousness, extraversion, openness to experience, neuroticism and agreeableness.
An ideal team would consist of members who are conscientious, extroverted, agreeable and open
to experience. Moreover, according to Hens Eysencks model of personality dimensions, an ideal
team should score low on neuroticism or none at all5; as teams with higher neuroticism score
tend to be more disagreeing, and impulsive and discouraging.

5 Cornwall, T. (n.d.). In a nutshell... Retrieved October 16, 2016, from http://temperaments.fighunter.com/?page=choleric

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Personally, I have encountered a case where a team member tried to shoot down my idea before I
even began expanding on it. Rather than finding solutions to my ideas potential obstacles, my
team mate not only argued about the idea not being feasible, he also complained how not creative
it was. Applying Hens Eysencks model of personality onto my team mate, he would be an
extrovert with high neuroticism, thus falling into the category called choleric type within the
team (an alpha type).6 Luckily, the other two members who are also extroverts but more
agreeable, came up with creative solutions and argued against him to prevent my idea from going
down the drain.
With all the four characteristics contributing its own significance to a teams success, it is in the
greatest interest of the team leader that the whole team consists of well-balanced team members.
In my point of view, I categorize myself as a 35 percent divergent thinker, 15 percent agreeable,
25 percent conscientious, 25 percent grit. I like to be creative and imaginative. Throughout my
life, I have supported others as an advisor, and a co-founder to help resolve hard problems in
smart ways with the minimum cost and effort. It is the divergent thinking that defines most of
what I am compared to the rest three. On the other hand, I believe I am equally conscientious,
and grit. Simply because I am an achiever and like taking systematic approaches to reaching a
target. Quoting Dr.Fretz, It is the journey that counts, not the destination. Truly, I realized that
the true value of journey is that it not only teaches you smarter way to do things, it also shows
you the other possibilities that could arise from the single destination that I am to achieve. I gave
myself a score of 15 percent in agreeable because I trust my team mates more often I do so
myself. However, agreeable is the least that represents me when working in teams as other
characteristcs tend to stand out more than agreeableness.
6 Cornwall, T. (n.d.). In a nutshell... Retrieved October 16, 2016, from http://temperaments.fighunter.com/?page=choleric

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Hence, when I form a team of three to execute a revolutionary idea, I would love to have team
mates that could balance out my zero level of expertise, extroversion, openness to experience and
convergent way of thinking.
Ideally, I would prefer my first team mate to be 30 percent grit, 25 percent divergent thinker, 25
percent skills of expertise in art and designs, and 20 percent extroverted. Essentially, my first
team member would be a creative problem solver similar to me but has an extra skill asset to
implement his or her skills in the beautification of our final product designs while being open
minded to other peoples opinion.
My second member would be 20 percent convergent thinker, 30 percent skills of expertise, 25
percent grit, 10 percent openness to experience, and 10 percent agreeable. Unlike, my first team
mate, my second ideal team mate would be a convergent thinker with high levels of expertise in
general business aspects. It is the duty of the second member to envision things pragmatically,
while narrowing down the rest of the teams ideas to help make a more feasible targets and goals.
Nonetheless, my third member should also be willing to take up risks in some cases to help
further advance our ideas.
Overall, I would imagine my ideal team to be pragmatic creative problem solvers that are highly
motivated, dedicated and communicative to each others ideas while being full with grit and
wisdom to work around our failures. It is also to note that my ideal team does not have possess
any neuroticism like in the Hen Eysencks personality model while keeping openness to
experience the bare minimum as this involves in many unnecessary risks.