A real entrepreneur is an individual who has the aptitude to think separately, different from some of us in the sense that such person can identify and see the business opportunity others cannot see.
You should not forget that whereas you see an environmental, social, economic and technological change as a problem, a real entrepreneur sees such change as an opportunity to establish a business to meet the need caused by the said change and satisfy people’s needs. A real entrepreneur does look for opportunity within the problem.
He/she sees a problem as a challenge and tries to learn from it. A real entrepreneur is an idea generator, a risk taker, a problem solver (good thinker), and a business architect who always has trust in his/her business thoughts and always believes that success is coming. Those are some features that differentiate an entrepreneur from a tenderpreneur.
A tenderpreneur is not an entrepreneur, rather a politically connected person who always relies on using what an entrepreneur has bred to do the allocated work as per the terms of references. A tenderpreneur does not conduct market research, neither induces a solution to the problem facing customers. A tenderpreneur is obviously a copycat of an entrepreneur and wants to become a millionaire within a year without working hard and smart. There is no doubt that in Namibia entrepreneurs are very few, whereas the majorities are tenderpreneurs who are scavenging in a red ocean. The budget cut and the suspension of capital projects during the financial year 2016/2017, along with the the economic recession, brought a clear understanding of the difference between entrepreneur and tenderpreneur in Namibia. As for now, some tenderpreneurs have closed down their business operations, whereas entrepreneurs have only changed their strategic plans for them to cope with external factors. Entrepreneurs diverged from the red ocean, entered the blue ocean and continue their business operations.
*TK Kamati – IUM Senior Lecturer