My answer to the question on “What knowledge is required to be an entrepreneur or to start a new company?” Do you need to study books on management for that? on Quora:
The knowledge that you need:
- Some good ideas to improve or create products/services in your chosen field.
- The ability to build/make/serve people in a specific marketplace (solve problems people face)
- Some skills in doing basic research to understand the needs of your potential customers
- Ability to clearly articulate benefits of your product/service and interact with people and listen to their problems.
- To learn from interactions/research and continuously improve your product/service
- Understand that being a good entrepreneur is hard work and may take a while to get right.
- An open mind to change some of your ideas and persevere
Some of these skills can be learned. Some through books and others through experience.
If can find an active entrepreneur community and find some advisers who have done that before can benefit you immensely.
I also suggest that taking this free Udacity course on Building a Startup can get you thinking in the right direction – How To Build A Startup: The Lean Launchpad
Meta:
Even though I answered it on Quora, I was hoping that this would reach some of my audience members who are entrepreneurs and others who are thinking about entrepreneurship. I also hope that it will generate some good questions/answers and reactions or encourage you to go to Quora and participate.
If you Google Things that an entrepreneur needs to know (you will get a lots of answers). There are some that are really good. But I think the most basic one is that you need to know what entrepreneurs do and what kind of problems they face.