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“Becoming an entrepreneur demands an array of personal characteristics and traits. You got to withstand against numerous tests perhaps risking everything you can think of before you emerge as an entrepreneur. In today’s context where factor mobility is high, the traditional factors of production often powered by technology are quite easy to mobilise.
Yet, entrepreneurship remains unique due to those rare qualities that differentiate an entrepreneur from the rest who will tend to be satisfied with what is easily achievable within their regular comfort zones,” said Nayana Dehigama, Chairman of Epic Lanka, addressing a group of final year students of the University of Colombo School of Computing.
Taking part at a career development program held at the UCSC auditorium recently, Dehigama added: “Entrepreneurship is more than successfully managing a business entity as the scope goes beyond earning profits. Entrepreneurs commercialise new ideas and thus generate wealth to the society. Commercialising new ideas is the textbook definition for innovations. Therefore, I believe innovations and entrepreneurship co-exist and they are inseparable. They are galvanised to synergise each other within the equation of successful entrepreneurship.”
He also emphasised that the country needs more and more entrepreneurs who can create wealth to the society through innovations. Citing examples from the West where young entrepreneurs have come up with world class enterprises especially in the ICT field, Dehigama asserted that local students have the potential to come up with innovative business models, adding that the entrepreneurial community in Sri Lanka was willing to assist them in numerous ways.
Dehigama, who was adjudged as the Sri Lankan Entrepreneur 2012 Platinum award winner, is a sought-after speaker in techno-entrepreneurship, a domain he has mastered with his business accomplishments, academic achievements and extensive scholarly research. His company Epic Lanka is celebrating its 15th anniversary in May this year.