An entrepreneur is an individual who creates a new business, bearing most of the risks and enjoying most of the rewards. The entrepreneur is commonly seen as an innovator, a source of new ideas, goods, services, and business/or procedures.
Entrepreneurs play a key role in any economy. These are the people who have the skills and initiative necessary to anticipate current and future needs and bring good new ideas to market. Entrepreneurs who prove to be successful in taking on the risks of a startup are rewarded with profits, fame and continued growth opportunities. Those who fail, suffer losses and become less prevalent in the markets.
- An entrepreneur is an individual who creates a new business, bearing most of the risks and enjoying most of the rewards.
- An entrepreneur combines capital, land, and labor to manufacture goods or provide services through the formation of a firm.
- In a market full of uncertainty, it is the entrepreneur who can actually help clear up uncertainty, as he makes judgments or assumes the risk.
- Entrepreneurship is high-risk, but also can be high-reward as it serves to generate economic wealth, growth, and innovation
Entrepreneurship is one of the resources economists categorize as integral to production, the other three being land/natural resources, labor and capital. An entrepreneur combines the first three of these to manufacture goods or provide services. They typically create a business plan, hire labor, acquire resources and financing, and provide leadership and management for the business.
Entrepreneurs commonly face many obstacles when building their companies. Three that many of them cite as the most challenging are: overcoming bureaucracy, hiring talent and obtaining financing.
Given the riskiness of a new venture, the acquisition of capital funding is particularly challenging, and many entrepreneurs deal with it via bootstrapping: financing a business using methods such as using their own money, providing sweat equity to reduce labor costs, minimizing inventory and factoring receivables.
While some entrepreneurs are lone players struggling to get small businesses off the ground on a shoestring, others take on partners armed with greater access to capital and other resources. In these situations, new firms may acquire financing from venture capitalists, angel investors, hedge funds, crowdsourcing or through more traditional sources such as bank loans.
Entrepreneurs Impact the Economy
In economist-speak, an entrepreneur acts as a coordinating agent in a capitalist economy. This coordination takes the form of resources being diverted toward new potential profit opportunities. The entrepreneur moves various resources, both tangible and intangible, promoting capital formation.
In a market full of uncertainty, it is the entrepreneur who can actually help clear up uncertainty, as he makes judgments or assumes the risk. To the extent that capitalism is a dynamic profit-and-loss system, entrepreneurs drive efficient discovery and consistently reveal knowledge. Established firms face increased competition and challenges from entrepreneurs, which often spurs them toward research and development efforts as well. In technical economic terms, the entrepreneur disrupts course toward steady-state equilibrium.
Entrepreneurs Help Economies
Nurturing entrepreneurship can have a positive impact on an economy and a society in several ways. For starters, entrepreneurs create new business. They invent goods and services, resulting in employment, and often create a ripple effect, resulting in more and more development. For example, after a few information technology companies began in India in the 1990s, businesses in associated industries, like call center operations and hardware providers, began to develop too, offering support services and products.
Entrepreneurs add to the gross national income. Existing businesses may remain confined to their markets and eventually hit an income ceiling. But new products or technologies create new markets and new wealth. And increased employment and higher earnings contribute to a nation’s tax base, enabling greater government spending on public projects.
Entrepreneurs create social change. They break tradition with unique inventions that reduce dependence on existing methods and systems, sometimes rendering them obsolete. Smartphones and their apps, for example, have revolutionized work and play across the globe.
Entrepreneurs invest in community projects and help charities and other non-profit organizations, supporting causes beyond their own. Bill Gates, for example, has used his considerable wealth for education and public health initiatives.
Entrepreneurial Ecosystems
There is research that shows high levels of self-employment can stall economic development: Entrepreneurship, if not properly regulated, can lead to unfair market practices and corruption, and too many entrepreneurs can create income inequalities in society. Overall, though, entrepreneurship is a critical driver of innovation and economic growth. Therefore, fostering entrepreneurship is an important part of the economic growth strategies of many local and national governments around the world.
To this end, governments commonly assist in the development of entrepreneurial ecosystems, which may include entrepreneurs themselves, government-sponsored assistance programs and venture capitalists; they may also include non-government organizations, such as entrepreneurs’ associations, business incubators, and education programs.
For example, California’s Silicon Valley is often cited as an example of a well-functioning entrepreneurial ecosystem. The region has a well-developed venture capital base, a large pool of well-educated talent, especially in technical fields, and a wide range of government and non-government programs fostering new ventures and providing information and support to entrepreneurs.
4 thoughts on “The Entrepreneur”