Entrepreneurship Concept and Nature

The meaning of entrepreneurship involves an entrepreneur who takes action to make a change in the world. Whether startup entrepreneurs solve a problem that many struggle with each day, bring people together in a way no one has before, or build something revolutionary that advances society, they all have one thing in common action.

An entrepreneur is someone who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise. An entrepreneur is an agent of change. Entrepreneurship is the process of discovering new ways of combining resources. When the market value generated by this new combination of resources is greater than the market value these resources can generate elsewhere individually or in some other combination, the entrepreneur makes a profit. An entrepreneur who takes the resources necessary to produce a pair of jeans that can be sold for thirty dollars and instead turns them into a denim backpack that sells for fifty dollars will earn a profit by increasing the value those resources create. This comparison is possible because in competitive resource markets, an entrepreneur’s costs of production are determined by the prices required to bid the necessary resources away from alternative uses. Those prices will be equal to the value that the resources could create in their next-best alternate uses. Because the price of purchasing resources measures this opportunity cost— the value of the forgone alternatives—the profit entrepreneurs make reflects the amount by which they have increased the value generated by the resources under their control.

Entrepreneurs who make a loss, however, have reduced the value created by the resources under their control; that is, those resources could have produced more value elsewhere. Losses mean that an entrepreneur has essentially turned a fifty-dollar denim backpack into a thirty-dollar pair of jeans. This error in judgment is part of the entrepreneurial learning, or discovery, process vital to the efficient operation of markets. The profit-and-loss system of capitalism helps to quickly sort through the many new resource combinations entrepreneurs discover. A vibrant, growing economy depends on the efficiency of the process by which new ideas are quickly discovered, acted on, and labeled as successes or failures. Just as important as identifying successes is making sure that failures are quickly extinguished, freeing poorly used resources to go elsewhere. This is the positive side of business failure.

Successful entrepreneurs expand the size of the economic pie for everyone. Bill Gates, who as an undergraduate at Harvard developed BASIC for the first microcomputer, went on to help found Microsoft in 1975. During the 1980s, IBM contracted with Gates to provide the operating system for its computers, a system now known as MS-DOS. Gates procured the software from another firm, essentially turning the thirty-dollar pair of jeans into a multibillion-dollar product. Microsoft’s Office and Windows operating software now run on about 90 percent of the world’s computers. By making software that increases human productivity, Gates expanded our ability to generate output (and income), resulting in a higher standard of living for all.

Nature of Entrepreneurship

1. Economic Activity

Entrepreneurship is primarily an economic activity because it involves the creation and operation of an enterprise. It is basically concerned with the production and distribution of goods and services and optimally utilizes the resource towards productive use.

2. Entrepreneurship Involves Innovation

Entrepreneurship involves changing, revolutionizing, transforming, and introducing new approaches. Entrepreneurship is an innovative function as it involves doing things in a new and better way. Innovation may take several forms, such as a new product, a new source of raw material a new market, a new method of -production, not yet applied in a particular branch or, manufacturing etc. Drucker says, “Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship”. Entrepreneur is a change agent.

3. Goal-oriented Activity

The entrepreneur who creates and operates enterprises seeks to earn profits through satisfaction of needs of consumers; hence, entrepreneurship is a goal-oriented activity. Entrepreneurship emphasizes results, achievements and targets achieved. It is work done not imaginary plans or paper decisions. Hence entrepreneurship is a goal oriented activity.

4. Value Creation

Next, we find that the process of creating value is a characteristic in describing entrepreneurship. Through entrepreneurship, new products, services, transactions, approaches, resources, technologies, and markets are created that contribute some value to a community or marketplace. We can also see value created when, through entrepreneurship; resources are transformed into outputs such as products or services. During this transformation process, value is created because the entrepreneur is fashioning something worthwhile and useful. Drucker says, “Until entrepreneurial act, every plant is a seed and every mineral just another rock”.

5. Enterprise Creation

The next characteristic of entrepreneurship is enterprise creation. In order to pursue the perceived opportunities for innovation and to create value, there must be organized efforts and actions. Someone must take the initiative to do something – take action to get the entrepreneurial venture up and running. Entrepreneurship is a creative response to changes in the environment. It involves innovation or introduction of something new or improved. An entrepreneur is an agent to effect change.

6. A Function of Risk Bearing

Risk is an inherent and inseparable element of entrepreneurship. An entrepreneur works under uncertainties and he assumes the uncertainty of future. In the pursuit of profit, there is possibility of loss also.

7. Entrepreneurship Implies Growth

The next characteristic in entrepreneurship is growth. One major difference between entrepreneurial ventures and other small businesses is the emphasis on growth. Entrepreneurship is about growing a business and pursuing opportunities as they arise. It’s not about standing still or being content to stay in one market or with one product.

8. Managerial Skill and Leadership Function

Managerial skill and leadership are the most important facets of entrepreneurship. An entrepreneur must have the ability to lead and manage. He provides direction, create work culture, and build teamwork and cohesiveness among employees.

9. Organizing Function

It is the ability to bring together productive resources of society. Entrepreneur coordinates and control the efforts of all the persons engaged in his enterprises. He harnesses land, labour, capital and other resources of for the benefits of mankind. Therefore, an entrepreneur is called as an organization builder.