Definitions of Entrepreneurship from Different Sources

Oyewole O. Sarumi |PhD|Teaching and Learning Strategies CENTRE, Lagos, Nigeria.

Lms-consulting.org; tlstrategies@gmail.com

Entrepreneurs - Risk Takers Let’s meet Mr. Eddie. He's an entrepreneur, which is a

person who starts a business. Eddie recently graduated from college with a degree in computer programming and has developed an app that he believes will make him a small fortune. So, instead of working nine to five for a software company in Silicon Valley, he decides to start his own. He wants to challenge himself and work the way he wants to without answering to a boss. He's using a small inheritance to fund the start-up. As an entrepreneur, Eddie is not only starting a business, but is risking his personal wealth to establish it.

Introductory Story

http://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-an-entrepreneur-definition-characteristics-examples.html

Eddie is also trying to convince some friends from school to form an entrepreneurial team with him. An entrepreneurial team is a group of people that help spread out the risk of the new venture and also bring in different talents and skill sets to it. Eddie has a friend who majored in accounting and another who majored in marketing. He's hoping they may come along with him and bring their skills and some cash. If he can build the right team, he can create a synergy, where the group can achieve more together than they can apart.

http://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-an-entrepreneur-definition-characteristics-examples.html

Entrepreneurship is the willingness to take risks and develop, organize and manage a business venture in a competitive global marketplace that is constantly evolving.

Entrepreneurs are pioneers, innovators, leaders and inventors. They are at the forefront of technological and social movements – in their fields, in their forward thinking, in their desire to push the envelope. They are dreamers and most importantly –doers.

http://pinchot.edu/what-is-entrepreneurship/

People who are thinking about starting their own business should understand that successful entrepreneurship involves much more than having a great concept, said Elizabeth Amini, CEO and co-founder of Anti-Aging Games LLC, a company that develops online games to train memory and focus, and an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business.

"Most people think being an entrepreneur is all about coming up with an idea, but that's just one part," Amini told Business News Daily. "It's also important to know, right from the start, how you will reach interested customers in an effective and affordable way."

…The capacity and willingness to develop, organize and manage a business venture along with any of its risks in order to make a profit. The most obvious example of entrepreneurship is the starting of new businesses.

In economics, entrepreneurship combined with land, labor, natural resources and capital can produce profit. Entrepreneurial spirit is characterized by innovation and risk-taking, and is an essential part of a nation's ability to succeed in an ever changing and increasingly competitive global marketplace

Entrepreneurship is…

Read more: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/entrepreneurship.html

Entrepreneurship means different things to different people. Some imagine tech geniuses with Silicon Valley startups, while others picture small business owners opening up their shop doors on Main Street.

Ultimately, entrepreneurship encompasses these and many other business ventures that share a commitment to turning an idea into a profitable business.

- See more at: http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2642-entrepreneurship.html#sthash.YfIq3Qnf.dpuf

Entrepreneurship has traditionally been defined as the process of designing, launching and running a new business, which typically begins as a small business, such as a startup company, offering a product, process or service for sale or hire. 

It has been defined as the "...capacity and willingness to develop, organize, and manage a business venture along with any of its risks in order to make a profit." 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrepreneurship

While definitions of entrepreneurship typically focus on the launching and running of businesses, due to the high risks involved in launching a start-up, a significant proportion of businesses have to close, due to a "...lack of funding, bad business decisions, an economic crisis -- or a combination of all of these" or due to lack of market demand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrepreneurship

In the 2000s, the definition of "entrepreneurship" has been expanded to explain how and why some individuals (or teams) identify opportunities, evaluate them as viable, and then decide to exploit them, whereas others do not, and, in turn, how entrepreneurs use these opportunities to develop new products or services, launch new firms or even new industries and create wealth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrepreneurship

The history of the word “entrepreneurship” is fascinating and scholars have indeed parsed its meaning. I’ll spare you the results, and focus instead on the definition we use at Harvard Business School.

It was formulated by Professor Howard Stevenson, the godfather of entrepreneurship studies at HBS. According to Stevenson, entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity beyond resources controlled.

https://hbr.org/2013/01/what-is-entrepreneurship

“Pursuit” implies a singular, relentless focus. Entrepreneurs often perceive a short window of opportunity. They need to show tangible progress to attract resources, and the mere passage of time consumes limited cash balances.

Consequently, entrepreneurs have a sense of urgency that is seldom seen in established companies, where any opportunity is part of a portfolio and resources are more readily available.

Opportunity” implies an offering that is novel in one or more of four ways. The opportunity may entail:

1) pioneering a truly innovative product; 2) devising a new business model; 3) creating a better or cheaper version of an

existing product; or 4) targeting an existing product to new sets

of customers.

https://hbr.org/2013/01/what-is-entrepreneurship

These opportunity types are not mutually exclusive. For example, a new venture might employ a new business model for an innovative product. Likewise, the list above is not the collectively exhaustive set of opportunities available to organizations.

Many profit improvement opportunities are not novel–and thus are not entrepreneurial–for example, raising a product’s price or, once a firm has a scalable sales strategy, hiring more reps.

“Beyond resources controlled” implies resource constraints. At a new venture’s outset, its founders control only their own human, social, and financial capital.

Many entrepreneurs bootstrap: they keep expenditures to a bare minimum while investing only their own time and, as necessary, their personal funds.

https://hbr.org/2013/01/what-is-entrepreneurship

In some cases, this is adequate to bring a new venture to the point where it becomes self-sustaining from internally generated cash flow.

With most high-potential ventures, however, founders must mobilize more resources than they control personally: the venture eventually will require production facilities, distribution channels, working capital, and so forth.

Because they are pursuing a novel opportunity while lacking access to required resources, entrepreneurs face considerable risk, which comes in four main types.◦ Demand risk relates to prospective customers’ willingness to

adopt the solution envisioned by the entrepreneur. ◦ Technology risk is high when engineering or scientific

breakthroughs are required to bring a solution to fruition. ◦ Execution risk relates to the entrepreneur’s ability to attract

employees and partners who can implement the venture’s plans. 

◦ Financing risk relates to whether external capital will be available on reasonable terms. The entrepreneur’s task is to manage this uncertainty, while recognizing that certain risks cannot be influenced by their actions.

https://hbr.org/2013/01/what-is-entrepreneurship

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.

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Entrepreneurship.html

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.

So, An Entrepreneur does this…..

….increase the value of the

resources they create.

Many definitions of entrepreneurship can be found in the literature describing business processes. The earliest definition of entrepreneurship, dating from the eighteenth century, used it as an economic term describing the process of bearing the risk of buying at certain prices and selling at uncertain prices.

Other, later commentators broadened the definition to include the concept of bringing together the factors of production. This definition led others to question whether there was any unique entrepreneurial function or whether it was simply a form of management.

What is Entrepreneurship?

http://www.gdrc.org/icm/micro/define-micro.html

Early this century, the concept of innovation was added to the definition of entrepreneur-ship. This innovation could be process innovation, market innovation, product innovation, factor innovation, and even organisational innovation.

Later definitions described entrepreneurship as involving the creation of new enterprises and that the entrepreneur is the founder.

1. A person who organizes and manages any 

enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk. 2.

An employer of productive labor; contractor.

Who is an Entrepreneur?

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/entrepreneurship

I hope this can wet your appetite to seek for more knowledge in the field of entrepreneurship.

THANK YOU