The Entrepreneur
Social Entrepreneurship : The Art of Mission-Based Venture Devel
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(Textbooks)
The book, "Social Entrepreneurship : The Art of Mission-Based Venture Development", by Peter C. Brinckerhoff (Edition: 00).
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Entrepreneurship in Action
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The book, "Entrepreneurship in Action", by Mary Coulter (Edition: 2ND 03).
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Fashion Entrepreneurship : Retail Business Planning - With CD
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The book, "Fashion Entrepreneurship : Retail Business Planning - With CD", by Michele Granger and Tina Sterling (Edition: 03).
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Entrepreneurship
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The book, "Entrepreneurship", by Robert D. Hisrich, Michael P. Peters and Dean A. Shepherd (Edition: 6TH 05).
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Essentials of Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management - T
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The book, "Essentials of Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management - Text Only", by Thomas Zimmerer and Norman Scarborough (Edition: 4TH 05).
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Entrepreneur is a loanword from the French language that refers to a person who undertakes and operates a new venture, and assumes some accountability for the inherent risks.
Most commonly, the term entrepreneur applies to someone who establishes a new entity to offer a new or existing product or service into a new or existing market, whether for a profit or not-for-profit outcome (see entredonneur). Business entrepreneurs often have strong beliefs about a market opportunity and are willing to accept a high level of personal, professional or financial risk to pursue that opportunity.
Research has demonstrated that there is such a thing as an "entrepreneurial type," with certain characteristics (such as having a father or a mother who was an entrepreneur) linked to the probability of someone being an entrepreneur themselves. There is little good evidence, however, that entrepreneurial type is linked to ultimate success of an entrepreneurial venture.
Business entrepreneurs are often highly regarded in US culture as being a critical component of its capitalistic society. Famous entrepreneurs include: Henry Ford (automobiles), J. Pierpont Morgan (banking), Thomas Edison (electricity/light bulbs), Bill Gates (computer operating systems and applications), Steve Jobs (computer hardware, software), Richard Branson (travel and media) and others.
Some distinguish business entrepreneurs as either "political entrepreneurs" or "market entrepreneurs."
Defining entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is someone who organizes a system to create a product or service in order to gain profit. However though there is a general sense that entrepreneurship involves the establishment of a new venture while adopting some of the risk, there is no common definition as the word has been used many ways in many times. Some scholars of entrepreneurship, such Prof. W. Long have tried to develop a definition by looking at the historical use of the word, as it evolved (Outcalt 2000) (external). Perhaps the first person to create a theory about entreprenurs would be
Schumpeter, although instead of using the French word adopted by the American literature, he used the German word "unternehmer".
Entrepreneur as a risk bearer
Richard Cantillon, an Irish man living in France was the first to introduce the term entrepreneur and his unique risk bearing function in economics in the early 18th century. He defined an entrepreneur as an agent who buys factors of production at certain prices in order to combine them into a product with a view to selling it at uncertain prices in future.
Uncertainty is defined as a risk, which cannot be insured against and is incalculable. There is a distinction between ordinary risk and uncertainty. A risk can be reduced through the insurance principle, where the distribution of the outcome in a group of instances is known. On the contrary, uncertainty is a risk, which cannot be calculated. The entrepreneur, according to Knight, is the economic functionary who undertakes such responsibility of uncertainty, which by its very nature cannot be insured, or capitalized or salaried too. Mark Casson has extended this notion to characterise entrepreneurs as decison makers who improvise solutions to problems which cannot be solved by routine alone.
Entrepreneur as an organizer
Jean–Baptiste Say, an aristocratic industrialist, developed the concept of entrepreneur a little further. His definition associates entrepreneur with the functions of co-ordination, organization and supervision. According to him, an entrepreneur is one who combines the land of one, labour of another and the capital of yet another, and, thus, produces a product.
By selling the product in the market, he pays interest on capital, rent on land and wages to labourers and what remains is his or her profit.
Functional and indicative approach to entrepreneur definition
Mark Casson divides the approach of defining entrepreneur into two parts! Functional approach states that an entrepreneur is what entrepreneur does. The indicative approach provides a description of the entrepreneur by which he may be recognized. The indicative approach maybe more concrete: it can describe entrepreneur in terms of legal status, relation with other parties, position in society, etc. An entrepreneur is an individual whose specialism and economic contribution refer to allocation of factors of production.
Entrepreneur as a person willing to engage uncertainty
Frank Knight, in his seminal contribution to economics Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (1921), defines uncertainty as a primary attribute of his entrepreneurship theory. If there were no uncertainty no losses would be made. Risk is calculable, uncertainty is not. Entrepreneur is a person who is willing to put his career and capital on an uncertain venture.
Entrepreneur as a leader
More recently, researchers such as R. B. Reich have argued that leadership, management ability, and team-building should be added to the definition of entreprenership. Other scholars disagree, viewing management as separate from entrepreneurship.