Definition: Entrepreneurship is an activity where an individual assumes the risk of funding and managing a given venture. Simply put, it means to develop an idea and deal with the risks involved in doing so.
What Does Entrepreneurship Mean?
The word entrepreneur is said to have its roots in a French word that means “adventurer”. There’s also a discussion about this subject, since some other say that the word comes from a Latin word. Either way, entrepreneurship is now a widely referred business word that identifies business activities normally carried out by innovative people. The concept of entrepreneurship has a bit of glamour attached, but in the real world, many ordinary ventures should be considered as entrepreneurial activities.
The idea behind this is that anyone willing and knowledgeable to undertake the risks involved in developing a business venture should be considered an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship is normally tied to new businesses but it can also refer to social activities, like the development of non-governmental organizations or community-building activities like setting up a new church or a home shelter.
To sum up, entrepreneurship should be interpreted more like a spirit, not a particular activity. It is a matter of character, skills and courage that come together to develop new ideas and concepts that add value to society.
Here’s an illustration of these.
Example
Mr. Prince is a 32 years old economist graduated from one of the top business schools of the U.S. After he graduated from his Master degree he decided to develop a statistical model to predict European currency results by using different tools. He decided to start a company to develop this idea and sell it to financial services companies all around the world. Should this be considered a case of entrepreneurship?
According to our concept, entrepreneurship is an activity where an individual assumes the risk of funding and managing a given venture. As we can see Mr. Prince seems to be willing to deal with the risks of developing this idea, which means that this should be considered a case of entrepreneurship.
