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Category: Business

Autor: anton 18 July 2011

Words: 2910 | Pages: 12

Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is how a lot of businesses get started but the vast majority of the businessesstarted fail after a short time. The definition of entrepreneurship is the practice of starting a neworganization or revitalizing mature organizations. Entrepreneurship has been a key part to howbusinesses have developed. This paper is going to be about the history of entrepreneurship andtheories of what entrepreneurship is, the characteristics of an entrepreneur and what an

entrepreneur is, the contributions of entrepreneurs and the advantages of entrepreneurship, andsome businesses that were started by entrepreneurs. After I touch on those topics I am going totalk about the top 10 entrepreneurs of all time.

Entrepreneurs have been around since the beginning of time. But the term was first introduced bya French economist by the name of Richard Cantillon in the 18th century. Cantillon defined theentrepreneur as the agent who buys means of production at certain prices in order to combinethem" into a new product. Over the next century British economists like Adam Smith, DavidRicardo, and John Stuart Mill briefly touch upon the concept of entrepreneurship. In writings byboth Smith and Ricardo they suggest that they undervalued the importance of entrepreneurship.But Mills on the other hand goes out of his way to stress the significance of entrepreneurship oneconomic growth.

In 1890 Alfred Marshall recognized the necessity of entrepreneurship for production. InMarshalls famous treaties of Principles of Economics he asserts that there are fourfactors to production which are: land, labor, capital, and organization. Marshall believed thatentrepreneurship was the driving force behind organization. For the entrepreneur to be the drivingforce behind organization Marshall believed that entrepreneurs had to have a thoroughunderstanding about their industries, and that they must be natural leaders. He also thought theymust also have the ability to foresee changes in supply and demand and must also be willing toact on such risky forecasts.
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But since the time of Marshall the concept of entrepreneurship has gone through some theoreticalevolution. An example of this evolution is whereas Marshall thought entrepreneurship droveorganization many economist but not all think that entrepreneurship by itself should be the fourthfactor in production that coordinates the other three factors. Although many economists agree thatentrepreneurship is necessary for economic growth, they still argue over the actual role of

entrepreneurship in generating economic growth. One thought about entrepreneurship is that itsrole is a risk-bearer in the face of uncertainty and imperfect information. One economist by thename of Knight believes that an entrepreneur is willing to bear the risk of a new venture if he orshe believes there is a good chance for a profit. Many current theories on entrepreneurship agreethat there is a component of risk, but the risk-bearer theory alone cant explain why somepeople become entrepreneurs. Risk is one characteristic of an entrepreneur.

Altogether there are eight characteristics that can be found in an entrepreneur. The first one ishaving an enthusiastic vision. This enthusiastic vision is the driving force of the enterprise. Thisenthusiastic vision is also where the entrepreneurs idea starts to take shape. The secondcharacteristic is having ideas no one else on the market has. The entrepreneurs ideas areone of a kind and hopefully realistic. The next characteristic is having the ability to make a

blueprint of your idea in your head. The blueprint that is made is just the start the blueprint ismost likely incomplete and should be flexible to change and evolving. Next on the list ofcharacteristics is being able to promote his/her vision/idea with enthusiastic passion. Being ableto promote your idea so other people can understand it is a very important because if youcant promote your idea then you wont get any backers to help you. The fifthcharacteristic is having the ability to develop strategies to change the vision into reality. This isalso another important ability because being able to develop an idea is one thing and having theidea in your head is nothing if you cant figure out how to turn it into reality. The sixthcharacteristic is the ability to make his or his vision into a successful one. This is one of thebiggest if not the biggest characteristics of an entrepreneur because if they cant turn therevision into a successful one than in the end they will lose money and have wasted time. Seventhcharacteristic which I have already talked about briefly is the risk of being an entrepreneur. This

is a big factor in being an entrepreneur because entrepreneurs take a big risk when tryingto turn an idea in to a real life business that makes money. The eighth and final characteristic isbeing a positive thinker and a decision maker. This is an important attribute because anentrepreneur is going to be but in situations where he is going to have to make key decisions thatcould greatly affect his vision and how it will succeed.

Entrepreneurs have a lot of the same traits that leaders have. But entrepreneurs are goingmore to a team based operation than a single person operation. Several economists have come upwith ideas on what entrepreneurs are and in 1959 Arthur Cole found that there are fourtypes of entrepreneurs: the innovator, the calculating inventor, the over-optimisticpromoter, and the organization builder. These types have nothing to do with personality but dealwith the type of opportunities the entrepreneur might face. In 1961 David McClelland said the

entrepreneur was motivated by an overwhelming need for achievement and the urge to build. In1997 Lowell Busenitz and Jay Barney claimed entrepreneurs are prone to overconfidence andover generalizations. But I think one of the best descriptions of an entrepreneur is by BarbaraBird and she said entrepreneurs as mercurial, that is, prone to insights, brainstorms, deceptions,ingeniousness and resourcefulness, they are cunning, opportunistic, creative, and unsentimental. Ithink these people give some of the best descriptions of what an entrepreneur is.

Next on the list of things to talk about is the contributions entrepreneurs make. The firstcontribution they make is developing new markets. This makes entrepreneurs different from


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regular business man because they only perform traditional functions of management likeplanning, organization, and coordination. Entrepreneurs can also create customers andbuyers when they develop new markets. The second contribution they make is discovering newsources of materials. The reason why they develop new sources to use is because of theirinnovative nature and also so they can improve their enterprise. Another advantage to developing

new sources of material is enjoying a comparative advantage in terms of supply, cost and quality.The next contribution is mobilizing capital resources. Entrepreneurs organize and coordinate themajor factors of production such as land, labor, and capital. They mix these factors of productionto create goods and services. Entrepreneurs have the initiative and self-confidence in mobilizingcapital resources for new business or business expansion. The fourth contribution that theentrepreneur makes is introducing new technologies, new industries, and new products. Besidesfrom being risk-takers and innovators they take advantage of business opportunities, and cantransform them into profit. This entrepreneur spirit has greatly contributed to the modernizationof our economy. All these new products and technologies are intended to satisfy human needs ina more convenient and pleasant way. The fifth and last contribution entrepreneurs make iscreating jobs for people. If you didnt know the biggest employer is the private sector andmillions of jobs are provided by factories, service industries, agriculture enterprise, and the manysmall-scale businesses. Such massive employment has multiplier and accelerator effects in thewhole economy. More jobs mean more incomes. This increases demand for goods and services.This stimulates production. Again, more production requires more employment.

Every successful entrepreneur brings about benefits not only for himself/ herself but for their city,town, county, region or country as a whole. There are at least sixteen benefits that can be derivedfrom entrepreneurial activities. The sixteen benefits/advantages of an entrepreneurship are asfellows:

1. Enormous personal financial gain

2. Self-employment, offering more job satisfaction and flexibility of the work force

3. Employment for others, often in better jobs

4. Development of more industries, especially in rural areas or regions disadvantaged byeconomic changes, for example due to globalization effects

5. Encouragement of the processing of local materials into finished goods for domesticconsumption as well as for export

6. Income generation and increased economic growth

7. Healthy competition thus encourages higher quality products

8. More goods and services available

9. Development of new markets

10. Promotion of the use of modern technology in small-scale manufacturing to enhance higherproductivity

11. Encouragement of more researches/ studies and development of modern machines andequipment for domestic consumption

12. Development of entrepreneurial qualities and attitudes among potential entrepreneurs to bringabout significant change in the rural areas

13. Freedom from the dependency on the jobs offered by others


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14. The ability to have great accomplishments

15. Reduction of the informal economy

16. Emigration of talent may be stopped by a better domestic entrepreneurship climate

These are the advantages and they can all positively affect a city or even a country. An

entrepreneur can have a great affect on a society because they can create jobs that werentthere before. Along with creating jobs they can help generate income and economic growth inplaces where there was hardly any if not none.

A lot of businesses are started by entrepreneurs and some of the best known businesses are run byentrepreneurs. Whats cool though is how many entrepreneur businesses are started in thepaintball industry. The paintball industry is a great market place of entrepreneurs because thesport is still growing. Every year there is always at least three new companies by the end of theseason that has made a name for themselves. And that alone is really helping the sport grow. Oneof the biggest entrepreneur businesses in the paintball industry is a paintball information website.The website was started in 1998 in Tacoma, Washington and is called paintball.com. One reasonwhy this website is such a big success is because if you go to and search engine and type paintball

into the search paintball.com is on the top of the list. All the major companies realized this sothey wanted to advertise on the website and the website had a high price for ad space becausethey knew this too. With the money they made they opened a store and field too. This is one ofmany examples you can find when it comes to entrepreneurship in paintball.

The last topic I am going to talk about is the top 10 entrepreneurs of all time. The firstentrepreneur Im going to talk about is Steve Jobs & Steve Woznika. These two guys ownthe tenth spot on the list. They are the men that created the Apple computers and all the otherproducts we have come to love. These guys werent the first entrepreneurs to come out ofSilicon Valley, but they were the first to democratize computing by creating a machine whose usewas so wonderfully that even technophobes embraced it.

The guy that holds ninth place on the list is H. Ross Perot. This diminutive Texan has become

best known in recent years as a political gadfly. But before all this he was a business man. Hestarted Electronic Data Systems in 1962 with a $1,000 loan from his wife. His winning idea wasthat large corporations and organizations would need data-processing help to take advantage ofcomputer technology. In the mid 60s Perot won contracts with two federal health-careprograms known as Medicare and Medicaid. With this contract EDS was off and running andPerot was on his way to becoming one of the richest people in America.

The man that holds eighth place is Ray Kroc. When he was 52 and sold kitchen wares he had hisimagination hijacked by a family run restaurant in the desert outside LA. But once he bought outthe McDonald brothers he proceeded to take their concept of a limited menu, fast service and lowprices to a national level and he didnt know it than but eventually to a world wide level.And in the process of doing so he created the fast-food industry and dramatically affecting

Americas lifestyle and even the health of the most people.Benjamin Siegel resides in the seventh place spot on the list. Siegel is also known as Bugsy to hisfriends is credited to creating Las Vegas by himself or at least that what the legend says. But whatwe do know is that he was the first to see what the town could become. He was good at attractingother peoples money his iconic resort, The Flamingo. But some of the people thatinvested in him were part of the mobster outfit called Murder Inc. and they gunned him down in1947. Rumor has it he was killed because he stole from his partners.


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The sixth place spot goes to none other than Henry Ford the man that created the automobile. Buthe did more than just making it possible for Americans to drive from one state to another but healso created the assembly line which revolutionized the industrial age. When Ford created theassembly line he made it possibly to produce products in a greater amount at a cheaper price.

The man that holds the fifth has been credited for creating a lot of stuff we still use today and this

man is Thomas Edison. His three biggest inventions were the light bulb, phonograph and thetalking motion picture; but he also had over 1,300 other patented inventions. The reason why hewas a great entrepreneur was because he was able to exploit the potential profit of his inventions.But he really started being an entrepreneur when he was a teen-ager. He did this by printing anewspaper in the baggage car on a train and then selling in to the passengers.

The fourth place spot goes to P.T. Barnum. Barnum took the art of scamming to new heights. Hedid this by creating the Barnum and Bailey Circus. When he created it he played on ourfascination with bizarre and freakish sideshows ranging from midget tom thumb to Jumbo thegiant elephant. He dubbed his show the greatest show on Earth. Along with thecircus he created advertising which without it he never would have been as rich as he became.

Residing in third place is Benjamin Franklin, he is considered to be the first real entrepreneur ofAmerica. Unlike the other founding fathers Franklin was more than just a statesman he was also apopular author, a printer, an inventor and a savvy businessman. The business side of him knewhow to commercialize the fruit of his fertile mind. Since he had the ability of doing all this hetruly was one of the greatest entrepreneurs.

The man that holds second place is someone that you wouldnt think of as anentrepreneur, this person is Pope Sixtus V. The Popes entrepreneur side opened anew market no one could of think of and this market was the dead. He exposed the dead formoney by accepting payments from the deceased relatives. The relatives hoped that in filling thecoffer with payments in the hope it would lessen the time their loved ones spent in purgatory. In1478 Sixtus expanded his market by authorizing the Spanish Inquisition. Bydoing so he swelled the purgatory ranks by 100,000 souls in 15 years and he was also the firstpope to license brothels. So in reality Pope Sixtus IV wasnt an entrepreneur for his owngood but for the good of the church.

Final we are at the number one entrepreneur of all time and it is King Croesus. He ruled the AsiaMinor Kingdom of Lydia in 6th century B.C. He is owed a huge gratitude even today because heis the man that created the worlds first coinage. In doing so he created the lifeblood ofevery business: liquidity and cash flow. He has also giving entrepreneurs something to shoot forand that is to be deemed as rich as Croesus.

Entrepreneurship is one of the most important roles in business because it has had some of thebiggest impacts on economies and societies world wide. Entrepreneurs can be credited with a lotof the markets we have today. Also if it wasnt for entrepreneurs theres a good

chance that most if not all companies would not be as efficient and productive as they are know adays. So basically what I am getting at is a lot of the stuff we have is because one guy had an ideaand the motivation to turn that idea into a real life business. Without entrepreneurs who knowshow economy would have grown. But the good thing is we well never have to worry about it.

Work citied

i. Burnett, David. "Hunting for Heffalumps the Supply of Entrepreneurship and EconomicDevelopment." Technopreneurial.Com. Sept. 2000. 28 Nov. 2007


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ii. Harper, Philipp. "History's 10 Greatest Entrepreneurs." Msnbc. 2007. 2 Dec. 2007.

iii. Oberholzer-Gee, Felix, and Joel Waldfogel. "The Speed of New Ideas: Trust, Institutions and

the Diffusion of New Products." Working Knowledge. 22 May 2007. Harvard Business School.03 Dec. 2007 .

iv. Sarasvathy, Saras D. "What Makes Entrepreneurs Entrepreneurial?" 21 June 2001. Universityof Washington. 01 Dec. 2007 .

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