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Information about Entrepreneurs

An entrepreneur (a loanword from French introduced and first defined by the Irish economist Richard Cantillon) is a person who operates a new enterprise or venture and assumes some accountability for the inherent risks. A female entrepreneur is sometimes referred to as an entrepreneuse.

The newly and modern view on entrepreneurial talent is a person who takes the risks involved to undertake a business venture. In doing so, they are said to efficiently and effectively use the factors of production. That is land (natural resources), labor (human input into production using available resources) and capital (any type of equipment used in production i.e. machinery). A business that can efficiently manage this and in the long-run hopefully expand (future prospects of larger firms and businesses), will become successful.

Entrepreneurship is often difficult and tricky, as many new ventures fail. In the context of the creation of for-profit enterprises, entrepreneur is often synonymous with founder. Most commonly, the term entrepreneur applies to someone who creates system to offer a product or service in order to obtain certain profit. 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. Business entrepreneurs are viewed as fundamentally important in the capitalistic society. Some distinguish business entrepreneurs as either "political entrepreneurs" or "market entrepreneurs."

Definition and terminology

An entrepreneur is someone who seeks to capitalize on new and profitable endeavors or business; usually with considerable initiative and risk.

Etymology

The word "entrepreneur" is a loanword from French. In french the verb "entreprendre" means "to undertake", with "entre" coming from the latin word meaning "between". In French a person who performs a verb, has the ending of the verb changed to "eur", comparable to the "er" ending in English. Therefore, an entrepreneur is an undertaker, a person who undertakes a task.

Enterprise is similar to and has roots in, the French word "entreprise", which is the past particple of "entreprendre".

Entrepreneuse is simply the French feminine word for "entrepreneur".

Entrepreneur as a leader

Scholar R. B. Reich considers leadership, management ability, and team-building as essential qualities of an entrepreneur. This concept has its origins in the work of Richard Cantillon in his Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en Général (1755) and Jean-Baptiste Say (1803) in his Treatise on Political Economy.

A more generally held theory is that entrepreneurs emerge from the population on demand, from the combination of opportunities and people well-positioned to take advantage of them. The entrepreneur may perceive that they are among the few to recognize or be able to solve a problem. In this view, one studies on one side the distribution of information available to would-be entrepreneurs (see Austrian School economics) and on the other, how environmental factors (access to capital, competition, etc.) change the rate of a society's production of entrepreneurs.

A prominent theorist of the Austrian School in this regard is Joseph Schumpeter who sees the entrepreneur as innovator.

See also

General: Independent contractor, Internet Entrepreneur, Consultant, E-Myth
Entrepreneurship education: Master of Enterprise, Junior Enterprise, Young Enterprise, Business and Enterprise College

References and external articles

General information

  • Baumol, W.J., Litan, R.E., Schramm, C.J. (2007). Good capitalism, bad capitalism, and the economics of growth and prosperity. Yale University Press.
  • Binks, M. and Vale, P. (1990). Entrepreneurship and Economic Change. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill.
  • Brouwer, M.T. (2002). 'Weber, Schumpeter and Knight on entrepreneurship and economic development'. Journal of Evolutionary Economics, vol. 12(1-2), p. 83.
  • Cantillon, R. (1755). Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en Général
  • Casson, M. (2005). 'Entrepreneurship and the theory of the firm'. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 58 (2) , 327-348
  • Hebert, R.F. and Link, A.N. (1988). The Entrepreneur: Mainstream Views and Radical Critiques. New York: Praeger, 2nd edition.
  • Kirzner, I. (1973). Competition and Entrepreneurship.
  • Knight, F.H. (1921/61). Risk uncertainty and profit. Kelley, 2nd edition.
  • Schumpeter, J.A. (1934). The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest, and the Business Cycle
  • Spengler, J.J. (1954).
  • Schramm, Carl (2006). The Entrepreneurial Imperative. Harper Collins

Theories of the Firm

  • Long, W. (1983). The meaning of entrepreneurship. American Journal of Small Business, 8(2), 47-59. (c971086)
  • Outcalt, Charles, (2000). 'The Notion of Entrepreneurship: Historical and Emerging Issues'. Cellcee digest. Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership.
  • Reich, R. B. (1987, May/June). Entrepreneurship reconsidered: The team as hero. Harvard Business Review. (c96187)

Popular Literature

External links

A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept whereby it is the meaning or idiom that is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself.
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French (français, pronounced [fʁɑ̃ˈsɛ]) is a Romance language originally spoken in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Switzerland, and today by about 300 million people around the world as either
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Richard Cantillon (1680-1734), acknowledged by many historians as the first great economic "theorist", is an obscure character. This much is known: he was an Irishman with a Spanish name who lived in France.
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An organization (or organisation — see spelling differences) is a social arrangement which pursues collective goals, which controls its own performance, and which has a boundary separating it from its environment.
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A venture is a major undertaking, synonymous with adventure. But can also refer to:

In automobiles:
  • Chevrolet Venture, a General Motors Corporation minivan.

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In economics, factors of production are resources used in the production of goods and services, including land, labor, and capital.

Land, labor, and capital

Resource in economics distinguish among such factors of production as:

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To-date, there is no generally agreed upon definition of entrepreneurship. However a number of important definitions have been put forward by leading thinkers in the discipline. This include: 1) the creation of new enterprises (Low and MacMillan, 1988), 2) the discovery of entrepreneurial
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System (from Latin systēma, in turn from Greek σύστημα systēma) is a set of entities, real or abstract, where each entity interacts with, or is related to, at least one other
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For the television series, see Profit (TV series)
Profit generally is the making of gain in business activity for the benefit of the owners of the business.
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For the Parker Brothers board game, see risk (game)

Risk is a concept that denotes a potential negative impact to an asset or some characteristic of value that may arise from some present process or future event.
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Opportunity may refer to:
  • Opportunity NYC is the experimental Conditional Cash Transfer program being launched in New York City
  • Opportunity Asset Management, a Brazilian investment bank based in Rio de Janeiro
  • Opportunity, Washington, a city in the U.S.

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Economic systems

Ideologies and Theories
Primitive communism
Capitalist economy
Corporate economy
Fascist economy
Laissez-faire
Mercantilism
Natural economy
Social market economy
Socialist economy
Communist economy


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The term Political entrepreneur may refer to any of the following:
  • someone (usually active in the fields of either politics or business) who founds a new political project, group, or political party

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Robert Bernard Reich (born June 24, 1946) was the twenty-second United States Secretary of Labor, serving under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997. Reich is a former Harvard University professor and the former Maurice B.
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Richard Cantillon (1680-1734), acknowledged by many historians as the first great economic "theorist", is an obscure character. This much is known: he was an Irishman with a Spanish name who lived in France.
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Jean-Baptiste Say (January 5, 1767 – November 15, 1832) was a French economist and businessman. He had classically liberal views and argued in favour of competition, free trade and lifting restraints on business.
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Libertarianism

Schools of thought
Agorism
Anarcho-capitalism
Geolibertarianism
Green libertarianism
Right-libertarianism
Left-libertarianism
Minarchism
Neolibertarianism
Paleolibertarianism
Progressive libertarianism


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Joseph Alois Schumpeter (February 8, 1883 – January 8, 1950) was an Moravian-born economist and political scientist, who was Austrian and later became an American citizen.[1] He is one of the most influential economists who lived in the first half of 20th century.
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An independent contractor is a natural person, business or corporation which provides goods or services to another entity under terms specified in a contract. Unlike an employee, an independent contractor does not work regularly for an employer but works as and when required,
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An Internet Entrepreneur is a person that engages in business on the internet and helps to shape the future of business on the internet by being an innovator. One who is able to recognize opportunity and administer resources to take advantage of the opportunities.
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A consultant (from the Latin consultare means "to discuss" from which we also derive words such as consul and counsel) is a professional who provides advice in a particular area of expertise such as accountancy, the environment, technology, law, human
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E-Myth in the business vernacular refers to the Entrepreneurial Myth, and refers to the fact that most businesses fail because the founders are technicians that were inspired to start a business without knowledge of how successful businesses run.
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Entrepreneurship education seeks to provide students with the knowledge, skills and motivation to encourage entrepreneurial success in a
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The Master of Enterprise (M.Ent.) Degree is a masters degree originally developed and offered by the University of Manchester through the Manchester Science Enterprise Centre (MSEC). A number of other universities have included the MEnt in their curriculum.
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A junior enterprise is a local non-profit organization entirely managed by students. Related to their field of studies the students offer consulting services to the market; experiencing unique learning opportunities by doing professional project work on the one side and managing
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Young Enterprise is a charity scheme in the United Kingdom involving students typically in their late teens, which allows them to start and run their own business usually for the period of one academic year.
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Business and Enterprise Colleges (BECs) were introduced in 1995 as part of the Specialist Schools Programme in the UK. The system enables secondary schools to specialise in certain fields.
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