Entrepreneurship defined

Posted on April 22, 2008
Filed Under Entrepreneurship |

What is an entrepreneur? The word can encompass many things. Originally, the word entrepreneur has a french language origin, as the french word “entreprise” translates as ”business” or “undertaking”, which is a more litteral translation. From this point of view, one could state that an entrepreneur is a business initiator and that entrepreneurship is about the qualities business initiators are able to consistently demonstrate.

In the sense that we are looking at today, it has relevance to a certain profile, or a person who has business in his blood. Usually, an entrepreneur epitomises a number of values. He will be at the core of many initiatives which other people will generally avoid.

Many of our modern daily comforts have come to be because individuals took the initiative to create and market them. If it weren’t for Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, computers might still be in their infancy stages of development and if it weren’t for Henry Ford, cars wouldn’t be as cheap or as ubiquitous as they are today.

An entrepreneur is a person who is driven by a goal, a desire to create or materialise an object or a service in order to make it available to the general population, and secure his own material wealth in the process. For this, he is willing to go to great lengths and spare neither time or effort. In most cases, entrepreneurs have a very specific detailed idea about that which they want to accomplish.

This allows them to focus and easily concentrate their effort on piecing together the puzzle of their plan. Entrepreneurs are ambitious and are not afraid to think big. They are willing to take calculated risks in orders of magnitude that would frighten most away. They are willing to “bet the farm” if need be.

Luckily, most entrepreneurs learn quickly from their mistakes, which shows they are flexible and nimble.  They are very good at people skills and communication and they can sell as second to none. When an entrepreneur sets his mind to reaching a goal, he will be methodic and ruthless in eliminating obstacles that will slow him down or block his path.

It seems that entrepreneurship needs a concentration of many abilities. In fact, the man or woman who takes on this kind of responsability has to be a little more than a jack of all trades, he or she will have to be the expert of all trades as the success of their ventures will depend on their ability to make the right decisions all of the time.

From an idea to a business plan, to executing the business plan and hiring the right people to advance the cause; from office or factory to phone, fax and business card; from design, packaging and marketing to insuring and negociating with the banker, the entepreneur will orchestrate it all by taking on the role of chief catalist and initiative taker.

And if it all fails, he is willing to take the losses, although it would seem that entrepreneurship qualities dictate that failure is yet but another opportunity to start all over again. 

    

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