The word “entrepreneur” is derived from the French verb “enterprendre”, which means ‘to undertake’. This refers to those who “undertake” the risk of new enterprises. An enterprise is created by an entrepreneur. The process of creation is called “entrepreneurship”. Entrepreneurship is the process of designing, launching, and running a new business, which is often initially a small business. The people who create these businesses are called entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship has been described as the “capacity and willingness to develop, organise, and manage a business venture along with any of its risks to make a profit.”
An entrepreneur is an entity who has the ability to find and act upon opportunities to translate inventions or technologies into products and services: “The entrepreneur is able to recognise the commercial potential of the invention and organise the capital, talent, and other resources that turn an invention into a commercially viable innovation.” In this sense, the term “Entrepreneurship” also captures innovative activities on the part of established firms, in addition to similar activities on the part of new businesses.
Entrepreneurial development today has become very significant; because of it being a key to economic development. The objectives of entrepreneurship are industrial development, regional growth, and employment generation that depend upon entrepreneurial development. Entrepreneurs are, thus, the seeds of industrial development and the fruits of industrial development are the greater employment opportunities to unemployed youth, increase in per capita income, higher standard of living and increased individual saving, revenue to the government in the form of income tax, sales tax, export duties, import duties, and balanced regional development.
There are various challenges that exist in entrepreneurship. These includes the problem of cash flow because it is essential to small business survival, along with hiring employees and time management. In addition, it also includes delegating tasks, choosing what to sell, marketing strategy, capital, and strapped budget. The risk factor is maximum in entrepreneurship for if one parameter of strategy fails it can lead to a huge loss. Entrepreneurship typically focuses on the launching and running of businesses, due to the high risks involved in launching a start-up, a significant proportion of start-up businesses have to close due to “lack of funding, bad business decisions, an economic crisis, lack of market demand, or a combination of all of these.” Global entrepreneurship week was organised at Northeastern University, during the event one attendee asked the panellists to advice entrepreneurs searching for female co-founders. One panellist replied, “It is important to attend events where they can find the kind of people they are looking to work with.”
Saloni Sharma
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