ENTREPRENEURIAL PERSPECTIVES

According to Professor Howard Stevenson, entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity

beyond resources controlled. On the other hand, Paul Reynolds, creator of the Global

Entrepreneurship Monitor, define Entrepreneurship as the discovery of opportunities and the

subsequent creation of new economic activity, often via the creation of a new organization.

Entrepreneurship, according to Onuoha (2007), “is the practice of starting new

organizations or revitalizing mature organizations, particularly new businesses generally in

response to identified opportunities.” Schumpeter (1965) defined “entrepreneurs as individuals

who exploit market opportunity through technical and/or organizational innovation”. For Frank H.

Knight (1921) and Peter Drucker (1970) “entrepreneurship is about taking risk”. Bolton and

Thompson (2000) have defined an entrepreneur as “a person who habitually creates and

innovates to build something of recognized value around perceived opportunities”. Hisrich

(1990) defined that an entrepreneur is characterized as “someone who demonstrates initiative

and creative thinking, is able to organize social and economic mechanisms to turn resources

and situations to practical account, and accepts risk and failure”. Thomas and Mueller (2000)

argue that the study of entrepreneurship should be expanded to international markets to

investigate the conditions and characteristics that encourage entrepreneurial activity in various

countries and regions. It is reasonable to expect that entrepreneurs reflect the dominant values

of his or her national culture and national culture has definite effect on entrepreneurship

(Thomas & Mueller, 2000).

The history of the word entrepreneurship is fascinating and many scholars and authors

have made hundreds of definition about it, but if put in a layman’s term, we can come up with

three words-innovation, business and risk. Entrepreneurship generally means offering a new

product, applying a new technique or technology, opening a new market, or developing a new

form of organization for the purpose of producing or enhancing a product. Entrepreneurship

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means setting up a business to make a profit. Entrepreneurs, therefore, are always working

under a certain degree of uncertainty, and they can’t know the outcomes of many of the

decisions that they have to make. Consequently, many of the steps they take are motivated

mainly by their confidence in the innovation and in their understanding of the business

environment in which they’re operating.

In this day and age, we often hear that the most successful people are entrepreneurs.

Bill Gates, Henry Ford Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg are among the well

renowned entrepreneurs who does not only succeeded but built vast business empire. But what

does it really take to be an entrepreneur?

Entrepreneurs are not born, they are made. They are driven to it. And this same drive

enables them to do what is necessary to be an entrepreneur. Mindset is the sum of a person’s

knowledge, including beliefs and thoughts about the world and himself in it. It is the filter for

information we get in and put out. So it determines how person receive and react to information.

So if a person wants to be an entrepreneur, he must think like an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurial mindset refers to a specific state of mind which orientates human

conduct towards entrepreneurial activities and outcomes. Individuals with entrepreneurial

mindsets are often drawn to opportunities, innovation and new value creation. Anyone can

come up with a new idea, but building a successful business around it is the entrepreneurial

challenge. The entrepreneurial mindset is unique in that one must be creative, communicative,

and highly motivated to succeed, yet open to risk and failure. Therefore, entrepreneurship is not

just a business model, but a way of thinking.

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 REFERENCES

 Eisenmann, T. (2013) ‘Entrepreneurship: A Working Definition’. Harvard Business

Review (online]) available from https://hbr.org/2013/01/what-is-entrepreneurship [Feb

19,2020]

 Eroglu O. (2011) ‘Entrepreneurship, National Culture and Turkey’. International Journal

of Business and Social Science, Vol. 2, No. 16 (online) available from

https://ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol_2_No_16_September_2011/16.pdf (Feb 19,2020)