Schools of Thought on Entrepreneurship

Although an agreed-upon definition may serve to unite the field, research activity seems to fall within six schools
of thought, each with its own underlying set of beliefs. Each of these schools can be categorized according to
its interest in studying personal characteristics, opportunities, management, or the need for adapting to an
existing venture.

Assessing Personal Qualities:

1. The “Great Person” School of Entrepreneurship;
2. The Psychological Characteristics School of Entrepreneurship Recognizing Opportunities;
3. The Classical School of Entrepreneurship Acting and Managing;
4. The Management School of Entrepreneurship;
5. The Leadership School of Entrepreneurship Reassessing and Adapting;
6. The Intrapreneurship School of Entrepreneurship Different entrepreneurial situations of start-up, growth,
and maturity of a venture may require different behaviors or skills.

Entrepreneurship is the immense strength and human spirit of which made possible the great geographical
discoveries of the world. Entrepreneurship is a vital activity to bring about changes in the economy and society
not only in a country but also of those in the world.

Figure 1 – Place of Entrepreneur in the Modern World

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Selected definitions:

“Entrepreneurship entails bearing the risk of buying at a certain price and selling at uncertain prices.” - Ricardo
Cantillon.

“Entrepreneurship is any kind of innovative function that could have a bearing on the welfare of an
entrepreneur.”- Joseph A. Schumpeter (1934).

“Entrepreneurship is that form of social decision making performed by economic innovators.” - Robert K. Lamb
(1952).

Robert D. Hisrich and Michael P. Peters (1998) said, “Entrepreneurship is the process of creating something
new with value by devoting the necessary time and effort, assuming the accompanying financial, psychic and
social risks and receiving the resulting rewards of monetary and personal satisfaction and independence”.

In a Conference on Entrepreneurship held in the United States, the term ‘entrepreneurship’ was defined as
follows: “Entrepreneurship is the attempt to create value through recognition of business opportunity, the
management of risk-taking appropriate to the opportunity, and through the communicative and management
skills to mobilize human, financial and material resources necessary to bring a project to fruition”.

In the opinion ‘of A.H. Cole, “Entrepreneurship is the purposeful activity of an individual or a group of associated
individuals, undertaken to initiate, maintain or aggrandize profit by production or distribution of economic goods
and services”.

Barot H. stated that “entrepreneurship is a key to success and every individual that creates a new organization
of business means enter into a new paradigm of entrepreneurship. Nevertheless, the entrepreneurship is an
activity that shifted the old habits into the new one with fully discipline and independent.”

Professor Howard Stevenson, the godfather of entrepreneurship studies at Harvard Business School, affirmed:
“Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity beyond the resources you currently control”.

Pursuit denotes a focused and determined effort towards a specific goal. For entrepreneurs, this often means
seizing a limited opportunity and demonstrating tangible progress to attract further resources. Unlike established
companies with readily available resources, entrepreneurs have a sense of urgency to make the most of their
limited time and cash balances.
An opportunity can refer to one of four ways: introducing an innovative product, developing a new business
model, creating a superior or cost-effective version of an existing product, or targeting new customer segments
for an existing product. These categories are not mutually exclusive, and organizations may find additional
opportunities to improve profitability that do not fall under these categories.

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has been supported by the EIT Health programme under the HEI Grant Agreement 2 of 3
Beyond resources controlled implies that new ventures face resource constraints at their inception.
Entrepreneurs often rely on their own financial, human, and social capital to bootstrap their ventures, keeping
expenditures minimal.

220818 HIVE HEI Innovation for Knowledge Intensive Entrepreneurship project

has been supported by the EIT Health programme under the HEI Grant Agreement 3 of 3