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The institute’s main initiatives are in Training the Trainers, Entrepreneurship-cum–Skill Development Programmes,
Management Development Programmes, Entrepreneurship Development Programmes, etc.
4.1 ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND ENTREPRENEUR
The word entrepreneur comes from the French word entrependre, which means to undertake or to do something.
As A.H. Cole states, “Entrepreneurship is the purposeful activity of an individual or a group of associated individuals,
undertaken to initiate, maintain, and aggrandize profit by the production and distribution of economic goods and services.”
Stevenson and Jarillo in 1990 defined entrepreneurship as “The process by which individuals—either on their
own or inside organisations—pursue opportunities without regard to the resources they currently control”. Thus,
entrepreneurship can be defined as the ability and readiness to develop, organise, and run a business enterprise, along
with any of its uncertainties, in order to make a profit.
People define entrepreneurs in various ways, according to different perspectives. Some of them are:
Ð ÐAn entrepreneur, according to economists, is someone who brings resources, labour, materials, and other assets
together to make a profit.
Ð ÐAn entrepreneur is defined by psychologists as a person who is typically driven by a psychological factor that causes
a desire to gain or attain something.
Ð ÐAn entrepreneur, according to sociologists, is a person whose actions influence social status and contribute to
societal progress.
Ð ÐAn entrepreneur, according to management gurus, is a person who has a goal and creates a plan to achieve it.
Do you know?
Jean-Baptiste Say, a French economist, was the person who coined the term “entrepreneur” in about 1800.
Fran Jabara is known as the “Father of Entrepreneurship.”
4.1.1 Characteristics of Entrepreneurship
On the basis of the above-mentioned definitions, the following are some of the characteristics of entrepreneurship:
Ð ÐIt is a financial endeavour to generate and launch a business, taking calculated risks to maintain a profit-oriented
organisation.
Ð ÐEntrepreneurship is an activity that begins with recognising the potential to make profits in the market and sell
one’s products.
Ð ÐEntrepreneurship is an economic activity that contributes to the economy by boosting and utilising resources
efficiently.
Ð ÐThis is an activity that involves risks, and the entrepreneurs are competent enough to manage those risks to make profits.
4.1.2 Entrepreneurship–Art and Science
Students!! Do you consider entrepreneurship to be an art or a science? Is it OK to associate entrepreneurship with
these topics? Let’s talk about it.
We have discovered that entrepreneurs are people who are innovative and creative. They bring to life real-life solutions
and make profits economically. Similarly, artists express their human creative ability and imagination in visual forms
such as paintings, sculptures, and so on. They bring previously unimaginable human imaginations to life. While we
know that science as a subject is a systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and biological world
through observation and experiments, likewise, an entrepreneur has to plan systematically to bring his or her ideas to
life.
Therefore, we can say that entrepreneurship is the perfect pairing of art and science.
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