Becoming an Entrepreneur

Introuduction

There are many definitions of entrepreneurship. According to one definition, entrepreneurship may be defined as the function of seeking investment and production opportunity, organizing an enterprise to undertake a new production process, raising capital, hiring labour, arranging the supply of raw materials, finding site, introducing a new technique and commodities, discovering new sources of raw materials and selecting top managers of day-to-day operations of the enterprise. This rather comprehensive definition was given by Higgins in his book The Economic Development. Another definition of entrepreneurship was given by John Kao and Howard Stevenson. According to them, entrepreneurship may be defined as 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.

Becoming an Entrepreneur

According to Jaffrey A. Timmons, entrepreneurship may be defined as the ability to create and build something from practically nothing. Fundamentally, a human creative activity, it is finding personal energy by initiating, building and achieving an enterprise or organization rather than by just watching, analyzing or describing one. It requires the ability to take calculated risk and to reduce the chance of failure

An entrepreneur is someone who undertakes or carries out the activity of entrepreneurship. However, this is a very narrow definition and does not take into account the qualities and skills required by an entrepreneur. According to the Oxford English dictionary an entrepreneur is someone who undertakes an enterprise, especially a contractor--acting as intermediary between capital and labour. Undertaking of an enterprise involves combining capital and labour for the purpose of production. Anyone who undertakes this task is an entrepreneur.

According to Evans, entrepreneurs are persons who initiate, organize, manage and control affairs of a business unit that combines the factors of production to supply goods and services, whether the business pertains to agriculture, industry, trade or profession.

According to McClelland, an entrepreneur is someone who exercises some control over the means of production and produces more than what he can consume in order to sell or exchange it for individual or household income.

There are many characteristics of a successful entrepreneur. Successful entrepreneurs are decisive decision makers, enjoy taking charge, and want to be masters of their own financial destiny, are organized, independent and self-confident, are hard workers, and come from a small business or agricultural background. It is not necessary that an entrepreneur will posses all of the above mentioned characteristics, but it is important for him or her to posses most of the above mentioned characteristics.

For anyone to start up a business they must have a motivation of some sort. Without a strong motive for business creation an entrepreneur may quickly loose interest in the business venture. Being an entrepreneur and starting up a business or a company is an extremely difficult task. Motivation is an important characteristic for anyone who is even considering going into a business, because they need to have a very strong goal ...