DISCOVERING ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Discovering Entrepreneurship

Discovering Entrepreneurship

Introduction

Entrepreneurship is how a lot of businesses get started but the vast majority of the businesses started fail after a short time. The definition of entrepreneurship is the practice of starting a new organization or revitalizing mature organizations. Entrepreneurship has been a key part to how businesses have developed. This paper is going to be about the history of entrepreneurship and theories of what entrepreneurship is, the characteristics of an entrepreneur and what an entrepreneur is, the contributions of entrepreneurs and the advantages of entrepreneurship, and some businesses that were started by entrepreneurs. After I touch on those topics I am going to talk about the top 10 entrepreneurs of all time.

Entrepreneurs have been around since the beginning of time. But the term was first introduced by a French economist by the name of Richard Cantillon in the 18th century. Cantillon defined the entrepreneur as the agent who buys means of production at certain prices in order to combine them" into a new product. Over the next century British economists like Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill briefly touch upon the concept of entrepreneurship. In writings by both Smith and Ricardo they suggest that they undervalued the importance of entrepreneurship. But Mills on the other hand goes out of his way to stress the significance of entrepreneurship on economic growth.

Discussion

In 1890 Alfred Marshall recognized the necessity of entrepreneurship for production. In Marshall's famous treaties of Principles of Economics he asserts that there are four factors to production which are: land, labor, capital, and organization. Marshall believed that entrepreneurship was the driving force behind organization. For the entrepreneur to be the driving force behind organization Marshall believed that entrepreneurs had to have a thorough understanding about their industries, and that they must be natural leaders. He also thought they must also have the ability to foresee changes in supply and demand and must also be willing to act on such risky forecasts.

But since the time of Marshall the concept of entrepreneurship has gone through some theoretical evolution. An example of this evolution is whereas Marshall thought entrepreneurship drove organization many economist but not all think that entrepreneurship by itself should be the fourth factor in production that coordinates the other three factors. Although many economists agree that entrepreneurship is necessary for economic growth, they still argue over the actual role of entrepreneurship in ...