Entrepreneurship is the practice of starting new organizations, particularly new businesses generally in response to identified opportunities. Entrepreneurship is often a difficult undertaking, as a majority of new businesses fail. Entrepreneurial activities are substantially different depending on the type of organization that is being started. Entrepreneurship may involve creating many job opportunities.

Many high-profile entrepreneurial ventures seek venture capital or angel funding in order to raise capital to build the business. Many kinds of organizations now exist to support would-be entrepreneurs, including specialized government agencies, business incubators, science parks, and some NGOs.

To some, entrepreneurship is all about taking risks. The behavior of the entrepreneur reflects a kind of person willing to put his career and financial security on the line and take risks in the name of an idea, spending much time as well as capital on an uncertain venture. Still another view of entrepreneurship is that it is the process of discovering, evaluating, and exploiting opportunities to come up with a new business venture.

Entrepreneurs have many of the same character traits as leaders. Similar to the early great theories of leadership, however, trait-based theories of entrepreneurship are increasingly being called into question. Entrepreneurs are often contrasted with managers and administrators who are said to be more methodical and less prone to risk-taking.

Characteristics of entrepreneurship:

1. The entrepreneur has an enthusiastic vision, the driving force of an enterprise.

2. The entrepreneur's vision is usually supported by an interlocked collection of specific ideas not available to the marketplace.

3. The overall blueprint to realize the vision is clear; however details may be incomplete, flexible, and evolving.

4. The entrepreneur promotes the vision with enthusiastic passion.

5. With persistence and determination, the entrepreneur develops strategies to change the vision into reality.

6. The entrepreneur takes the initial responsibility to cause a vision to become a success.

7. Entrepreneurs take prudent risks. They assess costs, market/customer needs and persuade others to join and help.
8. An entrepreneur is usually a positive thinker and a decision maker.

Too often entrepreneurship is seen as the process of finding capable individuals and providing nourishment (venture capital and know-how). Yet we know that some communities are far more successful than others in entrepreneurship and that such communities are also thriving economically even during times of economic downturn. Community entrepreneurship is about applying entrepreneurial principles to the process of creating a community that is highly supportive of entrepreneurship itself, both within classroom walls and without. We need new social entrepreneurs to invent those designs.

Copyright 2007 Ismael D. Tabije

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Tags: entrepreneur, business venture, new businesses, financial security, persistence, venture capital, driving force, s vision, government agencies, blueprint, job opportunities, character traits