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Entrepreneurship and Innovation: Startup Hubs

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Published: Apr 11, 2019

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Innovation and entrepreneurship (essay)

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Essay Samples on Entrepreneurship

What is entrepreneurship in your own words.

What is entrepreneurship in your own words? To me, entrepreneurship is the art of turning imagination into reality, the courage to chart unexplored territories, and the commitment to leave a lasting mark on the world. It's a journey of boundless creativity, relentless innovation, and unwavering...

• Entrepreneurship

What is Entrepreneurship: Unveiling the Essence

What is entrepreneurship? This seemingly straightforward question encapsulates a world of innovation, risk-taking, and enterprise. Entrepreneurship is not merely a business concept; it's a mindset, a journey, and a force that drives economic growth and societal progress. In this essay, we delve into the multifaceted...

Social Entrepreneurship: Harnessing Innovation

Social entrepreneurship is a transformative approach that merges business principles with social consciousness to address pressing societal challenges. This unique form of entrepreneurship goes beyond profit-seeking and focuses on generating innovative solutions that create positive change in communities. In this essay, we explore the concept...

Evolution of Entrepreneurship: Economic Progress

Evolution of entrepreneurship is a fascinating journey that mirrors the changes in society, economy, and technology throughout history. From humble beginnings as small-scale trade to the modern era of startups, innovation hubs, and global business networks, entrepreneurship has continuously adapted to the dynamic landscape. This...

Importance of Entrepreneurship: Economic Growth and Societal Transformation

Importance of entrepreneurship transcends its role as a mere business activity; it stands as a driving force behind innovation, economic growth, and societal transformation. Entrepreneurship fosters the creation of new products, services, and industries, while also generating employment opportunities and catalyzing economic development. This essay...

• Economic Growth

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Entrepreneurship as a Career: Navigating the Path of Innovation

Entrepreneurship as a career is a compelling journey that offers individuals the opportunity to create their own path, shape their destiny, and contribute to the economy through innovation. While the road to entrepreneurship is laden with challenges and uncertainties, it is also marked by the...

Corporate Entrepreneurship: Fostering Innovation

Corporate entrepreneurship represents a strategic approach that empowers established organizations to embrace innovation, take calculated risks, and explore new opportunities. In an ever-evolving business landscape, the concept of corporate entrepreneurship has gained prominence as companies seek to maintain their competitive edge and adapt to changing...

Challenges Faced by Entrepreneurs: Innovation and Success

Challenges faced by entrepreneurs are a testament to the intricate journey of turning visionary ideas into tangible realities. While entrepreneurship is often associated with innovation and opportunity, it's also characterized by a multitude of hurdles and obstacles that test an entrepreneur's resilience and determination. In...

300 Words About Entrepreneurship: Navigating Innovation and Opportunity

About entrepreneurship is a dynamic journey that involves the pursuit of innovation, creation, and the realization of opportunities. It is the process of identifying gaps in the market, envisioning solutions, and taking calculated risks to bring new products, services, or ventures to life. Entrepreneurs are...

Best topics on Entrepreneurship

1. What is Entrepreneurship in Your Own Words

2. What is Entrepreneurship: Unveiling the Essence

3. Social Entrepreneurship: Harnessing Innovation

4. Evolution of Entrepreneurship: Economic Progress

5. Importance of Entrepreneurship: Economic Growth and Societal Transformation

6. Entrepreneurship as a Career: Navigating the Path of Innovation

7. Corporate Entrepreneurship: Fostering Innovation

8. Challenges Faced by Entrepreneurs: Innovation and Success

9. 300 Words About Entrepreneurship: Navigating Innovation and Opportunity

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Entrepreneurship Essay: Topics & Samples about Entrepreneurship

In the course of your studies for management, marketing, or finance degree, you can be asked to write an entrepreneurship essay. Those who tried it know how challenging it is to compose a convincing and fact-based paper about business.

An entrepreneurship essay requires you to carry out thorough research. You have to arrange the findings to substantiate your opinion wisely. It shall be engaging for the reader. Usually, your purpose is not to inform but to explain your view on an economic phenomenon.

Entrepreneurship is about calculating one’s chances for success. It aims to establish a business opportunity and avail of it. In most cases, it involves product or process innovation. Thus, the goal of an entrepreneurship essay is to train your business thinking. It develops a habit of using subject-specific terminology and theories.

This article is your way to a perfect essay about entrepreneurship. Our team has prepared a guide and a list of topics where you can find an excellent sample essay about entrepreneurship. Yet, we know that the most challenging thing for many students is to come up with specific questions.

You can rely on the following steps while working on your paper:

• Pick or create a topic. The best essays focus on a narrow problem. Pick an idea that offers solutions or specifies how the reader can relate. Convey it all in your topic.
• Research thoroughly. Good preliminary research will prevent you from discussing stale news. Look for currently topical issues that many people face.
• Write an introduction. It is the most “selling” part of your entrepreneurship essay. Provide background information about the problem you are going to explore. Why did it arise, and who was affected?
• Work out a thesis statement. This sentence contains the central message of your writing. Specify your position on the narrow topic. For example, “Employee turnover is not always a negative thing.”
• Develop an argumentation. Make a list of all arguments that support your position and a few counterarguments. You will refine it when writing the main body. Include only the vital ideas and examples in your essay on entrepreneurship.
• Think of a conclusion. Mind that your readers will remember this paragraph most of all. What were the central ideas of your work? Summarize your arguments and restate your thesis with a development.
• Come up with an engaging title. It should make the readers want to keep on reading your text. An entrepreneurship essay title should reveal the problem you are going to discuss.

15 Entrepreneurship Essay Topics

To write a successful essay, you’ll need engaging topics on entrepreneurship. A good idea inspires you and gives a substantial reason for discussion.

Here we have collected the best entrepreneurship topics for your essay:

• Is becoming a successful entrepreneur an inborn quality or a developed skill?
• Is it efficient to unite researchers and entrepreneurs into one organization?
• Is contemporary entrepreneurship possible without online marketing?
• How can creativity make your business more identifiable?
• Does a model of economic development help entrepreneurs to achieve their goals, or does it limit their imagination?
• What are the psychological causes that urge entrepreneurs to seek profit?
• What are the reasons that spur the growing expertise of individuals in business issues?
• Which factors can bring entrepreneurship to bankruptcy?
• How could governments incentivize individuals to become sole entrepreneurs?
• What are the leadership characteristics of successful entrepreneurial management?
• Does gender influence a person’s skills in entrepreneurship as a career?
• Is it better to have a small enterprise or work for a large corporation, provided that the salary is the same?
• Compare the approaches entrepreneurs who start only one business and those who invest in multiple enterprises.
• How can MBA help you to become an entrepreneur?
• Analyze the path of a successful entrepreneur and suggest what could be improved.

5 Entrepreneurship Essay Questions

Your college or school professors can give you detailed essay questions. They direct your thought to make sure you do not diverge from the central idea.

Here you can check a list of entrepreneurship essay questions:

• In your opinion, is there a moment when an entrepreneur should stop expanding their business? Small business is easier to manage, but it provides less revenue. Big enterprises earn more but bring their investors to more serious risks and more significant expenses. Substantiate your point of view.
• What makes a successful business plan? Is it more important to calculate the economic feasibility of the future enterprise or predict the reaction of the target audience? Give examples of both approaches.
• Explain the concept of entrepreneurship. The essay should synthesize different formulations of prominent economists and sociologists. Make up your explanation of the term based on your synthesis.
• What can be done to avoid cutting the expenses of an enterprise? Staff reduction, renting smaller premises, and cutting salaries usually have negative aftermath. Are there any universal ways to make your business survive a recession?
• Imagine you are looking for a business partner. Which questions would you ask the candidates during the interview? Are there any traits you would look for? What kind of behavior would immediately tell you it is the wrong person?

Thanks for reading the article! Below you can find sample essays about entrepreneurship illustrating the structure that we have described above.

428 Best Sample Essays about Entrepreneurship

The definition of entrepreneurship.

• Words: 1654

Starting a Business: Advantages and Disadvantages

• Words: 1730

A Clothing Boutique as a Business Idea

• Words: 1227

Concept of an Entrepreneur in Business

• Words: 2037

Entrepreneurship: Interview with Small Business Owner

• Words: 1643

Business Failures: Reasons and Recommendations

Small business: features and development, case study analysis: opening a coffee shop.

• Words: 1783

Entrepreneurship: Making a Business Plan

“drinkworks: home bar” by keurig, working for someone vs. owning a business, starting a business vs. working for an employer, 3m corporation’s innovation engine case, the concept of enterprise “push” and “pull” in a business.

• Words: 2024

Natural Hair Care Products as a Business Idea

Entrepreneurship: history, reasons and roles, steve jobs as a successful entrepreneur, kirzner’s theory of opportunity.

• Words: 2450

Entrepreneurs’ Strengths and Weaknesses

Chinese and japanese business systems comparison.

• Words: 3387

Independent Entrepreneurship, Intrapreneurship, and Social Entrepreneurship

• Words: 1531

Entrepreneurship vs. Working as an Employee

The definition of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial behavior.

• Words: 2683

Entrepreneurship, Intrapreneurship, and Formulated Marketing

Entrepreneurship journey case study.

• Words: 2941

“Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson

Strategic entrepreneurship: creating values.

• Words: 2626

Women Entrepreneurs

Trait (or personality characterisitcs) approach to explaining enterpreneurship.

• Words: 1972

Enterprise Computing Challenges and Enterprise Resource Planning

• Words: 1449

Apple Inc.’s Entrepreneurship: iPod and iPad

Entrepreneurship: business planning and characteristics.

• Words: 3246

UAE Governmental Programs for Small Businesses

• Words: 2367

International Franchising and Its Benefits

Owning & operating a family business, eco-friendly packaging for food and beverage industry.

• Words: 2749

Women in Entrepreneurship

• Words: 3172

The Microeconomics and Macroeconomics Factors in a Startup Café

Entrepreneurship: reducing unemployment.

• Words: 1410

Andy Keller’s Company “ChicoBag”

• Words: 2534

Entrepreneurial Leadership Characteristics and Types

Entrepreneurship development in the uae.

• Words: 3180

Phenomenon of Entrepreneurship

• Words: 1495

Entrepreneurs and Opportunity Recognition

• Words: 2804

Entrepreneurial Action Module for Modular Business Model

• Words: 11408

How a Business Idea Becomes an Innovative Product

Concepts of customer data dynamics and sub-concepts, amazon and tesco: corporate entrepreneurship, the doctrine of insurable interest.

• Words: 2412

Khemka Family and Their Beer Business in Russia

Governmental role for business, elon musk on start-ups and entrepreneurial duties, critical success factors for entrepreneurs.

• Words: 3872

Business Planning Process and Entrepreneurial Characteristics

• Words: 2825

The Entrepreneurial Journey of Foods Future Global

• Words: 1385

“How to Change the World” by D. Bornstein

• Words: 1389

Entrepreneurship: Amara Online Shoe Shop

• Words: 7379

Establishing a Food Truck Business in Dubai

Defining corporate entrepreneurship.

• Words: 3501

Maha Al-Ghunaim, a Kuwaiti Businesswoman

Katie’s custom engraving logos.

• Words: 1669

Social Entrepreneurship and Social Change

The benefits of considering small businesses in government contract solicitations, sources of capital for entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship: advantages and disadvantages.

• Words: 1297

Starting a Small Business and Planning

Franchise agreement: term definition, free enterprise systems.

• Words: 1434

Traditional and Modern Forms of Transacting Business

Profitability in the uk technology industry.

• Words: 4995

Entrepreneurship Amidst Economic Downturns

Isaac larian and maxine burton: entrepreneurial success stories.

• Words: 1681

Dubai’s Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Economic Development

A new business idea for the rolls royce company, revolutionizing independent cinema streaming.

• Words: 1840

Application of Schumpeter’s Innovative Entrepreneurship Theory to Ooredoo

• Words: 8185

Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Uber Technologies, Inc.

Discussion: being an entrepreneur, elizabeth hobbs keckley as a woman in american business, digital transformation for small businesses in indonesia.

• Words: 3052

Entrepreneurship and Business Ethics

• Words: 1683

Entrepreneurship and Leadership in Freelance and Real Estate

• Words: 2321

Employee vs. Entrepreneur: Benefits and Drawbacks

New enterprise start-up plan: on-demand courier service to deliver medicine.

• Words: 15616

Frank Zamboni, an Entrepreneur and Inventor

Sole proprietorship and internal control.

• Words: 1285

The African American Entrepreneurship Development Program Evaluation

• Words: 1467

The African American Entrepreneurship Development Program

The dopeplus social entrepreneurship.

• Words: 1166

Luxury Linens: Review of an Interview With an Entrepreneur

• Words: 1104

Entrepreneurship by Young People

Sole proprietorship: advantages and disadvantages, capability: business model innovation in mergers, characteristics of writing a business plan, entrepreneurial activity: the key aspects, entrepreneurial personality and decision to start a business, the determinants of self-employment for artists, a study of ooredoo’s practices in the context of schumpeter’s theory, home depot’s entrepreneurship and value creation, discussion: female entrepreneurship in asian countries, types of business forms and their organisation, entrepreneurship and christian world view.

• Words: 1001

Entrepreneurship as a Powerful Practice

• Words: 2501

Kier Group Plc: The Impacts of COVID-19

• Words: 4343

The Minority Business Development Agency Program

• Words: 1455

Supporting the Innovative Entrepreneurs in Turkish Universities

Starting a business: a restaurant of national cuisine, entrepreneurial education for university students.

• Words: 2656

The Book “Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike” by Phil Knight

Family business succession in asian countries.

• Words: 8061

Commercialization and Innovation Best Practices

• Words: 2754

Establishing a Small Business Tourist Agency in the UAE

Investing in an offshore wind power plant in greece.

• Words: 1214

Crowdfunding Project on Kickstarter

• Words: 1010

What Is Business Intelligence?

“the art of the start” by guy kawasaki, the innovation process: successes and failures, elements and infrastructures for technology startups.

• Words: 2585

The Milaha Express Firm’s Possibilities in Qatar

Social enterprise: asian paints.

• Words: 2476

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Innovation in Business: What It Is & Why It’s Important

• 08 Mar 2022

Today’s competitive landscape heavily relies on innovation. Business leaders must constantly look for new ways to innovate because you can't solve many problems with old solutions.

Innovation is critical across all industries; however, it's important to avoid using it as a buzzword and instead take time to thoroughly understand the innovation process.

Here's an overview of innovation in business, why it's important, and how you can encourage it in the workplace.

What Is Innovation?

Innovation and creativity are often used synonymously. While similar, they're not the same. Using creativity in business is important because it fosters unique ideas . This novelty is a key component of innovation.

For an idea to be innovative, it must also be useful. Creative ideas don't always lead to innovations because they don't necessarily produce viable solutions to problems.

Simply put: Innovation is a product, service, business model, or strategy that's both novel and useful. Innovations don't have to be major breakthroughs in technology or new business models; they can be as simple as upgrades to a company's customer service or features added to an existing product.

Access your free e-book today.

Types of Innovation

Innovation in business can be grouped into two categories : sustaining and disruptive.

• Sustaining innovation: Sustaining innovation enhances an organization's processes and technologies to improve its product line for an existing customer base. It's typically pursued by incumbent businesses that want to stay atop their market.
• Disruptive innovation: Disruptive innovation occurs when smaller companies challenge larger businesses. It can be classified into groups depending on the markets those businesses compete in. Low-end disruption refers to companies entering and claiming a segment at the bottom of an existing market, while new-market disruption denotes companies creating an additional market segment to serve a customer base the existing market doesn't reach.

The most successful companies incorporate both types of innovation into their business strategies. While maintaining an existing position in the market is important, pursuing growth is essential to being competitive. It also helps protect a business against other companies affecting its standing.

Learn about the differences between sustaining and disruptive innovation in the video below, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more explainer content!

The Importance of Innovation

Unforeseen challenges are inevitable in business. Innovation can help you stay ahead of the curve and grow your company in the process. Here are three reasons innovation is crucial for your business:

• It allows adaptability: The recent COVID-19 pandemic disrupted business on a monumental scale. Routine operations were rendered obsolete over the course of a few months. Many businesses still sustain negative results from this world shift because they’ve stuck to the status quo. Innovation is often necessary for companies to adapt and overcome the challenges of change.
• It fosters growth: Stagnation can be extremely detrimental to your business. Achieving organizational and economic growth through innovation is key to staying afloat in today’s highly competitive world.
• It separates businesses from their competition: Most industries are populated with multiple competitors offering similar products or services. Innovation can distinguish your business from others.

Innovation & Design Thinking

Several tools encourage innovation in the workplace. For example, when a problem’s cause is difficult to pinpoint, you can turn to approaches like creative problem-solving . One of the best approaches to innovation is adopting a design thinking mentality.

Design thinking is a solutions-based, human-centric mindset. It's a practical way to strategize and design using insights from observations and research.

Four Phases of Innovation

Innovation's requirements for novelty and usefulness call for navigating between concrete and abstract thinking. Introducing structure to innovation can guide this process.

In the online course Design Thinking and Innovation , Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar teaches design thinking principles using a four-phase innovation framework : clarify, ideate, develop, and implement.

• Clarify: The first stage of the process is clarifying a problem. This involves conducting research to empathize with your target audience. The goal is to identify their key pain points and frame the problem in a way that allows you to solve it.
• Ideate: The ideation stage involves generating ideas to solve the problem identified during research. Ideation challenges assumptions and overcomes biases to produce innovative ideas.
• Develop: The development stage involves exploring solutions generated during ideation. It emphasizes rapid prototyping to answer questions about a solution's practicality and effectiveness.
• Implement: The final stage of the process is implementation. This stage involves communicating your developed idea to stakeholders to encourage its adoption.

Human-Centered Design

Innovation requires considering user needs. Design thinking promotes empathy by fostering human-centered design , which addresses explicit pain points and latent needs identified during innovation’s clarification stage.

There are three characteristics of human-centered design:

• Desirability: For a product or service to succeed, people must want it. Prosperous innovations are attractive to consumers and meet their needs.
• Feasibility: Innovative ideas won't go anywhere unless you have the resources to pursue them. You must consider whether ideas are possible given technological, economic, or regulatory barriers.
• Viability: Even if a design is desirable and feasible, it also needs to be sustainable. You must consistently produce or deliver designs over extended periods for them to be viable.

Consider these characteristics when problem-solving, as each is necessary for successful innovation.

The Operational and Innovative Worlds

Creativity and idea generation are vital to innovation, but you may encounter situations in which pursuing an idea isn't feasible. Such scenarios represent a conflict between the innovative and operational worlds.

The Operational World

The operational world reflects an organization's routine processes and procedures. Metrics and results are prioritized, and creativity isn't encouraged to the extent required for innovation. Endeavors that disrupt routine—such as risk-taking—are typically discouraged.

The Innovative World

The innovative world encourages creativity and experimentation. This side of business allows for open-endedly exploring ideas but tends to neglect the functional side.

Both worlds are necessary for innovation, as creativity must be grounded in reality. You should strive to balance them to produce human-centered solutions. Design thinking strikes this balance by guiding you between the concrete and abstract.

Learning the Ropes of Innovation

Innovation is easier said than done. It often requires you to collaborate with others, overcome resistance from stakeholders, and invest valuable time and resources into generating solutions. It can also be highly discouraging because many ideas generated during ideation may not go anywhere. But the end result can make the difference between your organization's success or failure.

The good news is that innovation can be learned. If you're interested in more effectively innovating, consider taking an online innovation course. Receiving practical guidance can increase your skills and teach you how to approach problem-solving with a human-centered mentality.

Eager to learn more about innovation? Explore Design Thinking and Innovation ,one of our online entrepreneurship and innovation courses. If you're not sure which course is the right fit, download our free course flowchart to determine which best aligns with your goals.

About the Author

Entrepreneurship and Innovation

• First Online: 12 May 2024

Cite this chapter

• Arão Sapiro   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2795-7051 2  

Part of the book series: Classroom Companion: Business ((CCB))

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Innovation refers to introducing novelty in a product, service, strategy, or business model. Moreover, innovation also increases growth in the current business environment. Sometimes, it is an idea, and sometimes, it is a concept that helps stay ahead of the competition and induces creativity and efficiency in businesses.

Central to innovation are entrepreneurs: innovative and risk-taking individuals who seek to bring about change and new opportunities, both for themselves and the business communities in which they operate. Entrepreneurship refers to the process of developing new business ventures or growing existing ones.

In the second part of this chapter, the importance of entrepreneurs to economic activity, their role in our organizations as intraentrepreneurs, and the development of the concept of entrepreneur attitude will be discussed in detail.

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Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Nothing unique to offer, how lack of uniqueness could hurt george’s business.

The uniqueness of a business idea defines the absolute success of any given venture. This claim confirms the truth behind the comments of George’s potential investor who upholds the role of uniqueness when it comes to attaining business productivity and hence success (Yukl and Lepsinger 361).

During its inception, a business is unable to identify the selling points that will enable it to stand out from other ventures. Hence, chances are that the business’ success options are slim. George’s potential investor views the uniqueness of a business as that particular idea or product that the business deploys in its operational environment to identify itself uniquely with the existing and potential customers. Business distinctiveness defines its points of sale in line with the long term and short term fundamental guiding principles and core values.

Failure to ignore the role of uniqueness may hurt George’s chances of business success. Based on the underlying issues and George’s negative perception about the concept of distinctiveness, his idea is deemed not to bear fruits because of the already established potential competitors who have been into business for a long. Also, the investor he is approaching is reluctant, pessimistic, and disinterested in committing because George’s idea has no exceptionality to prompt him to risk his money. Furthermore, George is working under unsatisfactory assumptions that his business will just succeed without proper planning. He has no technical backing of his presumptions. Hence, his chances of success may be ruined by the evident lack of uniqueness in his venture.

Steps to Making George’s Venture Successful

Despite new business ideas and concepts being developed every day, entrepreneurs are always challenged when it comes to establishing a unique product or way of marketing and selling that may enable them own part of the dominant niche of their competitors. Thus, upon overcoming competition, an entrepreneur is assured of not only a bigger market share but also excellent sales and returns.

Therefore, to attain uniqueness, George may have to follow steps that include emulating the business strategies of the market giants, including McDonald’s and Domino Pizza, but modifying them to fit his unique venture. By so doing, he will learn their tactics and plans on how they do their sales, the scale of customer satisfaction, and any special information about the product. This information will help the new entrepreneur to readjust his business plan and strategies accordingly to emerge the best in terms of customer satisfaction and service delivery.

Making a competitive analysis about the competitors is a second important step that will enable George to evaluate his rivals’ products. This plan will enable him to add fresh ideas that will translate into value addition and hence the uniqueness of his commodities. Creativity will differentiate George’s business from those of his competitors. He should consider modification of ideas of pizza preparation, cooking methods, and packaging techniques.

Preferably, he should always be at the center of his competitors’ customers and be the first to change strategy before his competitors. Having a clear knowledge of one’s customers, their preferences, particular selling points on the product, and their expectations in terms of quality and pricing may help George restore uniqueness in his business. Besides, George may increase the frequency of product availability. Sometimes, customers may not have any issue concerning the pricing and location of a product. They may only require their needs to be satisfied (Yukl and Lepsinger 362).

Therefore, George’s knowledge about customers will enable him to solve their problems by satisfying their needs. This strategy will retain the customers while at the same time assuring him of their loyalty. George may also opt to compare offers in terms of pricing and quantity to determine what adjustment he needs to make to attain uniqueness. This move will go a long way in helping him to come up with an irresistible offer that will wow customers.

Crucial Factors that George Overlooked

Other three factors that George is overlooking in his quest to start a pizza business include the need for a feasibility study, the amount of capital he requires, and the need for a contingency plan. George wants to commence a business without conducting a feasibility study. Such a study is crucial for George because it will validate the scale of success of his business. The study will assist him to analyze his business objectives, marketing, financial facets, business management, and technical considerations that will act as pillars for the success of his venture. George has overlooked the idea of undergoing some training about how such a study is done.

George has not considered the amount of money that is required for his venture. He is still looking for investors, yet he is not even sure of the required capital investment. The implication here is that he has no hint of the size of business he will establish. Third, George has no contingency plan. The venture is a start-up that is coated with uncertainties. There are already three competitors, namely, the Large National Franchise, Pizza Wagon, and the other one that avails domestic services. A contingency plan may help George to estimate the amount of rivalry he expects when he establishes his venture.

As a remedy to the above shortfalls, George needs to come up with a viable business plan that stipulates all considerate areas such as market evaluation and profiling, financial and budgetary analysis, project molding, and business preparation. Besides, he should consider approaching investors who share similar interests. Furthermore, besides undergoing training to acquire some knowledge in entrepreneurship, he may consider hiring experts to help him in structuring his business professionally.

The Southwest Airlines

Factors necessary for re-engineering corporate thinking exhibited by southwest airlines.

The need for change and the setting of organizational vision are among the essential elements to consider when re-engineering corporate thinking. In the context of Southwest Airlines, the company entered the industry with a clear vision that enabled it to set the pace by clinching top status in a fleet of 737s. It focuses on charging relatively low passenger fair and increasing airline frequency among other areas that its competitor airlines had not addressed (Tully 129).

However, orienting people to operate in line with the vision is not easy. Besides creating an environment where people own the vision, Southwest Airlines has provided its human resources with an environment to innovate. For instance, Herb Kelleher, the company’s CEO, has fostered an environment where workers are contented were delivering their services.

Consecutively, employees at Southwest Airlines are provided with a chance to explore their innovative power by being encouraged to excel. Those who achieve exemplary heights in their line of duty are legible for an award. One such award is the ‘heroes of the heart award’. Thirdly, Keller identifies people as the feasible processes that require re-engineering. For instance, he facilitates the training of new staff members as a basis to align them with the company’s vision. Process understanding is another factor that can re-engineer corporate thinking. Keller allows free interactions with junior employees by creating embraceable rapport. He manages by ‘fooling around’’, laughing with people, and acknowledging the value of each member. By so doing, he gets to know his employees, including the specific areas that need re-engineering.

The need to redesign the process and integrate new information technology is also another factor that steers corporate thinking. For smooth flow for ideas, managers should apply viable re-engineering principles, limiting assumptions, and/or look for avenues to apply new technology. Southwest Airlines applies this principle by encouraging people to innovate and/or come up with ideas that can steer the company forward. Management time is always not enough. Thus, Southwest Airlines’ managers and workers take on few tasks at a time. For instance, Keller identifies innovation, freedom, and social skills as his points of focus. Eventually, he succeeds in instilling discipline and high work spirit in his employees.

Specific Elements of a Corporate Entrepreneurial Strategy apparent within Southwest Airlines

The first element of corporate entrepreneurial strategy execution is the distribution of power. In Southwest Airline’s context, the company exhibits this strategy by dedicating and assigning managerial duties to its CEO, Keller, and Libby Sartain, the deputy leader. Other powers are also accorded to junior employees. Keller realizes the need to know his junior staff. He interacts with them most often with the view of knowing whether they are comfortable in their lines of operations.

The second element is decision making. Keller allows decision making in the company to follow top-bottom and bottom-up approaches. The top-bottom is exhibited when he delegates duties to junior staff while bottom-up decision-making is realized when junior staff’s innovative ideas are considered and incorporated into the company’s operations (Tully 130). Also, by encouraging junior staff even to violate the established rules in the interest of the company’s clientele.

Southwest Airlines upholds the generation of ideas as another corporate entrepreneurial strategy. A team that is dedicated to accomplishing the agenda of a company, including Southwest Airlines, can generate ideas. Keller invests at least one idea in each of his 30, 000 employees. He expects many ideas to be generated individually as well as departmentally. Hence, each year, the company has a culture where an exclusive department’s name is tattooed on a jet. The fourth corporate entrepreneurial strategy is the process of handling ideas in Southwest Airlines. Keller realizes that commitment is attained when employees understand the goings-on in a company.

Idealistic processes that are backed by all employees drive the company. Other apparent elements of corporate entrepreneurial strategy showcased within Southwest Airlines include strategic vision development. Kelleher has generated a distinctive vision that upholds a way of life, which promotes soaring spirit while evading gratification. Described as a celebrated figure, Keller has steered the vision that has elevated the company from a start-up to the best airline business in the world.

From its onset, the company had the idea of bridging the market gap by charging low passenger fair, offering from the point-to-point carriage, guaranteeing short-haul, and maintaining a relatively higher frequency that has seen it wave off competition. Its vision for success as a market leader has made it lead the industry by providing the world’s largest 737s that total to over 550 aircraft. Today, the company manages more than 3000 air travels daily, covering close to 100 stations in over 40 countries.

The Way Herb Keller has been Instrumental in Structuring a Conducive Entrepreneurial Activity

Herb Keller was at the forefront in terms of vitalizing the entrepreneurial activity at Southwest Airlines. To begin with, he provided an environment where staff members could have fun in their line of duty as a tool for promoting innovation. Keller dresses casually, a case where he is described to resemble Elvis Presley. As a grooming style, he has created an environment that enables employees to work with absolute freedom in areas of innovation.

Keller also has been the main mechanism for nurturing staff to gather confidence when handling unique processes that foster innovation. Southwest Airlines University for the People was an establishment by Kelleher, a conducive avenue where new employees would learn about social and integrity skills such as cooperation, trust, communication skills, and mutual respect. In turn, they apply the virtues when handling the company’s customers and/or when interacting with fellow workers.

Thus, Southwest Airlines’ employees are always in harmonious communication, a tool that Keheller established to foster the development of new ideas through professionalized interactions. The company has the interest of the people at heart. Keller availed room for employee self-growth and actualization. As a result, workers have created a conducive environment where they operate to the level of becoming products of their successful creation.

Reigning in Innovation at Google

Relating the chapter definition of a ‘corporate entrepreneurial strategy’’ to the role that marissa mayer must fulfill at google.

Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Google, is industry-conscious. She understands well the industry’s attractiveness so fluently that she can make a distinction of new actual alternatives. She can influence dealers and clients by providing them with high-tech user-friendly tools, thus out-shining the company’s competitors. She leads the company in large areas such as Google Health, Google Desktop, and Google Labs among other projects. Based on the definition of ‘corporate entrepreneurial strategy’, Mayer must fulfill her role as Google’s reason behind its enduring success. Mayer must maintain her efforts of developing many applications such as the ‘Google Search’ interface that has enabled the company to operate in more than 100 different global languages.

Mayer must also maintain the company’s growth strategy (Elgin 88). She has a well-balanced equation between growth strategy and competitiveness plans. She maximizes growth by exploiting short-term prospects, thus handling management roles besides the main strategy. This plan has been enabled by her readiness to consider viable innovations from project ideas that she receives from the mailing list that has been developed as a platform to span idea generation.

Mayer must also uphold the unequivocal internal strategic communication to employees on matters that concern marketing mechanisms, management of human resources, and production among many other areas of Google’s operations. Mayer effectively relates with the MBAs and the PhDs as a critical way to managing idea flow and/or regulating any conflict interests between her and the employees.

She also determines when pet projects are ripe enough to be promoted and infused onto the Google platform for customer use. Additionally, she has specific hours for discussing and brainstorming on the ideas with her employees. She has managed to tie the company’s essential competencies through an elaborate integrated chain of internal operations, an approach that she must uphold to guarantee easy project implementation (Elgin 89).

The distinction between Google’s Approach to ideas: Is it an ‘‘Entrepreneurial Strategy’ or a ‘Strategy for Entrepreneurship’?

Google has adopted both the entrepreneurial strategy and strategy for entrepreneurship in its operations. For the entrepreneurial strategy approach, Google has considered strategies such as creativity, risk tolerance, responsiveness to new ideas, leadership, and property rights acquisitions. The company’s creative nature keeps it on top of the competition table. Besides taking risks by investing in uncertain projects, it responds to innovative ideas by giving room to groups’ idea presentations. It also protects its idea windows through patenting its projects and providing good leadership. To maintain the viability of its projects, Google ranks each year’s top 100 projects based on their importance. The strategic growth of the company saw the projects list ranking grow to 270.

On the other hand, the company’s strategy for entrepreneurship is realized by giving room to general employees to brainstorm and come up with ideas, which are assessed based on relevance or applicability. Mayer has three days a week to attend to and assess employee projects before approving them for top management consideration. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google, encourage the generation of ideas at every level of organizational structure.

They have provided a mailing platform that allows any employee with a project to post on it for the management’s consideration. Besides, the company embraces outsourcing for new ideas and sponsoring their generation, and eventual patenting and applicability. A viable example was evident when Steve Lawrence’s project was considered and sponsored through financial and expert inclusion. This strategy encouraged Lawrence to come up with a higher applicable project.

Factors for Developing an Entrepreneurial Strategy that is evident in Google’s Approach

Through the help of CEO Marissa Mayer, Google has managed to remain creative by developing new ideas far beyond its competitors. Several factors for entrepreneurial strategy are evident in Google’s business operations. For instance, innovativeness such as offering voice calls free of charge and the provision of world satellite images are among key areas of creativity that have revolutionized the world of digital experience. Its founder, Larry Page, encourages the generation of ideas via the provision of a mailing list that is open to any innovator to publish his or her ideas.

Besides, Google is risk-tolerant since it responds quickly to the generated opinions while at the same time harnessing new risky ventures by utilizing all potential possibilities without fear of losing resources. This situation is evidenced by Google’s investment in Steve Lawrence’s desktop search software that enables users to search their computer hardware information on any computer. The third apparent aspect is the responsiveness of the Google Company, which gives it a chance to respond to new business opportunities and market exploration. Google responded swiftly to Steve Lawrence’s idea, thus leading the market ahead of Microsoft for two months.

Moreover, Google has upheld affable management qualities that have made the industry a leader in terms of innovativeness and relevance (Yukl and Lepsinger 361). Entrepreneurs’ ideas are bought and put into action. Mayer pays attention to presentations from innovative groups after which the exemplary projects are considered. The patenting and issuance of property rights to newly developed ideas have safeguarded Google’s innovations from proliferation by others through the acquisition of patent rights, thus closing out on competitors who may joyride on Google’s hi-tech knowledge.

Works Cited

Elgin, Ben. “Managing Google’s Idea Factory.” Business Week 1.3953(2005): 88-90. Print.

Tully, Shawn. “Southwest’s Radical New Flight Plan.” Fortune 172.5(2015): 128-136. Print.

Yukl, Gary, and Richard Lepsinger. “Why integrating the leading and managing roles is essential for organizational effectiveness.” Organizational Dynamics 34.4 (2005): 361-375. Print.

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1.1: Chapter 1 – Introduction to Entrepreneurship

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• Page ID 21253

• Lee A. Swanson
• University of Saskatchewan

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Whilst there is no universally accepted definition of entrepreneurship, it is fair to say that it is multi-dimensional. It involves analyzing people and their actions together with the ways in which they interact with their environments, be these social, economic, or political, and the institutional, policy, and legal frameworks that help define and legitimize human activities. – Blackburn (2011, p. xiii)

Entrepreneurship involves such a range of activities and levels of analysis that no single definition is definitive. – Lichtenstein (2011, p. 472)

It is complex, chaotic, and lacks any notion of linearity. As educators, we have the responsibility to develop our students’ discovery, reasoning, and implementation skills so they may excel in highly uncertain environments. – Neck and Greene (2011, p. 55)

Learning Objectives

• Examine the challenges associated with defining the concepts of entrepreneur and entrepreneurship
• Discuss how the evolution of entrepreneurship thought has influenced how we view the concept of entrepreneurship today
• Discuss how the list of basic questions in entrepreneurship research can be expanded to include research inquiries that are important in today’s world
• Discuss how the concepts of entrepreneurial uniqueness, entrepreneurial personality traits, and entrepreneurial cognitions can help society improve its support for entrepreneurship
• Apply the general venturing script to the study of entrepreneurship

This chapter provides you with an overview of entrepreneurship and of the language of entrepreneurship. The challenges associated with defining entrepreneur and entrepreneurship are explored, as is an overview of how entrepreneurship can be studied.

The objective is to enable you to apply current concepts in entrepreneurship to the evaluation of entrepreneurs, their ventures, and the venturing environment. You will develop skills, including the capability to add value in the new venture sector of the economy. You will acquire and practice evaluation skills useful in consulting, advising, and making new venture decisions.

Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship

Considerations influencing definitions of entrepreneur and entrepreneurship.

It is necessary to be able to determine exactly who entrepreneurs are before we can, among other things, study them, count them, provide special loans for them, and calculate how and how much they contribute to our economy.

• Does someone need to start a business from scratch to be called an entrepreneur?
• Can we call someone an entrepreneur if they bought an ongoing business from someone else or took over the operations of a family business from their parents?
• If someone starts a small business and never needs to hire employees, can they be called an entrepreneur?
• If someone buys a business but hires professional managers to run it so they don’t have to be involved in the operations, are they an entrepreneur?
• Is someone an entrepreneur if they buy into a franchise so they can follow a well-established formula for running the operation?
• Is someone an entrepreneur because of what they do or because of how they think?
• Can someone be an entrepreneur without owning their own business?
• Can a person be an entrepreneur because of the nature of the work that they do within a large corporation?

It is also necessary to fully understand what we mean by entrepreneurship before we can study the concept.

Gartner (1990) identified 90 attributes that showed up in definitions of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship provided by entrepreneurs and other experts in the field. The following are a few of these attributes:

• Innovation – Does a person need to be innovative to be considered an entrepreneur? Can an activity be considered to be entrepreneurial if it is not innovative?
• Activities – What activities does a person need to do to be considered an entrepreneur?
• Creation of a new business – Does someone need to start a new business to be considered to be an entrepreneur, or can someone who buys a business, buys into a franchise, or takes over an existing family business be considered an entrepreneur?
• Starts an innovative venture within an established organization – Can someone who works within an existing organization that they don’t own be considered an entrepreneur if they start an innovative venture for their organization?
• Creation of a not-for-profit business – Can a venture be considered to be entrepreneurial if it is a not-for-profit, or should only for-profit businesses be considered entrepreneurial?

After identifying the 90 attributes, Gartner (1990) went back to the entrepreneurs and other experts for help in clustering the attributes into themes that would help summarize what people concerned with entrepreneurship thought about the concept. He ended up with the following eight entrepreneurship themes:

1. The Entrepreneur – The entrepreneur theme is the idea that entrepreneurship involves individuals with unique personality characteristics and abilities (e.g., risk-taking, locus of control, autonomy, perseverance, commitment, vision, creativity). Almost 50% of the respondents rated these characteristics as not important to a definition of entrepreneurship (Gartner, 1990, p. 21, 24).

• “The question that needs to be addressed is: Does entrepreneurship involve entrepreneurs (individuals with unique characteristics)?” (Gartner, 1990, p. 25).

2. Innovation – The innovation theme is characterized as doing something new as an idea, product, service, market, or technology in a new or established organization. The innovation theme suggests that innovation is not limited to new ventures, but recognized as something which older and/or larger organizations may undertake as well (Gartner, 1990, p. 25). Some of the experts Gartner questioned believed that it was important to include innovation in definitions of entrepreneurship and others did not think it was as important.

• “Does entrepreneurship involve innovation?” (Gartner, 1990, p. 25).

3. Organization Creation – The organization creation theme describes the behaviors involved in creating organizations. This theme described acquiring and integrating resource attributes (e.g., Brings resources to bear, integrates opportunities with resources, mobilizes resources, gathers resources) and attributes that described creating organizations (new venture development and the creation of a business that adds value). (Gartner, 1990, p. 25)

• “Does entrepreneurship involve resource acquisition and integration (new venture creation activities)?” (Gartner, 1990, p. 25)

4. Creating Value – This theme articulated the idea that entrepreneurship creates value. The attributes in this factor indicated that value creation might be represented by transforming a business, creating a new business growing a business, creating wealth, or destroying the status quo.

• “Does entrepreneurship involve creating value?” (Gartner, 1990, p. 25).

5. Profit or Nonprofit

• “Does entrepreneurship involve profit-making organizations only” (Gartner, 1990, p. 25)?
• Should a focus on growth be a characteristic of entrepreneurship?

7. Uniqueness – This theme suggested that entrepreneurship must involve uniqueness. Uniqueness was characterized by attributes such as a special way of thinking, a vision of accomplishment, ability to see situations in terms of unmet needs, and creates a unique combination.

• “Does entrepreneurship involve uniqueness?” (Gartner, 1990, p. 26).

8. The Owner-Manager – Some of the respondents questioned by Gartner (1990) did not believe that small mom-and-pop types of businesses should be considered to be entrepreneurial. Some respondents felt that an important element of a definition of entrepreneurship was that a venture be owner-managed.

• To be entrepreneurial, does a venture need to be owner-managed?

Examples of Definitions of Entrepreneur

An entrepreneur can be described as “one who creates a new business in the face of risk and uncertainty for the purpose of achieving profit and growth by identifying significant opportunities and assembling the necessary resources to capitalize on them” (Zimmerer & Scarborough, 2008, p. 5).

An entrepreneur is “one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise” (Entrepreneur, n.d.).

Examples of Definitions of Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship can be defined as a field of business that

seeks to understand how opportunities to create something new (e.g., new products or services, new markets, new production processes or raw materials, new ways of organizing existing technologies) arise and are discovered or created by specific persons, who then use various means to exploit or develop them, thus producing a wide range of effects (Baron, Shane, & Reuber, 2008, p. 4)

A concise definition of entrepreneurship “is that it is the process of pursuing opportunities without limitation by resources currently in hand” (Brooks, 2009, p. 3) and “the process of doing something new and something different for the purpose of creating wealth for the individual and adding value to society” (Kao, 1993, p. 70)

The Evolution of Entrepreneurship Thought

This section includes an overview of how entrepreneurship has evolved to the present day.

The following timeline shows some of the most influential entrepreneurship scholars and the schools of thought (French, English, American, German, and Austrian) their perspectives helped influence and from which their ideas evolved. Schools of thought are essentially groups of people who might or might not have personally known each other, but who shared common beliefs or philosophies.

Figure 1 – Historical and Evolutionary Entrepreneurship Thought (Illustration by Lee A. Swanson)

The Earliest Entrepreneurship

The function, if not the name, of the entrepreneur is probably as old as the institutions of barter and exchange. But only after economic markets became an intrusive element of society did the concept take on pivotal importance. Many economists have recognized the pivotal role of the entrepreneur in a market economy. Yet despite his central importance in economic activity, the entrepreneur has been a shadowy and elusive figure in the history of economic theory (Hebert & Link, 2009, p. 1).

Historically those who acted similarly to the ways we associate with modern day entrepreneurs – namely those who strategically assume risks to seek economic (or other) gains – were military leaders, royalty, or merchants. Military leaders planned their campaigns and battles while assuming significant risks, but by doing so they also stood to gain economic benefits if their strategies were successful. Merchants, like Marco Polo who sailed out of Venice in the late 1200s to search for a trade route to the Orient, also assumed substantial risks in the hope of becoming wealthy (Hebert & Link, 2009).

The entrepreneur, who was also called adventurer , projector , and undertaker during the eighteenth century, was not always viewed in a positive light (Hebert & Link, 2009).

Development of Entrepreneurship as a Concept

Risk and uncertainty.

Richard Cantillon (1680-1734) was born in France and belonged to the French School of thought although he was an Irish economist. He appears to be the person who introduced the term entrepreneur to the world. “According to Cantillon, the entrepreneur is a specialist in taking on risk, ‘insuring’ workers by buying their output for resale before consumers have indicated how much they are willing to pay for it” (Casson & Godley, 2005p. 26). The workers’ incomes are mostly stable, but the entrepreneur risks a loss if market prices fluctuate.

Cantillon distinguished entrepreneurs from two other classes of economic agents; landowners, who were financially independent, and hirelings (employees) who did not partake in the decision-making in exchange for relatively stable incomes through employment contracts. He was the first writer to provide a relatively refined meaning for the term entrepreneurship . Cantillon described entrepreneurs as individuals who generated profits through exchanges. In the face of uncertainty, particularly over future prices, they exercise business judgment. They purchase resources at one price and sell their product at a price that is uncertain, with the difference representing their profit (Chell, 2008; Hebert & Link, 2009).

Farmers were the most prominent entrepreneurs during Cantillon’s lifetime, and they interacted with “arbitrageurs” – or middlemen between farmers and the end consumers – who also faced uncertain incomes, and who were also, therefore, entrepreneurs. These intermediaries facilitated the movement of products from the farms to the cities where more than half of the farm output was consumed. Cantillon observed that consumers were willing to pay a higher price per unit to be able to purchase products in the smaller quantities they wanted, which created the opportunities for the intermediaries to make profits. Profits were the rewards for assuming the risks arising from uncertain conditions. The markets in which profits were earned were characterized by incomplete information (Chell, 2008; Hebert & Link, 2009).

Adolph Reidel (1809-1872), form the German School of thought, picked up on Cantillon’s notion of uncertainty and extended it to theorize that entrepreneurs take on uncertainty so others, namely income earners, do not have to be subject to the same uncertainty. Entrepreneurs provide a service to risk-averse income earners by assuming risk on their behalf. In exchange, entrepreneurs are rewarded when they can foresee the impacts of the uncertainty and sell their products at a price that exceeds their input costs (including the fixed costs of the wages they commit to paying) (Hebert & Link, 2009).

Frank Knight (1885-1972) founded the Chicago School of Economics and belonged to the American School of thought. He refined Cantillon’s perspective on entrepreneurs and risk by distinguishing insurable risk as something that is separate from uncertainty, which is not insurable. Some risks can be insurable because they have occurred enough times in the past that the expected loss from such risks can be calculated. Uncertainty, on the other hand, is not subject to probability calculations. According to Knight, entrepreneurs can’t share the risk of loss by insuring themselves against uncertain events, so they bear these kinds of risks themselves, and profit is the reward that entrepreneurs get from assuming uninsurable risks (Casson & Godley, 2005).

Distinction Between Entrepreneur and Manager

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832), also from the French School, advanced Cantillon’s work, but added that entrepreneurship was essentially a form of management. Say “put the entrepreneur at the core of the entire process of production and distribution” (Hebert & Link, 2009, p. 17). Say’s work resulted in something similar to a general theory of entrepreneurship with three distinct functions; “scientific knowledge of the product; entrepreneurial industry – the application of knowledge to useful purpose; and productive industry – the manufacture of the item by manual labour” (Chell, 2008, p. 20).

Frank Knight made several contributions to entrepreneurship theory, but another of note is how he distinguished an entrepreneur from a manager. He suggested that a manager crosses the line to become an entrepreneur “when the exercise of his/her judgment is liable to error and s/he assumes the responsibility for its correctness” (Chell, 2008, p. 33). Knight said that entrepreneurs calculate the risks associated with uncertain business situations and make informed judgments and decisions with the expectation that – if they assessed the situation and made the correct decisions – they would be rewarded by earning a profit. Those who elect to avoid taking these risks choose the relative security of being employees (Chell, 2008).

Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), from the English School of thought, was one of the founders of neoclassical economics. His research involved distinguishing between the terms capitalist, entrepreneur, and manager. Marshall saw capitalists as individuals who “committed themselves to the capacity and honesty of others, when he by himself had incurred the risks for having contributed with the capital” (Zaratiegui & Rabade, 2005, p. 775). An entrepreneur took control of money provided by capitalists in an effort to leverage it to create more money; but would lose less if something went wrong then would the capitalists. An entrepreneur, however, risked his own reputation and the other gains he could have made by pursuing a different opportunity.

Let us suppose that two men are carrying on smaller businesses, the one working with his own, the other chiefly with borrowed capital. There is one set of risks which is common to both; which may be described as the trade risks of the particular business … But there is another set of risks, the burden of which has to be borne by the man working with borrowed capital, and not by the other; and we may call them personal risks (Marshall, 1961, p. 590; Zaratiegui & Rabade, 2005, p. 776).

Marshall recognized that the reward capitalists received for contributing capital was interest income and the reward entrepreneurs earned was profits. Managers received a salary and, according to Marshall, fulfilled a different function than either capitalists or entrepreneurs – although in some cases, particularly in smaller firms, one person might be both an entrepreneur and a manager. Managers “were more inclined to avoid challenges, innovations and what Schumpeter called the ‘perennial torment of creative destruction’ in favour of a more tranquil life” (Zaratiegui & Rabade, 2005, p. 781). The main risks they faced from firm failure were to their reputations or to their employment status. Managers had little incentive to strive to maximize profits (Zaratiegui & Rabade, 2005).

Amasa Walker (1799-1875) and his son Francis Walker (1840-1897) were from the American School of thought, and they helped shape an American perspective of entrepreneurship following the Civil War of 1861-1865. These scholars claimed that entrepreneurs created wealth, and thus played a different role than capitalists. They believed that entrepreneurs had the power of foresight and leadership qualities that enabled them to organize resources and inject energy into activities that create wealth (Chell, 2008).

Entrepreneurship versus Entrepreneur

Adam Smith (1723-1790), from the English School of thought, published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in 1776. In a departure from the previous thought into entrepreneurship and economics, Smith did not dwell on a particular class of individual. He was concerned with studying how all people fit into the economic system. Smith contended that the economy was driven by self-interest in the marketplace (Chell, 2008).

Also from the English School, David Ricardo (1772-1823) was influenced by Smith, Say, and others. His work focused on how the capitalist system worked. He explained how manufacturers must invest their capital in response to the demand for the products they produce. If demand decreases, manufacturers should borrow less and reduce their workforces. When demand is high, they should do the reverse (Chell, 2008).

Carl Menger (1840-1921), from the Austrian School of thought, ranked goods according to their causal connections to human satisfaction. Lower order goods include items like bread that directly satisfy a human want or need like hunger. Higher order goods are those more removed from satisfying a human need. A second order good is the flour that was used to make the bread. The grain used to make the flour is an even higher order good. Entrepreneurs coordinate these factors of production to turn higher order goods into lower order goods that more directly satisfy human wants and needs (Hebert & Link, 2009).

Menger (1950 [1871], p. 160) established that entrepreneurial activity includes: (a) obtaining information about the economic situation, (b) economic calculation – all the various computations that must be made if a production process is to be efficient, (c) the act of will by which goods of higher order are assigned to a particular production process, and (d) supervising the execution of the production plan so that it may be carried through as economically as possible (Hebert & Link, 2009, p. 43).

Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), from the English School of thought, considered entrepreneurs to be innovators. They “depart from routine, discover new markets, find new sources of supply, improve existing products and lower the costs of production” (Chell, 2008).

Joseph Schumpeter’s (1883-1950) parents were Austrian, he studied at the University of Vienna, conducted research at the University of Graz, served as Austria’s Minister of Finance, and was the president of a bank in the country. Because of the rise of Hitler in Europe, he went to the United States and conducted research at Harvard until he retired in 1949. Because of this, he is sometimes associated with the American School of thought on entrepreneurship (Chell, 2008).

Whereas Menger saw entrepreneurship as occurring because of economic progress, Schumpeter took the opposite stance. Schumpeter saw economic activity as leading to economic development (Hebert & Link, 2009). Entrepreneurs play a central role in Schumpeter’s theory of economic development, and economic development can occur when the factors of production are assembled in new combinations .

Schumpeter (1934) viewed innovation as arising from new combinations of materials and forces. He provided the following five cases of new combinations.

• The introduction of a new good – that is one with which consumers are not yet familiar – or of a new quality of good.
• The introduction of a new method of production, that is one not yet tested by experience in the branch of manufacture concerned, which need by no means be founded upon a discovery scientifically new, and can also exist in a new way of handling a commodity commercially.
• The opening of a new market, that is a market into which the particular branch of manufacture of the country in question has not previously entered, whether or not this market has existed before.
• The conquest of a new source of supply of raw materials or half-manufactured goods, again irrespective of whether this source already exists or whether it has first to be created.
• The carrying out of the new organisation of any industry, like the creation of a monopoly position … or the breaking up of a monopoly position (Schumpeter, 1934, p. 66).

Another concept popularized by Schumpeter – in addition to the notion of new combinations – was creative destruction . This was meant to indicate that the existing ways of doing things need to be dismantled – to be destroyed – to enable a transformation through innovation to a new way of doing things. Entrepreneurs use innovation to disrupt how things are done and to establish a better way of doing those things.

Basic Questions in Entrepreneurship Research

According to Baron (2004a), there are three basic questions of interest in the field of entrepreneurship:

• Why do some persons but not others choose to become entrepreneurs?
• Why do some persons but not others recognize opportunities for new products or services that can be profitably exploited?
• Why are some entrepreneurs so much more successful than others (Baron, 2004a, p. 221)?

To understand where these foundational research questions came from and what their relevance is today, it is useful to study what entrepreneurship research has uncovered so far.

Entrepreneurial Uniqueness

Efforts to teach entrepreneurship have included descriptions of entrepreneurial uniqueness based on personality, behavioural, and cognitive traits (Chell, 2008; Duening, 2010).

• Need for achievement
• Internal locus of control (a belief by an individual that they are in control of their own destiny)
• Risk-taking propensity
• Behavioural traits
• Cognitive skills of successful entrepreneurs

Past studies of personality characteristics and behavioural traits have not been overly successful at identifying entrepreneurial uniqueness.

As it turned out, years of painstaking research along this line has not borne significant fruit. It appears that there are simply not any personality characteristics that are either essential to, or defining of, entrepreneurs that differ systematically from non-entrepreneurs…. Again, investigators proposed a number of behavioural candidates as emblematic of entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, this line of research also resulted in a series of dead ends as examples of successful entrepreneurial behaviours had equal counterparts among samples of non-entrepreneurs. As with the personality characteristic school of thought before it, the behavioural trait school of thought became increasingly difficult to support (Duening, 2010, p. 4-5).

This shed doubt on the value of trying to change personality characteristics or implant new entrepreneurial behaviours through educational programs in an effort to promote entrepreneurship.

New research, however, has resurrected the idea that there might be some value in revisiting personality traits as a topic of study. Additionally, Duening (2010) and has suggested that an important approach to teaching and learning about entrepreneurship is to focus on the “cognitive skills that successful entrepreneurs seem uniquely to possess and deploy” (p. 2). In the next sections we consider the new research on entrepreneurial personality traits and on entrepreneurial cognitions.

Entrepreneurial Personality Traits

While acknowledging that research had yet to validate the value of considering personality and behaviour traits as ways to distinguish entrepreneurs from non-entrepreneurs or unsuccessful ones, Chell (2008) suggested that researchers turn their attention to new sets of traits including: “the proactive personality, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, perseverance and intuitive decision-making style. Other traits that require further work include social competence and the need for independence” (p. 140).

In more recent years scholars have considered how the Big Five personality traits – extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism (sometimes presented as emotional stability ), and openness to experience (sometimes referred to as intellect) – might be used to better understand entrepreneurs. It appears that the Big Five traits might be of some use in predicting entrepreneurial success. Research is ongoing in this area, but in one example, Caliendo, Fossen, and Kritikos (2014) studied whether personality constructs might “influence entrepreneurial decisions at different points in time” (p. 807), and found that “high values in three factors of the Big Five approach—openness to experience, extraversion, and emotional stability (the latter only when we do not control for further personality characteristics)—increase the probability of entry into self-employment” (p. 807). They also found “that some specific personality characteristics, namely risk tolerance, locus of control, and trust, have strong partial effects on the entry decision” (p. 807). They also found that people who scored higher on agreeableness were more likely to exit their businesses, possibly meaning that people with lower agreeableness scores might prevail longer as entrepreneurs. When it came to specific personality traits, their conclusions indicated that those with an external locus of control were more likely to stop being self-employed after they had run their businesses for a while. There are several implications for research like this, including the potential to better understand why some entrepreneurs behave as they do based upon their personality types and the chance to improve entrepreneurship education and support services.

Entrepreneurial Cognitions

It is only fairly recently that entrepreneurship scholars have focused on cognitive skills as a primary factor that differentiates successful entrepreneurs from non-entrepreneurs and less successful entrepreneurs. This approach deals with how entrepreneurs think differently than non-entrepreneurs (Duening, 2010; Mitchell et al., 2007).

Entrepreneurial cognitions are the knowledge structures that people use to make assessments, judgments or decisions involving opportunity evaluation and venture creation and growth. In other words, research in entrepreneurial cognition is about understanding how entrepreneurs use simplifying mental models to piece together previously unconnected information that helps them to identify and invent new products or services, and to assemble the necessary resources to start and grow businesses (Mitchell, Busenitz, et al., 2002, p. 97).

Mitchell, Smith, et al. (2002) provided the example of how the decision to create a new venture (dependent variable) was influenced by three sets of cognitions (independent variables). They described these cognitions as follows:

Arrangements cognitions are the mental maps about the contacts, relationships, resources, and assets necessary to engage in entrepreneurial activity; willingness cognitions are the mental maps that support commitment to venturing and receptivity to the idea of starting a venture; ability cognitions consist of the knowledge structures or scripts (Glaser, 1984) that individuals have to support the capabilities, skills, norms, and attitudes required to create a venture (Mitchell et al., 2000). These variables draw on the idea that cognitions are structured in the minds of individuals (Read, 1987), and that these knowledge structures act as “scripts” that are the antecedents of decision making (Leddo & Abelson, 1986, p. 121; Mitchell, Smith, et al., 2002, p. 10)

Cognitive Perspective to Understanding Entrepreneurship

According to Baron (2004a), by taking a cognitive perspective, we might better understand entrepreneurs and the role they play in the entrepreneurial process.

The cognitive perspective emphasizes the fact that everything we think, say, or do is influenced by mental processes—the cognitive mechanisms through which we acquire store, transform, and use information. It is suggested here that this perspective can be highly useful to the field of entrepreneurship. Specifically, it can assist the field in answering three basic questions it has long addressed: (1) Why do some persons but not others choose to become entrepreneurs? (2) Why do some persons but not others recognize opportunities for new products or services that can be profitably exploited? And (3) Why are some entrepreneurs so much more successful than others (Baron, 2004a, p. 221-222)?

Baron (2004a), illustrated how cognitive differences between people might explain why some people end up pursuing entrepreneurial pursuits and others do not. For example, prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1977) and other decision-making or behavioural theories might be useful in this regard. Research into cognitive biases might also help explain why some people become entrepreneurs.

Baron (2004a) also revealed ways in which cognitive concepts like signal detection theory, regulation theory, and entrepreneurial might help explain why some people are better at entrepreneurial opportunity recognition. He also illustrated how some cognitive models and theories – like risk perception, counterfactual thinking, processing style, and susceptibility to cognitive errors – might help explain why some entrepreneurs are more successful than others.

Cognitive Perspective and the Three Questions

• Prospect Theory
• Cognitive Biases
• Signal Detection Theory
• Regulation Theory
• Entrepreneurial Alertness
• Risk Perception
• Counterfactual Thinking
• Processing Style
• Susceptibility to Cognitive Errors

Entrepreneurial Scripts

• “Cognition has emerged as an important theoretical perspective for understanding and explaining human behavior and action” (Dutta & Thornhill, 2008, p. 309).
• Cognitions are all processes by which sensory input is transformed, reduced, elaborated, stored, recovered, and used (Neisser, 1976).
• Cognitions lead to the acquisition of knowledge, and involve human information processing.
• Is a mental model, or information processing short-cut that can give information form and meaning, and enable subsequent interpretation and action.
• The subsequent interpretation and actions can result in expert performance … they can also result in thinking errors.
• the processes that transfer expertise, and
• the actual expertise itself.
• Scripts are generally framed as a linear sequence of steps, usually with feedback loops, that can explain how to achieve a particular task – perhaps like developing a business plan.
• Sometimes scripts can be embedded within other scripts. For example, within a general venturing script that outlines the sequences of activities that can lead to a successful business launch, there will probably be sub-scripts describing how entrepreneurs can search for ideas, screen those ideas until one is selected, plan how to launch a sustainable business based upon that idea and including securing the needed financial resources, setting up the business, starting it, effectively managing its ongoing operations, and managing the venture such that that entrepreneur can extract the value that they desire from the enterprise at the times and in the ways they want it.
• The most effective scripts include an indication of the norms that outline performance standards and indicate how to determine when any step in the sequence has been properly completed.

General Venturing Script

Generally, entrepreneurship is considered to consist of the following elements, or subscripts (Brooks, 2009; Mitchell, 2000).

• Idea Screening
• Planning and Financing
• Ongoing Operations

Searching (also called idea formulation or opportunity recognition)

• This script begins when a person decides they might be a potential entrepreneur (or when an existing entrepreneur decides they need more ideas in their idea pool ).
• This script ends when there are a sufficient number of ideas in the idea pool.
• overcome mental blockages to creativity which might hinder this person’s ability to identify viable ideas;
• implement steps to identify a sufficient number of ideas (most likely 5 or more) which the person is interested in investigating to determine whether they might be viable given general criteria such as this person’s personal interests and capabilities;

Idea Screening (also called concept development)

• This script begins when the person with the idea pool is no longer focusing on adding new ideas to it; but is instead taking steps to choose the best idea for them given a full range of specific criteria .
• This script ends when one idea is chosen from among those in the idea pool.
• Evaluate the political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal climates
• Evaluate the degree of competitiveness in the industry, the threat of substitutes emerging, the threat of new entrants to the industry, the degree of bargaining power of buyers, and the degree of bargaining power of suppliers.
• Do a market profile analysis to assess the attractiveness of the position within the industry that the potential venture will occupy.
• Formulate and evaluate potential strategies to leverage organizational strengths, overcome/minimize weaknesses, take advantage of opportunities, and overcome/minimize threats;
• Complete financial projections and analyze them to evaluate financial attractiveness;
• Assess the founder fit with the ideas;
• Evaluate the core competencies of the organization relative to the idea;
• Assess advice solicited from trusted advisers

Planning and Financing (also called resource determination and acquisition)

• This script begins when the idea screening script ends and when the person begins making the plans to implement the single idea chosen from the idea pool, which is done in concert with securing financing to implement the venture idea.
• This script ends when sufficient business planning has been done and when adequate financing has been arranged.
• The scripting process involves a logical flow of steps to develop a business plan and secure adequate financing to start the business.

Set-Up (also called launch)

• This script begins when the planning and financing script ends and when the person begins implementing the plans needed to start the business.
• This script ends when the business is ready to start-up.
• The scripting process involves a logical flow of steps, including purchasing and installing equipment, securing the venture location and finishing all the needed renovations, recruiting and hiring any staff needed for start-up, and the many other steps needed to prepare for start-up.
• Start-Up (also called launch)
• This script begins when the set-up script ends and when the business opens and begins making sales.
• This script ends when the business has moved beyond the point where the entrepreneur must continually fight for the business’s survival and persistence. It ends when the entrepreneur can instead shift emphasis toward business growth or maintaining the venture’s stability.
• The scripting process involves a logical flow of steps needed to establish a new venture.

Ongoing Operations (also called venture growth)

• This script begins when the start-up script ends and when the business has established persistence and is implementing growth (or maintenance) strategies.
• This script ends when the entrepreneur chooses to harvest the value they generated with the venture.
• The scripting process involves a logical flow of steps needed to grow (or maintain) a venture.

Studying Entrepreneurship

The following quotations from two preeminent entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education researchers indicate the growing interest in studies in this field.

Entrepreneurship has emerged over the last two decades as arguably the most potent economic force the world has ever experienced. With that expansion has come a similar increase in the field of entrepreneurship education. The recent growth and development in the curricula and programs devoted to entrepreneurship and new-venture creation have been remarkable. The number of colleges and universities that offer courses related to entrepreneurship has grown from a handful in the 1970s to over 1,600 in 2005 (Kuratko, 2005, p. 577).

Interest in entrepreneurship has heightened in recent years, especially in business schools. Much of this interest is driven by student demand for courses in entrepreneurship, either because of genuine interest in the subject, or because students see entrepreneurship education as a useful hedge given uncertain corporate careers (Venkataraman, 1997, p. 119).

Approaches to Studying Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is a discipline, which means an individual can learn about it, and about how to be an effective entrepreneur. It is a myth that people are born entrepreneurs and that others cannot learn to become entrepreneurs (Drucker, 1985). Kuratko (2005) asserted that the belief previously held by some that entrepreneurship cannot be taught has been debunked, and the focus has shifted to what topics should be taught and how they should be covered.

Solomon (2007) summarized some of the research on what should be covered in entrepreneurship courses, and how it should be taught. While the initial focus was on actions like developing business plans and being exposed to real entrepreneurs, more recently this approach has been supplemented by an emphasis on technical, industry, and personal experience. “It requires critical thinking and ethical assessment and is based on the premise that successful entrepreneurial activities are a function of human, venture and environmental conditions” (p. 172). Another approach “calls for courses to be structured around a series of strategic development challenges including opportunity identification and feasibility analysis; new venture planning, financing and operating; new market development and expansion strategies; and institutionalizing innovation” (p. 172). This involves having students interact with entrepreneurs by interviewing them, having them act as mentors, and learning about their experiences and approaches through class discussions.

Sources of Information for Studying Entrepreneurship

According to Kuratko (2005), “three major sources of information supply the data related to the entrepreneurial process or perspective” (p. 579).

• Academic journals like Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice , Journal of Business Venturing , and Journal of Small Business Management
• Proceedings of conferences like Proceedings of the Academy of Management and Proceedings of the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada
• Textbooks on entrepreneurship
• Books about entrepreneurship
• Biographies or autobiographies of entrepreneurs
• News periodicals like Canadian Business and Profit
• Trade periodicals like Entrepreneur and Family Business
• Government publications available through sources like the Enterprise Saskatchewan and Canada-Saskatchewan Business Service Centre (CSBSC) websites and through various government resource centers
• Data might be collected from entrepreneurs and about entrepreneurs through surveys, interviews, or other methods applied by researchers.
• Speeches and presentations by practicing entrepreneurs

The impact of entrepreneurship of farmers on agriculture and rural economic growth: Innovation-driven perspective

• Zhang, Siqian
• Zhang, Mengyue

This research delves into the underlying impacts of farmers' innovative entrepreneurship on agricultural and rural economic development in China, adopting a dynamic and spatio-temporal perspective. The study utilizes panel data encompassing 30 provinces (cities and autonomous regions) from 2015 to 2020, with a systematic consideration of diversified spatial weight matrices. The empirical findings reveal that the spatial distribution of rural innovative entrepreneurship demonstrates a characteristic of low-low agglomeration, accompanied by evident positive spatial spillover effects and radiation-driving effects, especially in regions with similar urbanization levels. Additionally, the study identifies heterogeneous effects across regions with different grain production patterns and household income levels. Ultimately, the research underscores the significance of deeply integrating farmers' innovation and entrepreneurship and provides empirical evidence to support the necessity of adopting differentiated and specialized incentive measures for rural entrepreneurship amid the context of the new economic normal.

• Innovative entrepreneurship;
• Radiation-driving effect;
• Spatial spillover effect;
• Spatial Durbin model;
• Grain production pattern

The Macroeconomic Impact of Climate Change: Global vs. Local Temperature

This paper estimates that the macroeconomic damages from climate change are six times larger than previously thought. We exploit natural variability in global temperature and rely on time-series variation. A 1°C increase in global temperature leads to a 12% decline in world GDP. Global temperature shocks correlate much more strongly with extreme climatic events than the country-level temperature shocks commonly used in the panel literature, explaining why our estimate is substantially larger. We use our reduced-form evidence to estimate structural damage functions in a standard neoclassical growth model. Our results imply a Social Cost of Carbon of $1,056 per ton of carbon dioxide. A business-as-usual warming scenario leads to a present value welfare loss of 31%. Both are multiple orders of magnitude above previous estimates and imply that unilateral decarbonization policy is cost-effective for large countries such as the United States.

Adrien Bilal gratefully acknowledges support from the Chae Family Economics Research Fund at Harvard University. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

MARC RIS BibTeΧ

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