What is entrepreneurship? It certainly makes sense to start this article by really defining the term and understanding what it is and what it isn't.
Definitions of entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values than simply economic ones.
More narrow definitions have described entrepreneurship as the process of designing, launching and running a new business, which is often similar to a small business, or as the capacity and willingness to develop, organize and manage a business venture along with any of its risks to make a profit.
Why study entrepreneurship?
Isn't it something that you simply learn by doing? Or what are the motivations that people have for studying entrepreneurship?
1. Money
Well one motivation that we often hear from students is that of financial, and money and that's fine. That's a fine motivation.
I would say that there's also the other side of the coin of likelihood or potential for that monetary success that is lower in start-ups than in many other careers.
But, again if that's one of your ambitions, that's certainly fine.
2. Independence
What we also see from students is an element of independence. With entrepreneurship, they want to do something different than what might be out there.
They might want to make their own choice and pursue industries and markets and customers.
In solutions that are personally interesting to them. And they see entrepreneurship as a path to achieve that. Tied to that is an element of freedom.
3. Freedom
Now, with freedom it doesn't necessarily mean that you wake up late, you go to bed early.
And that entrepreneurship is easy. What it does mean is that you have the flexibility and the choice to do what you would like to do.
Now when you are also working with investors, when your working with partners, when you're working with customers, you do have a different type of boss in a different format in a different flavor.
But it's not the type of traditional boss that many individuals may have.
So when added all up freedom is certainly a motive for entrepreneurship and pursuing entrepreneurship.
4. Creat
There's an element of creation, of wanting to build a business, of wanting to build products and build solutions that we see an attractant for entrepreneurship.
5. Help
There's an element of helping. There's an element of social entrepreneurship that we'll talk about, where you're building businesses or you're building solutions, but they may be combating poverty.
They may be combating homelessness. They may be trying to improve education, or healthcare, or other societal interests that you're trying to achieve with your new venture.
Why not entrepreneurship?
If there's this thing that you can make money, you can create, you can help, you can have freedom and independence.
Why isn't everyone doing it? Why in the U.S for example, are less than 4% of the adult population entrepreneurs?
1. Risk
Well, there is risk. There's risk of time. There's risk of money.
2. Failure
There is elements tied to failure. You are likely to fail. Based on most research on entrepreneurship.
3. Peer pressure
There is peer pressure. It may not be the most popular thing among your friends or your family.
They may see the risk as not worth taking, and that's an added challenge for entrepreneurs.
4. Cost
There's an opportunity cost of to take a job somewhere else. Of to use your time to generate a more reliable stream of salary and income by other pursuits.
What does it take to succeed in entrepreneurship?
We've talked about some of the benefits. We've talked about some of the challenges.
What does it take to succeed in entrepreneurship? And this is probably the heart of our article.
1. Opportunity discovery
What we'll going to be looking at is opportunity discovery. How do you identify a great idea?
How do you validate an idea that you may already have, as something that has some true entrepreneurial potential.
2. Opportunity analysis
So there's that level of analysis that we'll talk about, of really understanding what's it take to really understand and demystify entrepreneurship. And dig in and find great opportunities.
3. Effective & Efficient decision-making
We'll talk about decision making. And before we talk about businesses, we'll talk about the entrepreneur themselves.
Summary
- Understanding opportunity discovery
- Opportunity analysis
- Entrepreneurial decision-making
And these are going to be some of the key things.