Entrepreneurship: Origins and Definitions

• Entrepreneurship involves undertaking opportunities to fulfill needs and wants.

Origins and Definitions

• The first recorded human trade occurred in New Guinea around 17,000 BCE, involving obsidian volcanic glass tools.
• Richard Cantillon was the first to use "entreprendre" in economics, defining an agent who assembles inputs to produce goods at a fixed price.
• Jean-Baptiste Say defined the entrepreneur as an economic agent central to the production and distribution process.
• The word "entreprendre" first appeared in the French Dictionary in 1723.
• The Oxford English Dictionary adopted “entrepreneur” in 1897, defining it as the director or manager of a public musical institution or entertainment venue.
• Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1961) defines an entrepreneur as an organizer of economic ventures who manages and assumes business risks.
• Today, entrepreneurship is generally viewed as innovating, risk-bearing, and wealth creation.

Entrepreneurial Characteristics

• An entrepreneur is someone who starts and/or operates a business and is creative and innovative.
• A successful entrepreneur possesses courage, confidence, efficiency, decisiveness, enthusiasm, and innovation.
• They also demonstrate integrity, opportunity-seeking, patience, perseverance, persuasion, and calculated risk-taking.
• Systematic planning is essential for entrepreneurs to meticulously assess how their activities contribute to long-term goals.
• Entrepreneurs are motivated to earn profit, make their own choices, achieve success, seize opportunities, and give back .

Advantages of Becoming an Entrepreneur

• Opportunity to create your own destiny.
• Potential to become financially well-off.
• Increased self-knowledge.
• Chance to excel, gain recognition, and contribute to society.

Business Ideation and Opportunity

• Business ideation is the process of generating an idea through identifying problems, brainstorming, and conducting research.
• The "3S" of opportunity involve seeking, screening, and seizing potential business ventures.

Anatomy of a Business Opportunity

• A business opportunity comprises resources, a solution, and a problem.
• Resources include the 6Ms: money, machine, manpower, materials, milieu, and methods.
• The solution is any product or service that addresses the problem.
• The problem represents the market's needs or wants.
• A business opportunity is not viable if any of these three components are missing.

Theoretical Approaches to Identifying Business Opportunities

• Discovery Theory: Involves identifying a market problem, thinking of a solution, and then securing necessary resources.
• Creation Theory: Focuses on creating business opportunities that the market will adopt by first finding resources, creating a product, and then checking for a problem it can solve.

Validation Methods

• Fact-finding methods include data analysis, surveys, competitive analysis, user reviews, and field research.
• Surveys can be formal or digital, as well as informal, such as informal Boolean surveys or informal essays.

Opportunity-Seizing

• It is defined as mobilizing resources to address needs and opportunities
• Teece et al., 2016, are credited with this definition

Business Model Canvas

• Tool for visualizing the essential elements of a business, including customers, marketing strategy, value proposition, and finances.
• Alex Osterwalder invented the Business Model Canvas and co-founded Strategyzer.com.

Key Elements of the Business Model Canvas:

• Customer Segments: Defining who the customers are and understanding their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
• Value Propositions: Describing what's compelling about the proposition and why customers choose to buy or us

SWOT Analysis

• A strategic tool assessing internal organizational strengths and weaknesses with external opportunities and threats
• Strengths: Internal advantages that give a competitive edge, generating economic value.
• Weaknesses: Internal disadvantages that hinder successful outcomes and impede economic value creation.
• Opportunities: External factors that can enhance organizational performance if utilized. Threats: External factors that can negatively impact and jeopardize the business.

Types of Business Environment

• Business environments can be internal (micro) or external (macro).

Internal Environment

• Includes events or situations within an organization, management methods, marketing mix, and financial matters

External Environment

• Events outside the organization that are harder to predict or control, can include social, political, economic, environmenal/ecological, and technological factors.

Business Environment Considerations

• The business environment is ever-changing and constant
• Every company faces threats in its environment.