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What is entrepreneurship?

Entrepreneurship is the action of exploiting an opportunity like setting up a business or taking on financial risk in the pursuit of making a profit. Therefore, entrepreneurship represents the process of starting a new venture, growing the business and then scaling the venture up to become a dominant player in a market.

To be entrepreneurial is to display characteristics that are associated with the processes of identifying an opportunity, evaluating the opportunity and then exploiting the opportunity.

In light of an opportunity, what does this actually mean?

What is meant by an entrepreneurial opportunity?

An opportunity in the entrepreneurial sense will be when new goods, services, raw materials and/or organizing methods can be introduced and sold at a higher rate than what they cost to produce, and therefore showing a profit.

Opportunities originate from multiple sources, but mostly start with an idea. All ideas do not always transform into opportunities as they might not be desired at the time, or it might not be feasible to act on them. Therefore, some ideas will be parked for later development, or will be discarded. Having a desired and feasible idea however, requires action to transform the idea into an opportunity. Here, action can be seen as the consequence from a judgemental decision about the opportunity for profit.

Transform an idea into an opportunity…

Therefore, to transform an idea into an opportunity, a judgement about the opportunity’s feasibility must be made, as hinted at above, it requires some knowledge about: (1) the nature of the opportunity, (2) the contextual environment (market) in which the opportunity was discovered or created, and (3) the ability of the individual who wants to exploit the opportunity. Thus, taking action will require prior knowledge regarding the type of opportunity, the environment and skills needed to perform such actions.

What motivate entrepreneurs?

Furthermore, apart from prior knowledge, to be motivated to take action, some form of motivation needs to be present, such as (1) the possibility for profit and wealth creation, (2) an inner drive to become an entrepreneur, (3) autonomy, independence or the need to achieve etc. These factors can be grouped under pull factors towards becoming entrepreneurial. The other side of the coin represents the push factors associated with (1) necessity, (2) subsistence, and (3) unemployment. Entrepreneurship in this instance become a tool for survival.

Taking a more practical view, looking at tools available to assist entrepreneurs in starting their new ventures. Google has just release some helpful tools and best practices for those who never stop starting…

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