The Definition of an Entrepreneur

Many people said that the success of a business depends upon the people who manage it. They said that it depends upon the managerial skills of the people engaged in it, their abilities to make wise decisions, their prowess to innovate, and their innate talents and characteristics to run a business.

In the field of business, there are many individuals involved and because of that, common folks sometimes interchange the roles of different persons in business world. They sometimes think that the managers are the chief executive officers of the companies. They also perceives that entrepreneurs have the same meaning with business owners or manager; and worst, they even think that all people who have careers related to business are business owners and entrepreneurs.

One of the most common mistake of many people’s perception towards business is the thinking that business owner is the same thing with entrepreneurs. They usually think that someone who have their own business can be called entrepreneurs or vice versa. But just what had mentioned earlier, this is a big misconception.

Entrepreneurs are very different from business owners, marketers, managers and especially to employees. When you do not have enough knowledge in business area, you will definitely have a hard time on examining who is the entrepreneur and who is not. In this short informative text, the basic concepts of entrepreneur will be introduce to you. However, the definition of entrepreneur will be defined first and then the concepts will follow.

You may probably encounter the word entrepreneur many times but you still did not bother to grab a dictionary to look for its meaning. Maybe because you think you already know it, or you are just lazy to know what is the meaning behind those twelve-letter word. Anyway, this text will make the definition of entrepreneur clear to you.

According to the excerpt from the World Encyclopedia of Entrepreneurship, the term “entrepreneur” is a French word derived from “entrepede”, a verb which means to do or to undertake. The excerpt said that it can be divided into two parts, “entre” which means between and “preneur” which means taker. So, entrepreneur literally means “between taker” and if you dwelt in this meaning you will suppose that entrepreneur is someone who takes something in between, something that is between good or bad, or in short something that is unsure. The “between taker” meaning of the word entrepreneur is closely related to the nature of a business man which is being a risk taker. Maybe that relation is possible because entrepreneurs may also have risk-taking attitude.

Entrepreneur is the one who will buy things at certain prices. Those things that he bought will be combined in order to produce another product that he will sell at a certain price, not knowing if someone will buy it and if he is going to retrieve his investment. (Amiri and Marimaei,2012). This clearly shows that entrepreneurs have the risk-taking attitudes that allow them to grab unsure opportunities and discover new ventures in business that were not yet tested by anyone. Entrepreneurs are opportunity seekers. They usually think outside the box and they usually visualize and explore things that are out of their comfort zones. Entrepreneurs can be compared to curious adolescents. Those adolescents tend to take challenges in their lives in order to learn things that will help them grow as a person. Entrepreneurs are also like that. They tend to grab more risks and innovate things in order to experience new stuffs and discover different business matters that will fulfill the gaps in their career and in business arena as well.

Based on Google dictionary, entrepreneur is a person who organizes a business or businesses. This definition is somewhat correct but it does not fully define entrepreneur. It does not point out the difference of this word to the other actors in business field. To make it more clearer, Michael Schaper, the author of the book Entrepreneurship and Small Business (2^nd Edition) defined entrepreneur as the foundation of the entrepreneurial tasks. The book mentioned that entrepreneur is the one who can see an opportunity, use their resources to achieve this opportunity, and the one who builds an institution that uses their resources to create things that will make that opportunity worth it. In short entrepreneurs are innovators that combines anything new under the sun to discover or develop things that will surely have the chance to be marketable in the market, advance old ideas and remake something old to something fresh and unique. In addition, another book, Fundamentals of Management written by Andrew Dubrin also explained entrepreneur as the one who discovers, evaluate, and exploit new business opportunities. The book also expounded that “entrepreneurs have vision for growth, a commitment to innovation, persistence in gathering the necessary resources, and an overriding need to achieve.”

In a nutshell, in order to become an entrepreneur, you should be the vanguard of innovation in terms of business. You should take opportunities and use your resources in order to make something new. You should take the risk to create original ideas and works.

Reference:

• Amiri, N. and Marimaei, M. (2012). Concept of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs traits and characteristics. Scholarly Journal of Business Administration, 2(7), 150-155. doi:  2276-7216 @2012 Scholarly-Journals. Retrieved from http://scholarly-journals.com/sjba/archive/2012/November/pdf/Amiri%20and%20Marim aei.pdf
• Entrepreneur. (2017). Google dictionary. Retrieved from https://www.google.com.ph/search?q=entrepreneur
• Filion, L.J. (2011). World encyclopedia of entrepreneurship: Defining the entrepreneur. Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar.
• Schaper, M. (2007). Entrepreneurship and small business (2^nd Pacific rim ed). Australia: John Wiley & Sons.