In general, entrepreneurship is the process of searching and exploiting the profitable opportunities, creating new utilities and values by transforming resources and by bearing risks of innovative decisions so that social expectations and needs can be fulfilled and wealth can be created to mobilize economic growth. According to Peter Kilby, “Entrepreneurship involves a wide range of activities which includes perception of market opportunity, coordinating and managing the factors of production and introduction of the production techniques and products.”
According to Franklin Lindsay :
“Entrepreneurship is anticipating the future requirements of society and successfully meeting those needs with new, creative new imaginative combinations of resources.
Characteristics of Entrepreneurship :
- Innovation : It involves innovation of something new and better. It includes new technique, new products or new way of distribution. According to Peter. F. Ducker, “Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneur is a change agent.”
- Economic activity : Entrepreneurship is primarily a wealth-producing task. It involves putting the resources to productive use. It creates and operates an enterprise. It is basically concerned with opening a new business venture and running it with an objective to earn profits.
- Risk-bearing capacity : An entrepreneur bears risk of setting up and operating a new enterprise, offering new products in market, determining prices in market, uncertainties, risk of investing his time, effort and wealth.
- A process of searching opportunities : “Entrepreneurship is about pursuing environment trends and changes that no one else has seen or paid attention to. It precludes the awareness of opportunities that exist in everyday life.
- Organisational creation : Entrepreneurship is a business – oriented activity. It reflects the business and enterprising nature of a person. In encourages people to start business.
- Result of high achievements : Entrepreneurship is said to be the need and motive of high achievers. For fulfilling their ambition of higher achievements, they work continuously.
- Professional activity : In todays competitive age, entrepreneurship is adopted as a profession like engineering or law. Any individual can became an entrepreneur by taking proper knowledge and training in different management institutes.
- Entrepreneurship is a behaviour : Entrepreneurship is not a born personality trait, but it emerges as an art of making risk – bearing decision and enterprising behaviour of a person. In words of P. F. Ducker, “Entrepreneurship is not a science and not an art. It is a behaviour.”
