By Dr Ken Barnes
“…Entrepreneurship has many salient and important components which must be taken into cognizance by the entrepreneur striving to succeed.
Barringer and Ireland,(2012), defined entrepreneurship as “the process by which individuals pursue opportunities without regards to resources they currently control” . To Barringer and Ireland therefore, entrepreneurship involves looking for opportunities and exploiting it through the mobilization of resources with which to exploit that opportunity. Thus an entrepreneur must be able to have the ability to mobilize capital.
Norman M Scarborough(2012) states that the word “entrepreneur” comes from the French verb ‘entreprendre’ which means ‘to undertake. Scarborough defines the entrepreneur as the “one who creates a new business in the face of risk and uncertainty for the purpose of achieving profits by the identification of opportunities and assembling the necessary resources to capitalize on the opportunities“. This definition also mentions the concept of opportunity identification, mobilization of capital, the risk and uncertainties associated with the new venture and the ability to exploit the opportunity for profit.
Hisrich, Peters and Shepherd (2010), define an entrepreneur as “an individual who takes initiative to bundle resources in innovative ways and is willing to bear the risk and or uncertainty to act“. This definition also recognizes risk, uncertainties, the concept of initiative, the need to mobilize resources and also introduces the subject of initiative into the definition. To the proponents, entrepreneurship involves taking initiatives. It also involves the organization and reorganization of social and economic mechanisms in an attempt to bundle resources using innovation. To the Hisrich, Peters and Shepherd, entrepreneurship also entails the acceptance of risk, uncertainty, and the potential for failure.
From the various definitions, one can safely classify the entrepreneurial process into some broad categories; “Creation ,” -the creation of a new valuable business venture through the investment of time and effort. “Devotion”- the assumption of financial, emotional and psychological risks and uncertainties and finally “Rewards”- which has to do with the satisfaction derived- monetary and or personal.
Many entrepreneurial ventures fail partly because the entrepreneurs are not able to identify clearly what the entrepreneurial process is so while they excel in the Creativity process of being very innovative, creative and able to identify opportunities, they are not able to withstand the Devotion process of marshalling the necessary resources to emotionally, psychologically and financially succeed. Some entrepreneurs concentrate so much on the reward process to the detriment of the other processes.
In an article titled why entrepreneurs fail, Paul B. Brown stated that entrepreneurs fail due to too much passion but lack of desire to start. Thus an entrepreneur might have all the necessary ingredients to start a business venture but lack of desire to start will cause him or her to fail…”
Part of a speech delivered at an educational workshop for Small Businesses on the “Meaning of Entrepreneurship”
Dr Ken Barnes is a Management Consultant with Specializations in Entrepreneurship and Business Management, Marketing and Human Capital Development
