Characteristics And Evolution Of Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is a concept that has been around for a few hundreds of years. It is very difficult to get an exact definition of Entrepreneur since many professionals have different opinions as to what the actual meaning is. Arrays of key authors throughout the years have defined the term in numerous ways in regards to the various characteristics/traits that individuals should have. Entrepreneurship was initially acknowledged by an economist named Richard Cantillon (1755) who recognised the essential role of an entrepreneur in economic development. He defined entrepreneur as somebody with the aptitude to take risk and ability to “undertake”. Jean-Baptiste Say (1803, 1815) also an economist specified entrepreneur as the pivot of the economy and a catalyst for economic alteration and

Schumpeter (1911/1934, 1928) believed entrepreneurs were hero figures which had the ability to become innovators and identify opportunities. Knight (1921) described an entrepreneur as someone who is willing to take risk to attain profit as a reward. Drucker (1974) was considered the “father of modern management”; he stated entrepreneurial management and strategies along with innovation are crucial to making the future or into a different business. Kirzner (1973, 1979, 1997 and 1999) identified that entrepreneurs play the role of spotting opportunities and being creative. More recently Ely and Hess in 1983 created a four-factor model which consists of entrepreneur, capital, labour and enterprise, this model was made to understand entrepreneurship in depth. From this we can see that over time some of the key scholars have disparate approaches regarding entrepreneurship and how a foundation platform has progressively been advanced into academic