The Concept of Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is regarded as one of the four major factors of production, the other three being land, labour and capital. Interestingly, the word 'entrepreneurship' has a French origin — it comes from the verb entreprendre, meaning 'to undertake' — and originally referred not to economics but to the undertaking of military expeditions. Several management terms have similar roots (for example strategy and logistics), which is not surprising, since periods of war have historically been followed by economic reconstruction. The difference is that while wars are rare, in today's competitive world the entrepreneur wages a fresh battle every day — under constant pressure to develop new products, explore new markets, update technology and devise innovative ways of marketing.

The term 'entrepreneur' was first introduced into economics by the early eighteenth-century French economist Richard Cantillon, who defined the entrepreneur as the agent who buys the means of production at certain prices in order to sell the produce at uncertain prices in the future. From the way the term has been used in economics ever since, entrepreneurship is seen to imply the bearing of risk and uncertainty, the coordination of productive resources, the introduction of innovations and the provision of capital. …