Enterprising/ Entrepreneurship : Introduction

• As said elsewhere there are four factors of production
• These are: capital, land, labour and enterprise/entrepreneurship
• An entrepreneur can be defined as an individual who organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on financial risk to do so
• Entrepreneurship meanwhile refers to the capacity and willingness to develop, organize and manage a business venture along with any of its risks in order to make a profit
• The word is also used to describe the actual process of designing, launching and running a new business
• An entrepreneur is someone who uses their skill and knowledge to bring together the other factors of production
• Their aim is to make a profit as a result of starting this enterprise
• They are however taking a risk that if things do not work out they will make a loss
• A loss will see the entrepreneur losing the amount they invested in starting the business
• And even their personal property ( in cases of unlimited liability)
• In case that is not clear an enterprise is a business
• It is sometimes used instead of the word business in order to
• Emphasise that a business is merely an enterprising activity started by initiative and resourcefulness of an entrepreneur
• The adjective enterprising is usually used to describe someone who has or showing initiative and resourcefulness
• Usually, such people are well known serial entrepreneurs or people who created a business that had revolutionary consequences
• Examples of enterprising individuals include:
  • Strive Masiyiwa the founder of Liquid Telecoms and Econet Global Groups
  • Lawrence Edward Page and Sergey Brin the founders of Google
  • Mark Zuckerberg the founder of Facebook
  • Jeff Bezos of Amazon
  • Martha Stewart
  • Oprah Winfrey
  • Steve Jobs founder of Apple
  • Henry T Ford of Ford
• Enterprising culture refers to an ingrained habit of showing initiative, innovativeness and willingness to take the risk of starting an enterprise
• Serial entrepreneurs are said to have an enterprising culture as they have a propensity to creating innovative startups
• A startup is a business that is in the early stage in the life cycle of an enterprise where the entrepreneur moves from the idea stage to securing financing, laying down the basic structure of the business, and initiating operations or trading
• A lot of businesses begin as startups, for example, Google was a startup that was only available to students at Stanford University in its early days

To access more topics go to the Advanced Level Business Studies/ Business Enterprise Skills page

To access more topics go to the Cambridge AS A Level Business Studies page