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What It Means
Entrepreneurship is the practice of forming a new business or commercial
enterprise, usually in an industry or sector of the economy with a large capacity for
growth. Entrepreneurship is generally synonymous with resourcefulness,
ingenuity, and the ability to take calculated risks in order to introduce a new,
untested product or service into the marketplace. These traits are often referred to
collectively as the “entrepreneurial spirit.”
In some cases the entrepreneur invents or develops a new product or service, which
then forms the core of his or her new business. In other cases, however, the
entrepreneur simply discovers a new way to market and sell an existing product or
service. The risks undertaken by the entrepreneur are often considerable. Some
entrepreneurs invest everything they own into their new enterprise, with no
guarantee that the business will succeed. Other times a successful businessman will
risk his reputation on a new idea, the failure of which could potentially jeopardize
his entire career. Because of the high level of risk involved in entrepreneurial
endeavors, the entrepreneur generally hopes to earn a high rate of return in the
venture.
One of the most important American entrepreneurs of the late nineteenth century
was the Scottish-born steel magnate Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919). The epitome
of the “self-made man,” Carnegie rose from humble origins to become one of the
wealthiest and most powerful businessmen in America. He embodied many of the
essential characteristics of the entrepreneur. Hardworking and friendly, Carnegie
impressed his early employers with his dedication, intelligence, and ambition,
qualities that earned him rapid advancement at an early age. He was also fiercely
dedicated to self-improvement, and throughout his life he strove to educate himself
on a range of subjects, from economics and business to literature and art.
Recent Trends
In the late twentieth century the rise of the corporation resulted, to some degree, in
the diminished importance of the individual entrepreneur. Joseph Schumpeter had
foreseen this shift almost a century earlier. He had predicted that the advancement
of entrepreneurship, particularly its role in making corporations more systematized
and efficient, would ultimately diminish the power of the individual to act with the
decisiveness and boldness characteristic of the entrepreneur. Schumpeter argued
that the eventual result would be corporatism, a bureaucratic system composed of
diverse, politically organized groups that would assume responsibility for the
management of certain sectors of the economy, while the traditional figure of the
entrepreneur would be replaced by the corporate manager or director.