What is Entrepreneurship?

Before we get into anything and everything technical about entrepreneurship, let’s understand what an entrepreneur is.

An entrepreneur, in simple words, is someone who has come up with a new idea or product and is now serving the market with the product.

And if we had to properly define entrepreneurship for you, it would be the process of developing, organising and running a new business, taking the relevant business risks with the final motive of generating profit and value for all stakeholders involved with the business.

The true meaning of entrepreneurship, more than anything else, is a process of change.

There are multiple types of entrepreneurship, the most common of which are:

• Small business entrepreneurship: These are entrepreneurs who have created a business with one person without the goal of expanding or creating a franchise.
  • These businesses normally do not have a large team or very high revenue compared to other businesses.
  • These could be your local salons, your local grocery, hardware stores etc where the owner only makes profit if the business makes money as a whole.

• Start-up entrepreneurship: Startup entrepreneurs are immersed in the idea of changing the world and finding new ways to develop repeatable business models often using technology or creating new technology.
  • One key differentiator for startups is that the models are scalable (meaning more sales can be generated with more resources). Scalable start-up entrepreneurs intend for rapid business growth and big profit gains.
  • In almost all cases, the businesses tap into a market that is massive in size and so, there is potential for the entrepreneur to grow the business.
  • Examples of some popular startups are: Uber, Airbnb, Amazon etc.

• Large Company Entrepreneurship: this refers to large businesses creating new segments through innovation.
  • Large companies such as Microsoft, Google, Samsung, Apple benefit from this type of entrepreneurship as this offers new product lines by keeping their core products intact.
  • It is important to note that this does not mean that a new business is created, rather new divisions are created or new businesses are acquired to grow the customer base and/or to reaching out to new markets for their products.

• Social Entrepreneurship: these are entrepreneurs whose main goal is to innovate to solve social problems and at the same time - earn from it.
  • Social entrepreneurship aims to recognise social issues and enact social change through entrepreneurial practices.
  • Social entrepreneurship relates to not-for-profits, for-profits or hybrid companies that commit to social or environmental change, such as educational programs, microfinance institutions etc.
  • A good example of a social enterprise in Asia is Grameen Bank, the nobel prize winning micro-finance institute based out of Bangladesh which is credited with first introducing the microfinance model, which has since been used by other social support ventures globally.