Paraphernalias of Entrepreneurship – A Contemplating Outlook

Introduction

In this ever-evolving world, to keep pace with its intricacies, humans have to reinvent themselves, this reinvention process by very nature requires an entrepreneurial mindset and constant reinvention requires long term vision, creating opportunities for growth and fostering synergies in the ecosystem. Entrepreneurship during the last few decades has gained an immense interest in academia, politics and practice, it is also argued from several spheres of society in most of the developing countries that more entrepreneurs are necessary for the economic development. In addition, nowadays entrepreneurship is also perceived as a solution to social and societal challenges. This drives a need for entrepreneurial people everywhere in society who can cope with the inconstant and uncertain world of today. As a consequence, there are around the world numerous educational initiatives trying to inspire and fuel an entrepreneurial mind-set. Here, educations of all kind become relevant contexts since they provide an opportunity to affect children, youth’s and adult’s interest and attitudes towards entrepreneurship, and as such give a possibility to reach a vast number of people (Axelsson, 2017).

As a key driving force of today’s society, entrepreneurship is considered not only an important constituent in the organization of modern economies and an engine of economic progress, but also a solution in order to face social challenges such as unemployment and poverty. Tamvada (2010) stated that self-employed are more likely to escape poverty, as are salaried employees and entrepreneurs who are employers. An entrepreneur is an innovator or developer who recognizes and seizes opportunities; converts those opportunities into workable/marketable ideas; adds value through time, effort, money, or skills; assumes the risks of the competitive marketplace to implement these ideas; and realizes the rewards from these' efforts. The global financial and economic crisis has heightened “…interest in entrepreneurship as an essential element to foster economic recovery and employment growth…” (OECD, 2014). Entrepreneurship stimulates economic growth and drives job creation (Kamakula & Patro, 2018). Consequently, entrepreneurship has increasingly become an important vocation and option for many people all over the world.

According to the OECD-Eurostat Entrepreneurship Indicators Programme (EIP), entrepreneurship is defined as “…the phenomenon associated with entrepreneurial activity, which is the enterprising human action in pursuit of the generation of value, through the creation or expansion of economic activity, by identifying and exploiting new products, processes or markets…” (OECD, 2012). Shane and Venkataraman (2000) considered entrepreneurship as the process by which “opportunities to create future goods and services are discovered, evaluated, and exploited.” It is undoubtedly that entrepreneurship manifests itself throughout the global economy in various forms and differs across time and locations. However, the entrepreneurial economy highlights “the interplay between the entrepreneur, the entrepreneurial firm and the society”, and has already profound effects that go beyond economic life (Welter et al., 2013). The entrepreneur is the aggressive catalyst for change in the world of business. The important characteristics are personal initiative, the ability to consolidate resources, management skills, a desire for autonomy, and risk taking. Other characteristics include aggressiveness, competitiveness, goal-oriented behaviour, confidence, opportunistic behaviour, intuitiveness, reality-based actions, the ability to learn from mistakes, and the ability to employ human relations skills.