The concept of ‘entrepreneurship’ is an age-old phenomenon that relates to the vision of an entrepreneur as well as its implementation by him.

Entrepreneurship is one of the most important inputs in the economic development of a country or a region. Entrepreneurship is the best way to fight the evil of unemployment. They create jobs for themselves but also provide employment opportunities to others. Entrepreneurship contributes for the social and economic development of the state and country.In fact entrepreneurship is the dynamic need of a developing nation.

Entrepreneurship means change. It is a creative and innovative response to the environment. Entrepreneurship is a composite skill that is a mixture of many qualities and traits such as imagination, risk taking, ability to harness factors of production i.e. land, labour, technology and various intangible factors.

J.A. Timmoans gives the definition as ‘Entrepreneurship  is  the ability to create and build something from practically nothing’. Entrepreneurship culture implies a set of values, norms and traits that are conducive to the growth of entrepreneurship. In India a large number of people are seeking entrepreneurship as a career option. Increasing number of educated youth is getting attracted towards entrepreneurship and is setting up their business ventures. According to Schumpeter ‘Entrepreneurship is a creative activity’^.

According to Robert Ronstadt ‘It is dynamic process of creating incremental wealth. This wealth is created by individuals who assume the major risks in terms of equity, time and career commitment of providing value for some product or service. The product or service itself may or may not be new or unique but value must somehow be infused by the entrepreneur by securing and allocating the necessary skills and resources. Entrepreneurship is a creative human activity involving the mobilization of resources from one level of productive use to a higher level of use.

It is the process by which the individual pursue opportunities without regard to resources currently controlled. Entrepreneurship involves a willingness to take responsibility and ability to put mind to a task and see it through from inception to completion. Another ingredient of entrepreneurship is sensing opportunities, while others see chaos, contradiction, and confusion. Essence of Entrepreneurship is going against time with maturity and serving as a change agent. During the last three decades, the concept of entrepreneurship has assumed prime importance both in research and in action for accelerating economic growth in the developing countries.¹⁵

In India, social and cultural issues hold their importance besides issues related to infrastructure. Any innovation to succeed in our society needs to be accepted by our value systems and cultural issues. It will not be wrong to say that dot.com will not succeed until and unless a high level of awareness is achieved and the idea is taken to the common people. An acceptance by the mass in itself is a kind of social innovation. Further, in our country, where the population is more concerned about making both ends meet, entrepreneurial activity will achieve sustainability only when support is provided both at the societal and governmental levels.

In present day condition, entrepreneurship is the purposeful activity of an individual or a group of associated persons initiating, promoting and maintaining business activity for the production of wealth and distribution of goods and services with a pecuniary motive or such benefits in the given social and political conditions. The rate of economic progress of a nation depends upon its rate of innovation which in turn depends upon the distribution of entrepreneurial talent in the population. Technical progress alone cannot lead to economic development, unless technological breakthrough are put through economic use by entrepreneur.¹⁶ It is the entrepreneur who organizes and puts  to use capital, labour and technology.

Entrepreneurial Skill:

Skill to deal with different challenging situations is an essential characteristic of efficient entrepreneur. The entrepreneur is rarely a master of all management skills, and yet he is responsible for all aspects of business. Many a times he has to be the General Manager, Production Manager, etc. all rolled in one. Following are the essential qualities that go for making a good entrepreneur:

• He must be an enterprising person.

• He must be energetic and hardworking and resourceful.

• He must be alert to exploit new opportunities.

• He must be able to adjust with the changing conditions.

• He must assume risks.

• He must be interested in advancing technology in respect of quality, product or service.
• He must be interested in expanding the scale of operations.

• He must be able to visualize and make changes.

• He must work for the good of the society.

 Qualities of Entrepreneurship

Innovative

Need for high achievement

Good organizer

Risk taker

Hard working

Highly optimistic

Independence

Foresight

Perseverance

Team spirit

Good communication skills

Flexibility

Adaptability

Very high energy level

Work ethics

Honesty and integrity

Initiative

Self confidence

Tolerance of ambiguity

High commitment

 Economic Need of Entrepreneurship

Capital formation by mobilizing idle resources (human resources, money, raw material etc.)

Large scale employment

Balanced regional development

Concentration of economic power

Redistribution of wealth

Backward and forward linkage

Promotes country’s export trade

Rural entrepreneurship

Women entrepreneurship

 Psychological Need

Need for achievement

Confidence develops

Further gets motivation

 Social need

Unemployment is reduced

Social status of country improves

 Difference between Manager and Entrepreneur

Entrepreneur:

The more precise meaning of ‘entrepreneur’ is one who creates his own business i.e. a person who organizes, operates and assumes the risk of a business venture. He is a catalyst of development. An entrepreneur is a person who perceives a need and then brings together manpower; material and capital required meeting that need. The entrepreneur is a business leader who has a pivotal role in fostering economic growth and development.

A good entrepreneur is one who is capable of inspiring confidence in people and has the ability to motivate them to work with him in fulfilling the economic goals set  by him. An entrepreneur is a person who incubates new ideas, starts enterprises based on those ideas and provides added value to society based on this independent initiative.⁶ Entrepreneurs have vision for growth, commitment to constructive change, persistence to gather necessary resources and energy to achieve unusual results.

A person having entrepreneurial qualities is an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur is the person who bears the risk of uncertainty in business (Richard Cantillon). An entrepreneur is a change agent (J.B. Say). An entrepreneur is an organizer, is an innovator, a risk bearer, a resource assembler and organizer.⁷ The small business person may exhibit these characteristics but only occasionally, not as a pre-requisite to establishing an enterprise. The numbers of competence of entrepreneurs affect the economic growth of a region. He is the most important inputs in the economic development of a country.

Entrepreneurial competence exercises a considerable influence on the rate of economic growth. A person, who initiates, establishers, maintains and expands new enterprise, constitutes a entrepreneurial class. The socio-economic and political conditions, availability of advanced technology and know-how, state of art and culture of business and trading, existence of market for product, all have bearing on the development and growth of entrepreneurship. In this respect, training may have a definite impact on the success of entrepreneurship programme.⁹

Entrepreneurship Development:

Capacity building in the SSI sector, both for entrepreneurs as well as workers, will be given top priority. The Ministry of SSI & ARI and Ministry of Labour will work out the strategy jointly.

Facilitating Prompt Payment:

The Reserve Bank of India is being requested to appoint a Task Force to go into the question of strengthening and popularizing factoring services, without recourse to the SSI suppliers. The Task Force shall give its report within six months of its constitution. RBI is being requested to take up with the banks, the question of sub-allocating overall limits to the large borrowers specifically for meeting the payment obligations in respect of purchases from the SSIs, either on case basis or on bills basis.

Rehabilitation of sick units:

RBI is being requested to draw up revised guidelines for the rehabilitation of currently sick but potentially viable SSI units. Such guidelines should be detailed, transparent and non-discretionary.

Promoting Rural Industries:

To support the Handloom Sector “Deendayal Hathkarga Protsahan Yojna” has been announced. The scheme has a total financial implication of Rs. 447 crores and will provide comprehensive financial and infrastructural support to weavers. The Government is working out new comprehensive package to strengthen Khadi and Village Industries that will further upgrade the skills of Khadi Workers.

Improving Data Base:

A fresh Census of Small Scale Industries will be conducted covering inter-alia, the incidence of sickness and its causes.

Evolution of the Concept of Entrepreneurs:

‘Entrepreneur’ is a French word which means between-taker or go- between. In the earliest days the explanation of the evolution of the theory of entrepreneurship can be rightly given by the example of Marco Polo – He was one of the beginners to establish trading from west to east. The concept which he used was to make a contract with a money person and take a loan on a high interest rate and on the other hand he himself would bear all the physical and emotional risks.

Next, the middle ages where the entrepreneur would be an actor or in-charge of large production projects like great architectural works, and would be provided resources by the government, and the individual did not take any risks, but rendered his services. The concept of taking risk by entrepreneurs again evolved in the 17^th century when an entrepreneur would be given a particular job by the government but a contract was signed according to which the price was fixed but any profits and losses would be borne by the entrepreneur.

Richard Cantillon is regarded as the founder to the tern entrepreneur and defined this risk taker as one who buys at a certain price and sells at an uncertain price therefore operating at a risk. Entrepreneur was differentiated from the capital provider in the 18^th century (i.e. from the venture capitalist). Hence, emerged the two groups, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, capital users and capital providers.

This difference was made since venture capitalist would make risk investments to obtain a high rate of return of investments and an entrepreneur developed new products or one can say used the capital for product development. In the next stage when entrepreneurs role was identified as that of a reformer who would revolutionize the pattern of production by an invention or by introducing a new way of supplying materials, a new outlet for products or by introducing a new technological method. He would impart his own initiative and skill. He will further assume the risk of loss and chance of profit depending upon the unforeseen and uncontrollable circumstances.