Monday, May 18, 2009

Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship according to Onuoha (2007) is the practice of starting new organizations or revitalizing mature organizations, particularly new businesses generally in response to identified opportunities. Entrepreneurship is often a difficult undertaking, as a vast majority of new businesses fail. Entrepreneurial activities are substantially different depending on the type of organization that is being started.

Entrepreneurship ranges in scale from solo projects (even involving the entrepreneur only part-time) to major undertakings creating many job opportunities. Many "high-profile" entrepreneurial ventures seek venture capital or angel funding in order to raise capital to build the business. Angel investors generally seek returns of 20-30% and more extensive involvement in the business.

Many kinds of organizations now exist to support would-be entrepreneurs, including specialized government agencies, business incubators, science parks, and some NGOs. The acts of entrepreneurship is often associated with true uncertainty, particularly when it involves bringing something really novel to the world, whose market never exists. Before the Internet, nobody knew the market for Internet related businesses such as Amazon, Google, YouTube, Yahoo etc.

Only after the Internet emerged did people begin to see opportunities and market in that technology. However, even if a market already exists, such as the market for cola drinks (which has been created by Coca Cola), there is no guarantee that a market exists for a particular new player in the cola category. The question is: whether a market exists and if it exists for you.

No comments:

Post a Comment