Entrepreneurship is the most widely growing term
in Indian Business context today. So, what it is all about and why India is so
much obsessed with it now. Let us figure out its history and dominance in
India. Entrepreneurship
means different things to different people. Conceptually and in practice, the
term hints of no stereotypical model.
The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish- French economist Richard Cantillon. This term first
appeared in the French Dictionary "Dictionnaire Universal de
Commerce" of Jacques des Bruslons published in 1723. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who
is willing to help launch a new venture or enterprise and accept full
responsibility for the outcome. Today entrepreneur is one who
undertakes innovations, finance and business acumen in an effort to
transform innovations into economic goods
It is very hard to find out
the origin of the entrepreneur. However, we can trace the study done in the
field of entrepreneurship. In the late 17th century Richard
Cantillon and Adam Smith started studying entrepreneurship but this work didn’t
had any major impact. In the late 19th century, with the rise
of business and economics this concept became much more prominent.
The entrepreneur who
implements ‘new combinations of means of production’ plays a crucial role in
disturbing the status quo through innovation — or ‘creative destruction’ — and
thereby becomes an agent of change. As such, the ‘dynamic
equilibrium’ achieved by a constantly innovating entrepreneur could generate
the conditions for:
· Increasing
opportunities for employment (comprising various competitive skill sets);
· Additional
wealth creation;
· Introduction
and dissemination of new methods and technology; and
· Overall
economic growth.
It is in the creation
of more wealth, and in the constant innovation from prevailing to the next best
practices, that the significance and importance of Entrepreneurship skill.
As such, the development of
Entrepreneurship in a particular milieu depends not on a single overriding
factor but rather on ‘a constellation of factors’ at the individual, societal
and national levels. Entrepreneurship depends on individual motivations,
individual experiences, socio-cultural (including family) traditions,
educational opportunities, availability of relevant skills and attitudes, supporting
financial institutions and access to credit, existence of commercial trading
centres, supporting infrastructure including trade routes with efficient
transport and communication facilities, macro-economic environment and overall
political stability. It has also been argued that Innovation and
Entrepreneurship flourish best in decentralized systems by empowered people, who
are willing to explore new ideas as well as willing to deal with exogenous
influences.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN INDIA
Entrepreneurship has been
‘embedded in the Indian genius and is a part of its tradition’. To quote the
renowned economist, T.N. Srinivasan, ‘India has been an entrepreneurial
society…we had the entrepreneurial skill but suppressed it for too long a time…
and now it is thriving.’ The entrepreneurial spirit is an ongoing
characteristic of India’s history, particularly visible in a number of
communities engaged primarily in trading. Traditionally, the Entrepreneurship
of such communities is facilitated principally by the successful use of
informal ‘entrepreneurial ecosystems’ and interdependent business networks.
Further, there is also a rich tradition within the Indian diaspora, spanning
the past several hundred years, whose spirit of enterprise is legion.
Recent surveys, such as those
undertaken by Goldman Sachs and Pricewaterhouse Coopers, have estimated that
India has the potential to be among the world’s leading economies by 2050.
Further, India’s economy can potentially gain significantly from the
country’s characteristic features — a democratic open society, a strong
technology base (with capacity for leapfrogging), unparalleled diversity,
vibrant capital markets (including growing private equity and venture capital
markets), an increasingly youthful population (50% of India is 25 years and
younger), a sizeable market of a large number of customers with vast unmet
needs as well as an environment of full and free competition in the private
sector.
