Work Book: Entrepreneurship as a Social and Economic Process

Abstract

This chapter has examined the nature of entrepreneurship and innovation, providing definitions for both and placing them into context. Note that entrepreneurship is a major driver of employment and economic growth throughout the world. Entrepreneurship operates at the individual, organisational and environmental level, and is a process associated with self-evaluation, opportunity recognition, the active management of resources, and the capacity to reassess and change. Unlike managers, the entrepreneur is willing to assume the risk associated with ownership of a venture, but also enjoys the rewards of success. Innovation is an integral part of entrepreneurship and involves either product or process innovations that can be incremental, synthetic or discontinuous in nature. Innovation is a major source of competitiveness for firms and is essential to success in modern economies.