An entrepreneur is someone who starts and operates a business, typically taking on
financial risks in order to do so. They are often seen as innovators, identifying opportunities in the market and creating new products, services, or business models to capitalize on those opportunities. Entrepreneurs are characterized by their willingness to take initiative, their creativity, and their ability to adapt to changing circumstances. They play a crucial role in driving economic growth and innovation in societies around the world.
Characterstics of Entrepreneur
• Passion and Self-Motivation: Entrepreneurs are driven by a strong passion for
their ideas and ventures. They have a deep-rooted enthusiasm for what they do, which fuels their motivation and keeps them focused and dedicated to achieving their goals. • Risk-Taking and Tolerance for Uncertainty: Entrepreneurs are comfortable with taking risks and are willing to embrace uncertainty. They understand that starting and running a business involves inherent risks and are prepared to face and manage them to pursue their entrepreneurial vision. • Creativity and Innovation: Creativity and innovation are the lifeblood of an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs are often creative thinkers who can generate new ideas and think outside the box. They are adept at identifying gaps in the market and developing innovative solutions to address them. • Adaptability and Flexibility: Entrepreneurs must be adaptable and flexible in their approach. They can adjust their strategies and plans based on changing circumstances, market conditions, and customer feedback. They embrace change and view it as an opportunity for growth and improvement. • Vision and Goal-Orientation: Entrepreneurs possess a clear vision of what they want to achieve and a long-term perspective. They set ambitious goals and create actionable plans to bring their vision to life. They maintain focus on their objectives and continuously work towards realizing them.
Types of Entrepreneurs
On the Basis of Economic Development:
a) Innovating Entrepreneurs: This type of entrepreneurship is characterized by aggressive assemblage of information and the analysis of results deriving from novel combination of factors of production. Entrepreneurs falling in this class are generally aggressive in experimentation and exhibited shrewdness in putting attractive possibilities into practice. They are the entrepreneurs who have creative and innovative ideas of starting a new business. Innovative entrepreneurs thus, results in the creation of something new. They are the contributors to the economic development of a country. Innovating entrepreneurs played the key role in the rise of modern capitalism, through their enterprising sprit, hope of moneymaking, ability to recognize and exploit opportunities, etc.
b) Adoptive or Imitative Entrepreneur: There is a second group of entrepreneurs
generally referred as imitative entrepreneurs. The imitative entrepreneurs copy or adopt suitable innovations made by the innovative entrepreneurs. They does not innovate the changes himself. They only imitates technology innovated by others. Imitative entrepreneurs are most suitable for the developing regions because in such countries people prefer to imitate the technology, knowledge and skill already available in more advanced countries. Imitative entrepreneurs help to transform the system with the limited resources available. However; these entrepreneurs face lesser risks and uncertainty then innovative entrepreneurs. While innovative entrepreneurs are creative, imitative entrepreneurs are adoptive.
c) Fabian Entrepreneur: The third type is Fabian entrepreneur. By nature these
entrepreneurs are shy and lazy. This type of entrepreneurs have neither will to introduce new changes nor desire to adopt new methods of production innovated by the most entrepreneurs. They follow the set procedures, customs, traditions and religions. They are not much interested in taking risk and they try to follow the footsteps of their predecessors. Usually they are second generation entrepreneur in a business family enterprise.
d) Drone Entrepreneur: The fourth type is Drone entrepreneurs who refuse to
copy or use opportunities that come on their way. They are conventional in their approach and stick to their set practices products, production methods and ideas. They struggle to survive not to grow. They may be termed as Laggards. In such cases the organization looses market, their operations become uneconomical and they may be pushed out of the market. On the Basis of Type of Business:
a) Business Entrepreneurs: They are the entrepreneurs who conceive an idea for a new product or service and then create a business to materialize their idea into reality. They tap the entire factor of production to develop a new business opportunity. They may set up a big enterprise or a small scale business. When they establish small business units they are called small business entrepreneurs. In a majority of cases, entrepreneurs are found in small trading and manufacturing business.
b) Trading Entrepreneur: There entrepreneurs undertake trading activities and are
not concerned with the manufacturing work. They identifies potentiality of their product in markets, stimulates demand for their product line among buyers. They may go for both domestic and overseas trade. These entrepreneurs demonstrated their ability in pushing many ideas ahead which promoted their business.
c) Industrial Entrepreneur: Industrial entrepreneur is essentially a manufacturer
who identifies the needs of customers and creates products or services to serve them. He is product-oriented who starts through an industrial unit to create a product like electronic industry, textile unit, machine tools.
d) Corporate Entrepreneur: These entrepreneurs used his innovative skill in
organizing and managing a corporate undertaking. A corporate undertaking is a form of business organisation which is registered under some statute or Act like a trust registered under the Trust Act, or a company registered under the Companies Act. These corporate work as separate legal entity. He is thus an individual who plans, develops and manages a corporate body.
e) Agricultural Entrepreneur: Agricultural entrepreneurs are those who undertake
agricultural activities as through mechanization, irrigation and application of technologies to produce the crop. They cover a broad spectrum of the agricultural sector and include agriculture and allied occupations.
According to the Use of Technology:
a) Technical Entrepreneurs: With the decline of joint family business and the rise of scientific and technical institutions, technically qualified persons have entered the field of business. These entrepreneurs may enter business to commercially exploit their inventions and discoveries. Their main asset is technical expertise. They raise the necessary capital and employ experts in financial, legal- marketing and other areas of business. Their success depends upon how they start production and on the acceptance of their products in the market.
b) Non-technical Entrepreneur: Non-technical entrepreneurs are those who are not
concerned with the technical aspects of the product or service in which they deal. They are concerned only with developing alternative marketing and promotional strategies for their product or service.
c) Professional Entrepreneur: Professional entrepreneur is an entrepreneur who is
interested in establishing a business but does not have interest in managing it after establishment. A professional entrepreneur sells out the existing business on good returns and starts another business with a new idea. Such an entrepreneur is dynamic and conceives new ideas to develop alternative projects
According to Entrepreneurial Activity
a) Novice Entrepreneur: A novice is someone who has started his/her first entrepreneurial venture. A novice entrepreneur is an individual who has no prior business ownership experience as a business founder, inheritor of a business, or a purchaser of a business. It is not similar to early starter; a novice can also be a 50 year old with over 25 years of experience in the industry.
b) Serial Entrepreneur: A Serial Entrepreneur is someone who is devoted to one
venture at a time but ultimately starts many. It is the process of starting that excites the starter. Once the business is established, the serial entrepreneur may lose interest and think of selling and moving on.
c) First-Generation Entrepreneurs: This category consists of those
entrepreneurs whose parents or family had not been into business and was into salaried service. The booming economy of India has led to a multitude of business opportunities, and with deregulation, it has become easier to set up businesses. Also, with a change in the mindset of the middle class, it is now more acceptable to become an entrepreneur. A first-generation entrepreneur is one who starts an industrial unit by means of an innovative skill. He is essentially an innovator, combining different technologies to produce a marketable product or service.
d) Modern Entrepreneur: A modern entrepreneur is one who undertakes those
businesses which go well along with the changing scenario in the market and suits the current marketing needs.
e) Women Entrepreneurs: Women as entrepreneurs have been a recent
phenomenon in India. The social norms in India had made it difficult for women to have a professional life. Now this has changed. Progressive laws and other incentives have also boosted the presence of women in entrepreneurial activity in diverse fields. In 1988, for the first time, the definition of Women Entrepreneurs’ enterprise was evolved that termed an SSI unit/industry-related service or business enterprise, managed by one or more women entrepreneurs in proprietary concerns, or in which she/they individually or jointly have a share capital of not less than 51 per cent as partners / shareholders / directors of a private limited company / members of a cooperative society, as a Woman Enterprise.
f) Nascent Entrepreneur: A nascent entrepreneur is an individual who is in the
process of starting a new business. E. Habitual Entrepreneur: A habitual entrepreneur is an individual who has prior business ownership experience. The nascent entrepreneur can either be a novice or a habitual entrepreneur.
g) Lifestyle Entrepreneurs: Lifestyle entrepreneurs have developed an enterprise
that fits their individual circumstances and style of life. Their basic intention is to ear an income for themselves and their families.
h) Copreneurs: It is related to the married couples working together in a business.
When a married couple share ownership, commitment and responsibility for a’ business, they are called “copreneurs”. As copreneurs, couples struggle in ventures to establish equality in. their relationships. Such couples represent the dynamic interaction of the systems of work and personal life. i) Social Entrepreneur: Social entrepreneur is one who recognizes the part of society which is stuck and provides new ways to get it unstuck. Be it dedicated efforts for child upliftment, fighting for the conservation of environment, working for the betterment of the blind or initiatives to empower women, the entrepreneur’s passion is very strong. Freedom, wealth, exposure, social mobility and greater individual confidence are driving this huge wave of social innovation and entrepreneurship. After all are tired with the Inefficiency of governments and the indifference of corporate, and want to make a change and this is the case everywhere.
