Entrepreneurship Development

INTRODUCTION

Entrepreneurship is the process of setting up one’s own business as distinct from pursuing any other economic activity, be it employment or practising some profession. The person who set-up his business is called an entrepreneur. The output of the process, that is, the business unit is called an enterprise.

Entrepreneurship development is concerned with the study of entrepreneurial behaviour, the dynamics of business set-up, development and expansion of the enterprise. Entrepreneurship development (ED) refers to the process of enhancing entrepreneurial skills and knowledge through structured training and institution-building programmes. It basically aims to enlarge the base of entrepreneurs in order to hasten the pace at which new ventures are created. This accelerates employment generation and economic development.

Entrepreneurship development focuses on the individual who wishes to start or expand a business. Small and medium enterprise (SME) development, on the other hand, it also focuses on developing the enterprise, whether or not it employs or is led by individuals who can be considered entrepreneurial. Furthermore, entrepreneurship development concentrates more on growth potential and innovation than SME development does. However, many of the lessons learned from experiences in both types of development are similar.

Traditionally, it was believed that entrepreneurs are born. No society can wait for the chance of ‘birth’ of entrepreneurs to pursue its developmental plans. In fact, plans for economic development would bear little fruit unless entrepreneurship development is regarded as a deliberate process of making people aware of entrepreneurship as a career at an early age and creating situations where they may actually make a choice to become entrepreneurs. When you make this choice, you become a job-provider rather than a job-seeker, besides enjoying a host of other financial and psychological rewards. Taking to entrepreneurship is surely more a matter of aspiring to become an entrepreneur rather as being born as one.