This document provides an overview of entrepreneurship and its role in economic development in India. It defines entrepreneurship as applying knowledge and skills to launch a new enterprise or diversify an existing one to pursue growth and generate wealth and social good. Entrepreneurship involves risk-taking, innovation, and starting new profitable businesses. The document reviews various definitions of entrepreneurship from literature. It discusses India's tradition of entrepreneurship in trading communities and the diaspora. Recent studies suggest India has potential to be a world leading economy by 2050 due to its demographic advantages and growing private markets. Entrepreneurs play a vital role in economic development by catalyzing industrialization, technological progress, job creation, income growth, and balanced
2. Objectives of the session
● To obtain a basic understanding about the process of
entrepreneurship
● To learn who is an entrepreneur fromreview of Lit.
● Walkingthrough popular definitions of entrepreneurship
3. Overview
‘Entrepreneurship is the professional application of knowledge, skills and competencies
and/or of monetizing a new idea, by an individual or a set of people by launching an
enterprise diversifying from an existing one (distinct from seeking self employment as in a
profession or trade), thus to pursue growth while generating wealth, employment and
social good’.
4. Some definitions...
1 Entrepreneurship means different things to different people. Conceptually and in
practice, the term hints of no stereotypical model. Yet its very etymology – derived
from the French ‘entreprendre which literally means, ‘to undertake’ it indicates the
minimum characteristicsof an entrepreneur.
2 From the perspective of economic functions, three crucial characteristics of
entrepreneurial activity are: risk taking, innovation and venturing into new business
activities for profit.
5. Review of Literature
Entrepreneurship has been understood to mean, among other things: ‘the ability to create and build
something from practically nothing’ (J.A. Timmons, “The Entrepreneurial Mind”, 1989); ‘the creation
of new economic opportunities’ (Wennekers and Thurik, “Linking Entrepreneurship and Economic
Growth”, 1999); ‘creating and managing vision and demonstrating leadership’ (Wickham, “Strategic
Entrepreneurship: A decision making approach to new venture creation and management”, 1998,
page 34); ‘the ability to see and evaluate business opportunities’ (Meredith, “The Practice of
Entrepreneurship”, 1982, page 3; see also the GEM studies that distinguish between ‘need based’
and ‘opportunity based’ entrepreneurship); ‘a practice with a knowledge base’ (Peter Drucker,
‘Innovation and Entrepreneurship’, page viii); ‘an ability to assemble or reassemble from what is
available into a new kind of activity’ (Peter Marris, ‘The Social Barriers of African
Entrepreneurship’, Journal of Developing Societies, October, 1968, as quoted in Thomas A.
Timberg, ‘ The Marwaris: From Traders to Industrialists’, 1978, page 19); ‘the shifting of economic
resources out of an area of lower productivity into one of higher productivity and yield’ (The
Economist, October 13, 2007, page 18 of the special section on Innovation, quoting Jean Baptiste
Say) as well as ‘an activity characterized by the goals of profitability, growth and innovative
practices’ (see Joseph Schumpeter’s works generally, quoted in Kirby, supra note 1 as above, page
10).
6. David Kirby, ‘Entrepreneurship’ 2003, McGraw Hill, page 13; see
also ‘Entrepreneurial Management: In Pursuit of Opportunity’, The
Intellectual Venture Capitalist: John H. McArthur and the work of
the Harvard Business School, 1980-1995 (Ed. Thomas K. McCraw
and Jeffrey L. Cruikshank. Harvard Business School Press, 1999);
insight provided by Mohit Malik, Innova Consulting, New Delhi;
coinage of the term is also attributed to the economist Jean
Baptiste Say
Review of Literature
7. Review of Literature
See McCraw et al in supra note 2 as above; see also Per Davidson, ‘Researching Entrepreneurship’, Springer
2004, page 1-3, who succinctly states that ‘researching Entrepreneurship is fun, fascinating and
frustrating...one of the fascinations is the richness of the phenomenon, which leads to one of its greatest
frustrations, namely the lack of a common understanding of what precisely Entrepreneurship is’. See also
Abhishek Goel, Neharika Vohra, Liyan Zhang, Bhupinder Arora’ ‘Attitudes of Youth towards Entrepreneurs
and Entrepreneurship: A Cross Cultural Comparison of India and China’, Indian Institute of Management
(IIM) Ahmedabad paper; Goel et al summarise some of the existing approaches as follows: ‘leader manager’
(Mill, 1848; Brockhaus and Horwitz, 1986; McClelland, 1961); ‘innovator’ (Schumpeter, 1934); ‘risk taker’
(Brockhaus and Horwitz, 1986); ‘with internal locus of control’ (Rotter, 1966; as in B & H, 1986); and
‘different from managers’ (Penrose); quoting Cunnigham and Lischeron (1991), who understood the term
from the following perspectives: ‘psychological’, ‘opportunity’, leadership and intrapreneurship (within
organizations)
9. 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.
10. Entrepreneurship in India
Entrepreneurship in India occurs in ‘far more encompassing and far reaching
ways than in developed countries’, and could therefore be far more complex, ‘for
there is so much more that needs to be done’
.
Commentators today celebrate the ubiquitous Indian attitude of ‘Jugaad’ (a Hindi
word roughly translated as ‘creative improvisation...a tool to somehow find a
solution based on a refusal to accept defeat, and calling on initiative, quick
thinking, cunning and resolve...to quickly fulfill market demands at the lowest
possible prices as an entrepreneurial trait that has been as much a part of
everyday Indian living as its rich tradition of philosophy and speculation.
11. Entrepreneurship in India
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.
13. Economic development essentially means a process of upward change whereby the real
per capita income of a country increases over a period of time.
Entrepreneur plays a vital role in economic development. Entrepreneurs serve as the
catalysts in the process of industrialization and economic growth.
Technical progress alone cannot lead to economic development, unless technological
breakthroughs are put to economic use by entrepreneurs.
15. Some of the roles of entrepreneurs are:
1.Capital Formation
2.Improvement in Per Capita Income
3. Generation of Employment
4.Balanced Regional Development
5.Improvement in Living Standards
6. Economic Independence
7.Backward and Forward Linkages
16. The role of entrepreneurship in economic development
varies from economy to economy depending upon its
material resources, industrial climate and the
responsiveness of the political system to the
entrepreneurial function. The entrepreneurs contribute
more in favourable opportunity conditions.
17. 1.In underdeveloped/developing regions, due to lack of funds and skilled labour, the atmosphere
is less conducive for innovative entrepreneurs.
2.Under the conditions of paucity of funds and the problem of imperfect market, the
entrepreneurs are bound to launch their enterprises on a small scale. Also initiator
entrepreneurs are preferred in such regions. Thus, initiation of innovations introduced in
developed regions on a massive scale bring about rapid economic-development in
underdeveloped/developing regions.
3.Further India aims at decentralized industrial structure to reduce regional imbalances in
levels of economic development.