The first economist to be associated with entrepreneurship and its role was French economist Richard Cantillon. He recognised the entrepreneur as a businessperson who exercises judgement in the face of adversity exchanging it for profit. Baudeau (1730-92) added the aspect of innovation as a tool to re-engineer processes that will improve profit margins and reduce costs. Knowledge, abilities and intelligence are the attributes he claims make this an economic event. Others, Turgot; Say; Herbert and Link and Schumpeter contributed to the different dimensions of entrepreneurship as we know it today. At that time entrepreneurship was closely linked to economic concepts only.
Schumpeter’s theoretical developments are the foundations for the addition of psychological concepts into the economic concept. The behaviour of identified entrepreneurs is taken into consideration. Shackle theorised that the individual stretches his imagination in unique ways and based on this plunges into a venture thereby gambling on his imagination, others theorise about the alertness to profit opportunities, others are value added oriented, while others innovation and change championing.
Breaking new grounds has been a common characteristic of most theoreticians of entrepreneurship. The different traits of entrepreneurs widen the study circumventing the real value of the study of entrepreneurship, it is not so important to have a universal definition of an entrepreneur as to know why individuals are entrepreneurial and how their entrepreneurial activities are enacted and identified and how they are linked to economic growth and development.
Why do we study entrepreneurship?
The study of entrepreneurship could be traced to the fascination with the unpredictable ability of the entrepreneurs to turn lead into gold or coal into diamond. The possibility of creating more of such people is important with unemployment and poverty as the most challenging socio-economic problem of this century. The key ingredient in entrepreneurship is the raw economic energy built into the concept and this energy is capitalised on for supernormal economic gains from innovation, new product developed, opening up or exploiting new markets and new methods or processes of accomplishing old tasks with considerable savings.
Job creation and innovation are key value adding benefits of entrepreneurship. In many African countries over 70% of new jobs created are attributed to small businesses and entrepreneurial activity in organisations. In technological innovation, they have been responsible for 50% of the innovations and 95 % of radical innovations since the Second World War. These innovations include: the microcomputer, the pacemaker, overnight express packages, fast food, the x-ray machine and oral contraceptives (Bygrave, 1994).
Entrepreneurship could be in the organisation or in an individual. There is significant evidence of entrepreneurship in the corporations. The organisations are leaner and faster and create and capture more opportunities also generating profits uncharacteristic of the business cycle phase in which they are.