Entrepreneurship. Rhonda Abrams

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СКАЧАТЬ Minimal Viable Product

      A product that has been created quickly in order to get it to market as soon as possible. Over time, and based on the experience of actual customers, the product is improved on and refined.

       Risk

      In entrepreneurial terms, risk involves uncertainty, with the possibility of encountering unexpected setbacks, suffering losses, and even failing. New ventures present various types of risk, such as market risk in that target customers may not be ready for the product or service; or technology risks in that the necessary technology may not be able to be developed in an acceptable time frame; or execution risks, in that the planned activities may not be able to be carried out.

       Start-up

      A term often used for a young business; most often applied when the business has the intent or potential to grow to substantial size.

       Venture

      An entrepreneurial undertaking, usually referring to a new business.

       Vision

      The ability for an entrepreneur to conceive a company, product, or service that doesn’t yet exist, typically in response to a specific need in the market and often in somewhat great detail. A visionary is one who can see possibilities where others do not.

      ■ New jobs. Total new-job creation in the United States is a result of new businesses. In fact, America relies on new businesses to offset the job losses from bigger and older corporations. The Small Business Administration (SBA) estimates that small businesses create 64 percent of all new jobs in the country. Worldwide, substantial job creation is largely a result of new business formation, especially in emerging economies.

      ■ New industries. Entrepreneurs not only create new businesses, but when they’re incredibly successful, they may even end up creating entire new industries. In recent years, for example, the success of a few social media companies—like Facebook—has fostered the generation of a whole ecosystem based around those companies. This leads to an immense explosion of jobs in related businesses.

      ■ Middle class income. In many areas—including rural areas, developing countries, and older regions in the United States—there are no large corporations to provide decent jobs. There, the only path to a middle class lifestyle (or better) is through the creation of one’s own business.

      ■ Flexibility. Smaller companies can open, close, move, and change focus much more quickly than big corporations. Typically, smaller companies are the first to respond to changing market needs and conditions, and often provide a testing ground for big corporations to learn how they themselves will need to adapt. The smaller companies offer the job opportunities and new products our society needs until big firms figure out how to catch up.

      ■ Old values. Big companies get distracted by things such as keeping Wall Street happy, arranging mergers and acquisitions, and rewarding executives with huge bonuses. Newer companies, by contrast, concentrate on the basics: cash flow, profits, providing high-quality products and services, and serving and retaining their customers. Perhaps even more important, owners of newer or smaller businesses know their employees are people, not “human resources,” and need to be treated as such.

      REAL-WORLD RECAP

       How entrepreneurs change the world

      ■ New ideas and innovation

      ■ New jobs

      ■ New industries

      ■ Middle class income

      ■ Flexibility

      ■ Old values

      Entrepreneurs, in short, make a huge difference. They innovate, pioneering new industries and producing new products. They provide vital services. They support their communities. They create wealth, for the entrepreneurs, the investors, and society. Most important, they create jobs. And when you create jobs—good jobs, with fair pay and good working conditions, where people can take pride in their work and be treated with respect—you change their world, your world, and the world in general.

Growth of entrepreneurship

      Humans have been engaged in entrepreneurial endeavors for thousands of years. It’s nothing new for someone to see something that people want to buy and then figure out a way to sell it. It may be part of human nature to be able to identify an opportunity and wish to seize on it, and, through hard work, be motivated to make money in the process.

      While it’s true that entrepreneurship has been around for a long time, we are now in a golden age of entrepreneurship. Throughout the world, entrepreneurs are making a greater impact than ever before, and gaining the recognition that comes from that impact.

      Although much attention is paid to technology-based start-ups, especially in places like Silicon Valley in California, the truth is entrepreneurship is flowering in all industries and geographic locations around the world. Even concepts that once were the sole province of philanthropists and charitable organizations have now become the interest of entrepreneurs who aim to apply their innovative and strategic thinking to solving some of the globe’s most pressing problems.

      Indeed, since the earliest part of the 21st century, there has been a ground shift. The best and the brightest in our society, who before might have gone to work for big corporations, now want to start their own ventures, at younger and younger ages. Some of the growth in entrepreneurial desire has certainly come from seeing the example of those who have succeeded—especially young entrepreneurs—who have created whole new industries, transformed the way we live and work, and made fortunes along the way. Seemingly overnight, entrepreneurs have become millionaires—even billionaires—as a result of launching innovative businesses.

      Of course, most entrepreneurs never become millionaires. Yet the chance to act on your ideas, to make your own way, to create new products, to invent new services, and to make a difference in the world, has encouraged record numbers of people to become entrepreneurs.

       Eventually everyone is an entrepreneur

       Pinning down the number of independent contractors in the U.S. can be difficult, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not track this growing group of self-employed workers. A 2014 report from the non-profit Freelancer’s Union and Elance-oDesk claims that 53 million Americans now work as freelancers. That translates to 34 percent of the population, up from 31 percent in a 2006 study from US General Accountability Office. With mobile devices, the ability to plug in virtually anywhere, and online marketplaces that match freelancers with customers—Uber, Task Rabbit, and Upwork, for example—expect the number of freelancers to continue to rise.

Factors driving the growth of entrepreneurship

      Besides the example of successful entrepreneurs, what’s propelling the rapid growth of interest in launching one’s own businesses?

      ■ Less job stability. The days are long gone when СКАЧАТЬ