The function of the entrepreneur

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Entrepreneurship .

Entrepreneurship has a wide range of meanings. On the other hand an entrepreneur is a person who has a very high aptitude who pioneers change, possessing characteristics found in only a very small fraction of the population. Other definition, anyone who wants to work him or herself is considered to be an entrepreneur.

The word entrepreneur is originated from the French " entreprendre", which means "to undertake". In business context, it means to start a business. The dictionary presents the definition of an entrepreneur as who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise.

In the Schumpeter's view of entrepreneurship who is an Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter's definition of entrepreneurship places an emphasis on innovation as the new product, new production methods, new markets, new forms of organization.

Furthermore, wealth is created when such innovation result in new demand. From his point of view, One can define the function of the entrepreneur as one of combining various input factors in an innovative manner to generate the value of customer with the home that this value will exceed the cost of the input factors, thus it can generate the superior returns that result in the creation of wealth.

In the context of, Entrepreneurship vs. Small business many people use the terms "entrepreneur" and "small business owner" synonymously. While they may have much in common, there are significant differences between the entrepreneurial venture and the small business. Entrepreneurial ventures are different from small businesses in these ways such as the Amount of wealth creationÂ which means, rather than simply generating an income stream that replaces traditional employment, a successful entrepreneurial venture creates substantial wealth, typically in excess of several million dollars of profit. Speed of wealth creationÂ which means, while a successful small business can generate several million dollars of profit over a lifetime, entrepreneurial wealth creation often is rapid, for example, within 5 years. RiskÂ which means, the risk of an entrepreneurial venture must be high or otherwise, with the incentive of sure profits many entrepreneurs would be pursuing the idea and the opportunity no longer would exist. Innovation which means entrepreneurship often involves substantial innovation beyond what a small business might exhibit. This innovation gives the venture the competitive advantage that results in wealth creation. The innovation may be in the product or service itself, or in the business processes used to deliver it.

Background of the study / Problem statement.

In discussing the challenges that entrepreneur face in this 21 st century, it is more helpful to divide them according to their age category or enterprise status. There are divided to 3 categories which is pre-entrepreneurs. This means, this being a probationer or transitional stage, the key challenge facing pre-entrepreneurs who are just starting out in life on their own is choosing what they want to do. White and Kenyon (2000) as warn that there is a danger in 'selling' enterprise as the best option for everyone and forgetting that successful enterprise development begins with the initiative coming from young people themselves especially.

Besides that, the challenges in facing the pre-entrepreneurs and potential entrepreneurs among them are the promotion of awareness of various career options and possibilities to start up a business. Young entrepreneurs especially women's in this category largely require awareness and understanding of what an enterprise is and what it takes to own and manage a business so that they can consider themselves as self-employment as a career option. As an entrepreneur they should decide whether explore further, or to start their own business, the second step is the provision of practical support services such as training, advice, access to finance.

To start up a business for pre-entrepreneur it is likely to involve the few stages like, the Formative Stage which means, it is related to the various factors including environmental factors that can also influence the development to become an entrepreneur. At this stage, it is important to encourage young entrepreneur to acquire appropriate entrepreneurial skills, motivations, attitudes, attributes, behaviors, and values. Second stage is the, the Developmental Stage, which it is related more specific learning and targeted skill development that would prepare an individual to move to start-up a business venture. These are learning skills and strategic skills. Learning skills it is related to the ability of a person to acquire information, knowledge, and experience from the world around them that is relevant to their entrepreneurial success. And strategic skills relates to how a person sees the world around them, envisions what is desirable, and identifies entrepreneurial opportunities in the world around them.

And the third stage is the Start-up Stage. In this stage it refers to the specific skills that are relevant for a successful entrepreneur who is looking to advance an entrepreneurial venture to a period of growth and expansion. These are tactical skills for start-up. Tactical skills are important to conceptualizing a business, developing a business plan and establishing a business. The start-up stage also requires access to credit or finance for youth entrepreneurs.

Besides that there is also few types of entrepreneurs which is the Budding entrepreneurs. These is for the young people who are just starting to run their own business. The challenge facing these young person is to increase the rate of survival and success in new businesses .This also means that budding entrepreneurs have a different set of needs from those of pre-entrepreneurs and potential entrepreneurs. They also need to manage the expansion of their businesses, and this make theier needs are largely revolve around by learning and knowing the ,Tactical skills for Growth, these are skills that are important to move a business into a period of growth. They include business management, management of business finances, time management, stress management , improving sales, managing and reducing costs , marketing, recruitment by able to employ the right person at the right place, and risk management.

Next is the Emergent entrepreneur, where the needs of emergent entrepreneurs who are aged 26 years and above and different from those of lower categories of youth proprietors. Many of the emergent entrepreneurs, especially those operating in low income markets, are likely to be running enterprises that are not growing, with only very few graduating to the formal sector.

The major challenge facing these young adults is to transform their small business into commercial and competitive businesses. By doing that, they need to have few skill which involve the Tactical skills for Growth and transformation. By using these skills it recognizes the certain skills which are important for the entrepreneur to have, while others can employ. From the survey, I have found that these skills can be divided into two which is the skills one should have where it involves the interpersonal and team building and also involve leadership. Next is the skills one can employ, means is is more to specialized marketing, record keeping, and information management.

Research objectives / Scope of studies.

From the research that we are finding which is on the Challenges of Women Entrepreneurs in Malaysia, is that we have found that in the 16 countries in Malaysia, most of the women entrepreneur came up from their own family business, where they took over from their parents or family. Some of the women entrepreneur also came up by doing small business like becoming a florist, bakery shops, and so on. Most of the entrepreneurs are educated and some are average having a SPM cert. Some women came up by having degree in Entrepreneurship progrmmes by scoring well and they somehow learnt about business by education. Compare to men, the challenges for women to come up as an entrepreneur is very hard because of many factors. For example, they family itself, they dun give support to them to open up a business and if it is a man the family would always give them way because he is man and they are the lead of the family. Whereas, women are mostly known as housewife in Malaysia. To become and entrepreneur financial crisis might also occurs when a person don't have a business or any income background before for them to apply a loan in bank and so on. It is hard for them to start up a business without any modal in their hands. And next is, some women's who comes from an average family at times are lack with useful information to start up a business and how to manage a business. This could also be a challenge for them to try in a business. Some woman's are also weak, by making a decision where before this they are more dependent to their husbands and it is hard for them now to make a decision in a big matters like bringing up the business to a level higher than before and so on.

To examine these problems, research can be conducted by researches to find out the factors that are holding back the woman to becoming successful entrepreneurs. For example, the factors as said above it could be family factors or back ground, education level, and level of information about opening up a business for their future benefit. And it could also be , where women are afraid to make a decision in a matter or either they are not the risk taking persons. And the culture of certain individual could also be the factors. To identify the culture factors, we can see it in the Indian family especially, where some of the parents don't like the girls in the family doing big jobs like taking care of the shops or either they sometimes get married in the early age. This matter always happens in the low average family, this could also be the challenges or factors affecting the Malaysia entrepreneurs. Some of the woman is affected by the inner value of them also, where it is in born with them since small where the soft side of the women . For example, if there is a problem or issue occurs in a business, they don't know how to habdle it and they might give up easily without even making or coming up with a concrete reasons or decisions.

To overcome all this problems , womens should start to learnt the meaning of business by starting or trying to start with small business like selling groceries, flowers, tit bits, cloths and so on. By learning with the small business, they could learnt about business how it works and when there is a problem occurs they know how to faced it. Some womens who are knowledgeable in this filed they some came up very fast for example there is few women entrepreneurs of small business nowadays. This could motivate many others to become an entrepreneurs.