Entrepreneurship- Role of entrepreneurs, Entreneurship development, Process of ENtrepreneur development< Industrial MIcrobiology introduction

Entrepreneurs are a very important cog in the machinery of a country’s economy. They are absolutely essential to the survival and growth of the economy. This is why developing budding Entrepreneurs is an important function. In fact, India even has an Entrepreneurship Development Institute! Let us learn more about Entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship

An entrepreneur is a person who undertakes a venture with some profit potential and involving a considerable amount of risk and therefore, entrepreneurship is the venture undertaken by the entrepreneur. The most obvious example of an entrepreneurship is the starting of a new business.

Entrepreneurship can be of varying degrees and is not necessarily alike. It can be categorised into various subcategories, starting with small and home businesses to multidimensional industries that were started from the ground level.

Ideally speaking, anyone who has the capacity to start a venture and undertake risks can become an entrepreneur. But not all entrepreneurs are successful. There are certain characteristics of entrepreneurship that make for a successful venture. So let us talk a little about these traits that an entrepreneur must possess in order to be successful.

 Characteristics of Entrepreneurship

While there can be as many characteristics of an entrepreneurship as there are people in this world with opinions, there are some characteristics that are considered indispensable or necessary in an entrepreneur. These are listed here as follows.

Ability to take Risks

This is the first and foremost trait of an entrepreneurship. Starting any business involves a considerable amount of risk of failure. Therefore, the courage and capacity to take the said risk are essential for an entrepreneur.

Innovation

In a world, where almost everything has been done, innovation is a priceless gift to have. Innovation basically means generating a new idea with which you can start a business and achieve a substantial amount of profits. Innovation can be in the form of a product, i.e., launching a product that no one is selling in the market. It can also be in the form of process, i.e., doing the same work in a more efficient and economical way.

An easy example of product innovation could be the launching of touch screen cell phones when the world was still using a keypad on cell phones.

Process innovation can be seen in capital-intensive industries that have to replace manual labour with machines, therefore, increasing their production and reducing their costs.

Another type of innovation can be the one concerned with usage. For examples, cell phones are now used for various functions such as viewing, creating and editing various files and documents, thus, eliminating the need for computers to a large extent.

Visionary

Every entrepreneur needs to be a visionary. Without a vision for the future of his venture, he or she would just be working aimlessly without reaching any point of success.

Leadership

An entrepreneur has a vision. However, it takes a lot of resources to turn that vision into reality. One of these resources are the people that the entrepreneur hires to perform various functions like production, supplying, accounting, etc.

A single person cannot perform all the tasks and therefore it is important to bring some more people to do it. This also makes leadership very important as a leader provides the required direction to the efforts of the employees. Without proper leadership, everyone would be working independently without achieving the desired results.

Open Minded

A good entrepreneur realizes that every situation can be a business opportunity. Thus can be utilized for the benefit of the organization. For example, Paytm realized the significance of demonetization and recognized that the need for online transactions was more than ever during this time and so it utilized and grew massively during this period.

Confident and Well Informed

An entrepreneur needs to be confident about his ideas and skills. This confidence also inspires the confidence of the people working for him as well as the other stakeholders involved in his business.

This confidence comes from being well informed about the industry and environment. Various legal and political policies enhance business and trade opportunities, while some hinder them. Having a knowledge about these can really help an entrepreneur make the right decision at the right time.

Role of Entrepreneurs:

A lot of hard work goes into starting and eventually expanding an enterprise. This hard work starts with the entrepreneur and trickles down the entire organization. But this is a very broad definition and does not really appreciate and highlight the actual role of entrepreneurs with respect to their enterprises.

So to explain it in a better way, let us break it down into points about how an entrepreneur is vital to the enterprise.

Initiator

The entrepreneur is the one who initiates the process of creating an enterprise by coming up with the idea for the business and planning out how to turn that idea into a reality.

Risk Taker

In an enterprise, the entrepreneur, being the owner, is the biggest risk taker. He is the one who finds the capital to back up his idea and also the person who is accountable in the face of the failure of that particular idea.

Reduces Risk

It is also one of the most important roles of entrepreneurs to reduce the risk of an enterprise failure by bringing in people that can help the organization grow. These people can be shareholders or investors that have a stake in the company and therefore are motivated to help the company succeed.

Allocator

An entrepreneur procures and allocates various resources in the organization. The most important of these resources is manpower. The entrepreneur is responsible for hiring an efficient staff to help him carry out his business. This is important because a good manager can take a business to new heights, while a bad manager can destroy the business.

He is also responsible for creating an organizational structure and departments for a more efficient functioning of the enterprise.

Adhering to Legal Norms

To ensure that the enterprise adheres to legal norms and policies, such as obtaining a license is also the duty of the entrepreneur. Not pertaining to these can mean serious legal consequences for the enterprise. These could be in terms of financial losses for the organization or something even more serious such as shutting down of an enterprise.

Forecasting

Last but far from least, the role of entrepreneurs involve acting as a forecaster. The enterprise works in a business environment and is affected by changes occurring in various aspects of this environment. It could be internal, such as strikes, machinery breakdowns, budget cuts etc. or these could be external, such as legal policy changes, political or social unrest, technological advancements, etc.

An entrepreneur must be able to correctly forecast these changes and prepare the organization to deal with these changes.

Functions of Entrepreneurs in the Economy

In layman’s terms, an economy can be defined as a general area of production, distribution, trade and consumption. It follows a simple rule of demand and supply. Whatever the consumers need and demand is produced and supplied by the producers in the economy.

As soon as a need is recognized in the society, an entrepreneur comes into action to efficiently and profitably satisfy these needs. Let us see some important functions an entrepreneur fulfils in the economy.

1)Contribution to the GDP

GDP refers to the monetary value of all final goods and services produced in an economy during a specified period of time- usually a year. These goods and services are provided by the entrepreneurs of that particular economy

In a fast-growing economy like India, the entrepreneurs play a vital role in producing the optimum amount of products and services in response to the demand by the people. If there were no entrepreneurs, the country would be solely dependent on the imports and multinational companies and the GDP would be adversely affected or collapse. Therefore, the economy is hugely dependent on the entrepreneurs for its GDP generation.

2] Foreign Exchange Earnings

Industries like the handloom and many other industries produce goods not only to meet the domestic requirements but also export these goods and earn valuable foreign exchange for the country. This adds to the economic growth of the country.

3] Generates Employment

Starting new ventures inevitably means the requirement of various resources including the very valuable human resource to get the work done. People are required to perform various functions in an organisation. So one of the major functions of entrepreneurs is helping the economy by generating employment.

4] Tax Generation

More employment to the people also results in more taxable income for the government. This helps the government increase their tax revenues that which they use for the development of the country and improve the standard of living of the people.

5] Eradicating Poverty

India is a labour intensive economy because of the vast population in the country. And since entrepreneurs help in generating employment, they directly help the government in eradicating unemployment and poverty in the economy. More income means that people are able to afford more and better things.

6] Entrepreneurs Introduce New Technology

Since a long time, entrepreneurs have been introducing new technologies in the economy. For example, Steve jobs introduced the MAC software. Such technological advancements help to develop the economy as a whole. This is one of the reasons that the government supports and promotes the entrepreneurs

7] Entrepreneurs help other Industries in the Economy

A lot of industries use the products of other industries as a raw material for their finished products, thus generating even more goods and services as well as more revenue.

For example, while flour is a finished product for a person who owns a flour mill, it is a raw material for the factory producing biscuits. In this way, it goes on and on. One idea or product leads to the development of another or complementary product or service.

8] Specific Tax Revenue

Entrepreneurs pay various direct and corporate taxes to the state governments without which they cannot function in the states. Therefore, the entrepreneurs help in additional tax revenue generated in the country.

9] Bringing in FDI

A lot of start-ups are funded by various companies in foreign countries. This helps the economy bring in more and more foreign investments. In fact, RBI helps these start-ups by relaxing policies on FDI.

In light of the above points, it is clear that an entrepreneur is a huge asset for a country and the functioning of an economy greatly depends on the existence of entrepreneurship.

Process of Entrepreneurship Development

Clear View of the Objective of the Program

Before you get into training the prospective entrepreneurs, it is very important to have a clear objective and plan in mind about what the program is going to encompass.

Without a proper plan and direction, the training would not yield the desired results. This would lead to a loss of time, money, effort and most of all, valuable potential.

Selecting the Potential Targets

It is important to select the potential targets who are willing to enhance their skills and who can be identified as the people who have some amount of business acumen. These can be further divided into two categories- the educated target audience and the uneducated target audience.

Educated audience refers to the target people who have a decent educational background and want to be entrepreneurs. These people have the motivation to put their education to use by starting a venture and working for themselves.

Uneducated audience refers to the people who are not as privileged as others in terms of education about the market and have the potential to become entrepreneurs. These people are constantly looking for alternative ways to earn money and support their families. Therefore they are highly motivated and, given the right training and direction, can prove to be exceptional entrepreneurs.

Identifying Local Talents and Markets

The process of entrepreneurship development program can be seen as most effective and efficient when it is applied in the local markets and on the local entrepreneurs who know about it. These people understand and absorb the knowledge way more quickly and can apply it in the current scenario because of which the results of the program can be seen more quickly and effectively.

Choosing the Right Location

In India unfortunately, these programs can only be launched where support institutions and resources are available, but ideally, these programmes should be planned and launched in the areas where most people are interested and willing to take advantages of these programmes so that this opportunity can be used most effectively and there is no loss of resources.

Tying up with Institutions

A lot of times these programmes involve tying up with various institutions like universities, NGO and some private institutions. This is done to give a real-world experience to assist the program and give the people some idea of the situations in the real world.

Develop the Entrepreneurship Program as Needed

People and their skill sets are different and develop over time. Thus, it is very important to keep developing the programs to suit the needs of the people enrolled in it. Moreover, the focus must be on harnessing their strengths and working to minimize their weaknesses.

Analyze the Result for Future Development

This is a very important and final step in the process of entrepreneurship development. After the program has run its course, it is very important to analyze the effectiveness of the program. This is necessary to ensure that in future more effective programs can be developed. For this one has to minimize the shortcomings of the existing program.

Industrial microbiology

DEFINITION:

Industrial microbiology is a branch of applied microbiology in which microorganisms are used in industrial processes; for example, in the production of high-value products such as drugs, chemicals, fuels and electricity.