Entrepreneurship - The Productive Ingenuity of the Human Factor in an Ambiguous Environment

Abstract

Land, Labour and Capital are regarded as factors necessary for production to occur. In this frame, entrepreneurship is seen as that part of labour which combines other production factors to create goods and services that satisfy society's needs whilst making profit, bearing all the associated risks. Naturally, risk implies ambiguity with the reverse also true. Ambiguity is therefore a permanent feature of the entrepreneurship environment. That entrepreneurs are able to recognize and exploit opportunities in an ambiguous environment is a sign of ingenuity. Based on the interpretivist approach, we conducted a qualitative (desk) research by reviewing the literature on entrepreneurship and its associated themes. Drawing from insights and patterns of meanings provided by these prior works, we identify those special attributes of entrepreneurs that make them so ingenious. We are of the view that generally speaking, the ingenuity of entrepreneurs or enterprising individuals (the human factor) lies in cognitive; fear-conquering; and self-reliance characteristics of individuals. This is in line with the assertion that entrepreneurs' personal characteristics are the most important factors for business success. In our view, these three broad characteristics enable entrepreneurs to: create or discover opportunities; identify real opportunities that are less obvious to the general population; identify geographical locations that are endowed with social and economic resources conducive for a particular venture; and chose the organizational arrangement that best serve as a vehicle to exploit the opportunity -the hallmarks of ingenuity.

Conceptual foundations of entrepreneurial strategy: A systematic literature review

“…Advancing in the chronology and trying to identify, in short, the most recent contributions of the literature found on this issue, we can then present some proposals concerning entrepreneurship: 1) Entrepreneurship is decisive in getting better and more efficient combinations of factors (Hoeyi & Dzansi, 2014) and should be incorporated into the context of a reformulation of the firm's economic theory (Foss, Klein, & Bylund, 2011); 2) Such increased efficiency derives from the entrepreneurial agent's characteristics: a) an entity that discovers and explores new opportunities; b) an organisation that creates and motivates change processes. These characteristics determine a behaviour which is guided by risk-taking, by intuition, alertness, and creation of new businesses; by leadership and the initiation of new modes of operation, by the identification of new business opportunities, and by the creation of new companies (Cuervo, Ribeiro, & Roig-Dobón, 2007); 3) There is a broad consensus that The Conceptual foundations of entrepreneurial strategy: a systematic literature review | 111 entrepreneurship is a vital force in the economies of developed countries -the consensus is not evident as to what entrepreneurial activity is -most notably three transmission mechanisms through which a capital entrepreneur influences the product of economies: a) the impact of the knowledge generated; b) an increase in the competition inherent to an increase in the number of companies; c) an increase in the diversification of companies themselves (Audretsch & Keilbach, 2004;Braunerhjelm, 2008); 4) Entrepreneurship becomes strategic entrepreneurship when an entrepreneurial action is performed in a strategic perspective, more specifically, when this involves the simultaneous search of opportunities and competitive behaviour to pursue benefits for the design and implementation of business strategies driven by wealth creation.…”

Shallot Farmers Performance in Entrepreneurship Perspective with Linear Programming Approach Data Envelopment Analysis

“…The entrepreneurial attitude that has by the farmer is considered as a part of the workforce which, when combined with other production factors in creates goods and services that will produce satisfactory output [1]. With an entrepreneurial attitude, they can assist farmers in recognizing and taking advantage of opportunities in the environment in creating high profits and production.…”