Although entrepreneurship concerns a large part of the working population, contributes to the economic growth in an important way and has proved to be of interest to a great percentage of the academic world, there hasn't yet been a complete study that develops every aspect of this issue (the actors, the skills needed and the environment). "Entrepreneurship is an activity that involves the discovery, evaluation and exploitation of opportunities to introduce new goods and services, ways of organizing, markets, processes, and raw materials through organizing efforts that previously had not existed". Moreover, it is important to establish the difference between entrepreneurship as self-employment and entrepreneurship as the founding of a new business. While, for one, the action is in pursuit of making one's own profit as opposed to receiving a salary from someone else, for the other the concept of profit is less important than the idea of developing something that has never existed before
[...] The more the gap between the expected value and the alternative use of their time is large, the more the willingness to exploit en entrepreneurial opportunity will be strong. Opportunity cost is influenced by two main factors: income and unemployment. In fact, the higher the income, the lower the chances that the opportunity will be exploited. In the same way, unemployed people are more likely to catch an entrepreneurial opportunity than those who already have a job, even if the chances decrease when a person receives benefits during her unemployed period. [...]
[...] But on the other hand, Lindh and Ohlsson found out that till a certain amount, winning lottery encourages firm founding, which proves that disposing of personal capital in a factor that helps exploiting entrepreneurial opportunities. But not every entrepreneur has the chance to provide resources by himself, which is why sometimes external capitals are necessary. Contractual solutions may thus help to obtain them by reducing the information asymmetry and uncertainties. They could take the form of equities, as they reduce the entrepreneur's advantages in case of opportunist behaviour. Contractual solutions can also be convertible securities. [...]
[...] First, it is difficult for entrepreneurs to start on a large scale. In fact, it is too hard and risky to finance such a start, which is why they start on a small segment of the market and plan to grow in case of success. Growth from a small scale is proved to contribute positively to a new firm's performance. Moreover, several studies show that the more a venture is aged, the more it has chances to survive, to grow and gives profits because entrepreneurs mostly learn by doing. [...]
[...] Through advertising, entrepreneurs can keep the monopole of the opportunity because customers become suspicious towards other offers. He can also decide to give coupons to his clients: if imitators want to enter the market they will have to compete with the discounts that fidelity gives to the customers that by the original product or service. The entrepreneur can also concentrate on his brand's reputation, through marketing oriented strategies that by the way are proved more efficient in protecting from imitators than other strategies like the one based on competitive prices. [...]
[...] Centralization lowers the likeliness to exploit entrepreneurial opportunities. Finally, the socio-cultural environment consists of “the beliefs and attitudes of the members of society as to what are desirable and legitimate activities, as well as the social and cultural institutions that support a particular society's way of life”. In some societies, the entrepreneurial aptitude is more desirable than in others: those that encourage profit seeking will provide a better environment for the exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities for example. The same phenomenon is observed is societies that have a wider range of precedent entrepreneurial experiences and models to follow. [...]
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