entrepreneurship

From an economists point of view entrepreneurship is best considered as a function. The entrepreneur is what the entrepreneur does. Entrepreneurship was first described in economic terms by Cantillon who defined the components of trade but the term was accorded by Say. The modern theory of the entrepreneur is primarily concerned with the primary characteristic of the search for or the discovery of knowledge. The entrepreneur uses this knowledge in moving resources, where it is argued that the qualities of insight and deviousness enter, to his own advantaged. The very nature of entrepreneurship, that is doing something new and remote making it unpredictable, makes it impossible to give a precise and universally acceptable characterisation of it. Consequently there is a diversity of opinion regarding its function and definition.

The neo classical theory of the firm, entrepreneurial activity is analogous to a fixed factor endowment because it sets a limit to the efficient size of the firm. The static and passive role of the entrepreneur in the neo-classical theory reflects the theory's emphasis on perfect information, which trivializes management and decisions making, and on perfect markets, which do all the coordination that is necessary and leave nothing for the entrepreneur. The classical and the neo-classical tradition both concerned primarily with the establishment of natural or equilibrium prices. It is the French classical tradition that the origin of the idea that profit is an income different from received capital and that it goes to the entrepreneur.

J. B. Say built on the ideas of Cantillon and places the entrepreneur in a much more specialised and detailed role. He insisted that profit was a quite separate category of income from interest, and it was this that established the major distinction between the English and the French Classical economists. He regards the entrepreneur as a rare phenomenon who is able to coordinate and combine the factors of