Entrepreneurship & Firm Creation

One party supplied capital and another supplied labour and expertise, sharing profit by agreement while the financier alone bore any loss, a structure that shaped trade across the Islamic world and beyond.

An investor supplied capital for a trading voyage and shared the profit with the travelling merchant while bearing the capital risk, letting people without seafaring skill fund commercial expeditions.

Pooling capital from many investors who bore limited risk in exchange for a share of profit created a durable template for financing large, long-distance ventures still recognisable in modern company law.

The Irish-French economist Cantillon gave the earliest formal definition of the entrepreneur as one who buys at a certain price and resells at an uncertain one, thus bearing risk. He separated the function of the risk-bearing entrepreneur from that of the owner supplying the money, a distinction foundational to classical economics and to later study of entrepreneurial activity.

The potter and entrepreneur devised direct mail, money-back guarantees, travelling salesmen and "buy one get one free" while meeting the demands of the consumer revolution behind Britain's Industrial Revolution. Historians have ranked him among the most innovative retailers ever, illustrating entrepreneurship as a driver of commercial method as well as product.

The word first appeared in the French Dictionnaire Universel de Commerce compiled by des Bruslons. In Britain the term "adventurer" was often used for the same meaning, marking an early stage in the vocabulary of enterprise.

The French economist described entrepreneurship as moving economic resources out of areas of lower yield and into areas of higher productivity. He identified entrepreneurs as drivers of economic development and as a collecting factor of production.

Jewish entrepreneurs initiated the UK fish and chip industry, with Malin's London shop the first. Samuel Isaacs later opened the first sit-down fish restaurant in 1896, expanding it into a chain of 22 restaurants.

Former samurai and merchant families built diversified conglomerates, including Mitsubishi and Mitsui, as the state pursued rapid industrialisation after the Meiji Restoration, fusing entrepreneurship with national policy.

The German Reich removed guild-era restrictions on operating as an entrepreneur, opening business formation to a wider group. This liberal interval preceded the reintroduction of competence requirements in the early twentieth century.

The Jewish brothers established a sporting goods firm that went on to hold the longest-running sporting sponsorship, supplying tennis balls to Wimbledon from 1902. It exemplifies durable brand-building by nineteenth-century entrepreneurs.

Marks co-founded the retailer Marks & Spencer while Isidore and Montague Gluckstein founded Lyons, whose teashop chain became a British high street staple. Lyons went on in 1951 to pioneer the use of computers in business.

Changes in politics and society in Russia and China permitted large-scale private enterprise where it had been suppressed. The result was the emergence of Russian oligarchs and Chinese millionaires, a decisive shift in where entrepreneurial activity occurred.

Both words entered English in 1902, well after the 1762 loan of "entrepreneur" itself. The coinages mark the point at which the activity became a named subject rather than merely a described role.

The Kleiner Befähigungsnachweis restricted the training of apprentices to craftspeople holding a Meister certificate, reviving guild-style regulation after the freedom of trade period. Proof of competence was not yet required merely to start a business.

Schumpeter argued that entrepreneurs convert new ideas or inventions into successful innovations, destroying old industries while creating new products and business models. His 1934 work held that changing environments continuously reveal new information, which some individuals exploit for entrepreneurial profit, shifting the production-possibility curve upward.

The Großer Befähigungsnachweis required craftspeople to obtain a Meister apprentice-training certificate before being permitted to set up a new business. The requirement was reasserted again in 1953, constraining entry into craft entrepreneurship.

The catering entrepreneurs behind the Lyons teashop chain applied computing to commercial operations, an early instance of enterprise IT adoption. It shows established entrepreneurial firms driving technological diffusion.

The new arm extended development finance beyond loans to governments, backing private enterprises directly in developing economies and establishing a template later followed by regional development banks.

Having been largely ignored theoretically until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, entrepreneurship became a major empirical field from the late 1970s. This resurgence built the measurement base for treating entrepreneurial activity as a national capability.

The two partnerships formalised the practice of funding new technology companies in exchange for equity and board involvement, creating the institutional model that later spread worldwide.

A 1977 survey of management scholars named Frederick Winslow Taylor, Chester Barnard, Frank Bunker Gilbreth Sr., Elton Mayo and Lillian Moller Gilbreth as the top five pioneers. Such rankings reflect the codification of managerial knowledge underpinning enterprise formation.

The Communist Party's shift toward household responsibility farming and township and village enterprises allowed private economic activity for the first time in decades, seeding the entrepreneurship that later drove China's growth.

The Bangladeshi bank lent small amounts without collateral to people excluded from formal credit, demonstrating that very small-scale entrepreneurship could be financed reliably at large scale outside conventional banking.

Facing a balance-of-payments crisis, the government scrapped much of its industrial licensing system and welcomed foreign investment, ending decades of restrictions that had confined entrepreneurship to a narrow, permitted list of activities.

The initiative, launched in January 2016, has recognised a large and growing number of start-ups for tax and regulatory benefits, though funding for new ventures remained well below the peak reached in 2021.

Riyadh has been trying to lift small and medium enterprises' share of GDP toward roughly a third by 2030, using streamlined licensing, funding guarantees and dedicated industrial zones to encourage new company formation.

Further states signed compacts offering tax breaks and regulatory support to labelled start-ups, building out an initiative originally intended to formalise Lagos and Abuja's technology sectors nationwide.

A fresh wave of demonstrations, echoing the 2024 tax protests, closed markets and shops in the capital for days at a time, underscoring how recurring unrest can interrupt the informal and small-enterprise economy that employs most working Kenyans.

Resolution 68 set a target of roughly two million active enterprises by 2030 and directed reduced red tape and easier access to land and credit for new firms, marking a shift in official doctrine on private business.

Almost 75% of male entrepreneurs were found to start a firm in the same or a related industry as their father. The result highlights family transmission as a mechanism of entrepreneurial activity.

The online system, intended to cut the number of separate agency visits needed to start a business, added further licences and approvals, part of a broader effort to simplify company formation ahead of graduation from least-developed-country status.

The scheme, which certifies smaller firms with strong niche technology positions for preferential financing and procurement, continued adding cohorts even as broader new business registration growth slowed amid weaker domestic demand.

The annual survey again found early-stage entrepreneurial activity running highest in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, where necessity-driven start-ups are common, and lowest in several high-income East Asian economies with strong corporate employment.

The MEI category, which lets very small businesses formalise for a flat monthly fee, has grown past fifteen million registered microentrepreneurs, extending a formalisation drive underway since the late 2000s.

The 17-item validated instrument measures entrepreneurial behaviour at the individual level, addressing the gap between firm-level and personal measurement. It extends the five-dimension Entrepreneurial Orientation framework to individuals.

The programme aimed to move a large share of the country's roughly sixty million micro, small and medium enterprises onto e-commerce and digital payment platforms, treating digital onboarding as a route into the formal economy.

Research published in 2022 found enterprising tendency negatively associated with a persistent tendency to see oneself as a victim. Among people with lower self-efficacy, lower trait victimhood predicted founding at least one business initiative.

Their book The Business of Culture identified cultural personalities, tycoons and collective enterprises as distinct forms of cultural entrepreneurship. The typology broadened analysis of enterprise beyond conventional industry.

A 2014 study found entrepreneurs showed higher decision-making efficiency and stronger activation in brain regions associated with explorative choice compared with typical managers. Research the same year also reported links between entrepreneurship and historical sea piracy.

The researchers examined traits that could potentially identify who may become an entrepreneur at an early age. Such work supports policy aimed at cultivating entrepreneurial capability through education.

A 2011 article set out a three-step framework for strategic entrepreneurship. It contributed to the formalisation of entrepreneurship as a manageable, teachable process.

From 2008 an annual Global Entrepreneurship Week aimed at exposing people to the benefits of entrepreneurship and prompting participation in entrepreneurial activities. It institutionalised promotion of enterprise culture across many countries.

Compiling 2.7 million company founders who hired at least one employee between 2007 and 2014, the study established the average age of a successful start-up founder at founding as 45. The finding countered assumptions about youth-driven entrepreneurship.

The Stanford economist's study found that breadth of education and work experience was the most important characteristic distinguishing entrepreneurs from non-entrepreneurs. Later work in 2013 by Backes-Gellner and Moog added diverse social networks as a predictor.

A survey of 58 business history professors placed Henry Ford first, followed by Bill Gates, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and Thomas Edison. The exercise reflects scholarly consensus on which entrepreneurs most shaped American industrial capability.

Governments pursued policies to stimulate business creation in the hope of raising economic growth and competition. Support structures included specialised government agencies, business incubators, science parks and non-governmental advocacy bodies.

Usage of the term expanded beyond for-profit business to include social entrepreneurship, political and knowledge entrepreneurship, and intrapreneurship within existing firms. The decade also saw growing focus on how individuals identify, evaluate and exploit opportunities, and the rise of story-telling in cultural entrepreneurship.

The two business schools created an annual survey measuring the rate at which adults start businesses across dozens of countries, establishing the standard reference data set for entrepreneurial activity worldwide.