THE BUSINESS

ENTERPRISE
lesson 1
Enterprising and
Enterpriser
 OBJECTIVES

By the end of this lesson :

❑ The leaner should have a clear understanding
of what Business Enterprise Skills is.
❑ The learner should be able to explain concept
of enterprising.
❑ The learner should understand what an
Enterpriser is.

6/11/2020 2
INTRODUCTION
I want us to start by defining a few terms in this lesson as part of introducing Business Enterprise Skills to you.
We will start by defining the terms, business, enterprise and skills. This will help us understand the very
reason why we are studying this subject and will help us understand more concepts in this subject better.

Business: A commercial activity that is usually engaged in, to make a profit.

Enterprise: An organization, especially a business, or a difficult and important plan, especially one that will
earn money.
Skills: The ability to perform an action with determined results often within a given amount of time, energy,
or both.

From the definitions above we get that Business Enterprise Skills is going to teach us how to carry out a
commercial activity (business), through the execution of an important plan (enterprise), using our ability to
perform an action with determined results (skills).

3
Enterprising

o Enterprising is working hard to achieve a certain goal. For

instance, the provision of goods and services in order to
satisfy human needs and wants at a profit.
o Enterprising is making things happen. This is seeing
business opportunities in all areas of life.
o Enterprising requires seeing business opportunities in the
future and planning how to maximize on them.
o An Enterprising involves taking risks and spending money
to start up a new product, business or idea.
o Enterprising takes a mind that will not wait for
opportunities to come, but goes out to look for new
opportunities where they may seem not to exist.

o (write notes)
4
Enterpriser
There are many definitions of an Enterpriser which include the
following.
1. A person who starts a business to exploit a potential business
opportunity. Someone who takes a risk by starting a business if
there is a chance of making profit.
▪ He/She sets up a business to produce goods and services to
meet the needs of his or her customers. Schumpeter (1934)
asserts that an entrepreneur needs to be innovative, creative,
and should be able to take risk.
▪ This is a person who is also known as the entrepreneur. This
person is simply an economic agent who identifies market
opportunities and gathers the factors of production to take
advantage of such chances or opportunities at a profit.

5
2. It refers to a person who possesses skills, behaviours that are known to lead
to opportunity recognition, creativity, and innovation which all lead to the
success of the business enterprise.
• Barringer and Bluedorn (1999) have described Enterprisers as
individuals who can explore, discover the opportunities in the
environment, and exploit them after proper evaluation.

6
It is important at this stage to differentiate between goods and
services as we are going to be making reference to them throughout
the course.
Goods are items that are tangible, like chalk, salt, shoes, hats,
folders, books, or pens.
Services are intangible facilities provided by other people such as
teaching, nursing, transport, and insurance.
A customer is an individual or a business that purchases goods or
services produced by an enterprise.

•The enterpriser creates new businesses basing on new ideas, either inventions or new innovations.
•He/she can also be described as a person responsible for setting up a business enterprise.
•When an entrepreneur is able to generate a new idea that is feasible as well as efficient, it gives him or her an edge
over the competition.
•The ability to explore different roles is just like a learned skill or a resource that is possessed by an individual.
•An entrepreneur is someone who is fond of creating something new and enjoying the risks and rewards.

7
• The Enterpriser is an individual who sees chances, takes the risks in exploiting those chances
on the market through the use of factors of production and the team (employees).
• A business person earns profit and is not looking at growth. An entrepreneur, on the other
hand, is someone with new ideas or a solution to a current problem. Once that is done, an
entrepreneur looks for a bigger project to undertake.
• It is important at this stage to show the differences between an enterpriser and a business
owner.

8
• An entrepreneur aggressively focuses on
innovation, profit, and growth of the enterprise.
On the other hand, a small business owner's
objective and focus is mostly on managing
stable growth, sales, and profits.
• The process in which an entrepreneur starts
and operates his business enterprise is
entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship can also
be defined as a practice of starting a business in
order to earn profit on new found
opportunities.

9
 Exercise

1. What is a business? [2]

2. What is an enterprise? [2]
3. What are skills? [2]
4. Explain enterprising. [4]
5. What is an enterpriser? [6]
6. Define entrepreneurship. [4]

Total: 20

6/11/2020 10