THE BUSINESS

ENTERPRISE
Enterprising and Enterpriser
INTRODUCTION LESSON
OBJECTIVE
By the end of this lesson, you should be able to

1. have a clear understanding of what Business

Enterprise Skills is.
2. explain concept of enterprising.
3. understand what an enterpriser is.
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: is 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: A skill is 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).

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 Enterprising
❖ 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.
❖ Enterprising is making things happen. This is seeing
business opportunities in all areas of life.
❖ Enterprising requires seeing business opportunities
in the future and planning how to maximize on
them.
❖ An enterprising involves taking risks and spending
money to start up a new product, business or idea.
❖ 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.

(write notes)
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 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.

2. It refers to a person who possesses skills, behaviors 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.

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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 chalks, 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.

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Enterpriser
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
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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

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