Entrepreneurship, 3rd Edition

CHAPTER 1

THE POWER OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs: Entrepreneurial leaders who drove the information technology revolution that transformed the way in which we live, work, and play.

This is the entrepreneurial age. More than 500 million persons worldwide either were actively involved in trying to start a new venture or were owner-managers of a new business in 2012.¹

More than 1,500 new businesses are born every hour of every working day in the United States. Entrepreneurs are driving a revolution that is transforming and renewing economies worldwide. Entrepreneurship is the essence of free enterprise because the birth of new businesses gives a market economy its vitality. New and emerging businesses create a very large proportion of the innovative products and services that transform the way we work and live, such as personal computers (PCs), computer software, the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW or Web), social media, biotechnology drugs, overnight package deliveries, and big-box stores. They generate most new jobs; from 1993 through 2011, companies with 500 or fewer employees created 64% of all new jobs in the United States; that number increased slightly to 67% from mid-2009 through 2011 in the aftermath of the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.²

There has never been a better time to practice the art and science of entrepreneurship. ...