An entrepreneur is someone who perceives an opportunity and creates an organization to pursue it. The entrepreneurial process includes all the functions, activities, and actions that are part of perceiving opportunities and creating organizations to pursue them. But is the birth of a new enterprise just happenstance and its subsequent success or failure a chance process? Or can the art and science of entrepreneurship be taught?
The process of creating a new business is well understood. Yes, entrepreneurship can be taught. No one is guaranteed to become the Collison brothers (founders of the payment processor Stripe) or a Katrina Lake (founder of Stitch Fix, which started as a business school project and reached $2.1 billion in revenue in 20221 and IPO'ed in 2017) any more than a physics professor can guarantee to produce an Albert Einstein or a tennis coach can guarantee a Serena Williams. But students with the aptitude to start a business can become better entrepreneurs.
Critical Factors for Starting a New Enterprise
We will begin by examining the entrepreneurial process (see Figure 2.1). These are the factors—personal, sociological, organizational, and environmental—that give birth to a new enterprise and influence how it develops from an idea to a viable enterprise. A person gets an idea for a ...
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