Purpose of Entrepreneurship – Entrepreneurship is a behavior, attitude, and ability to organize or manage a business and have creativity to provide services to consumers, and benefit from trading activities. When this explanation can be implemented into a business unit, then entrepreneurship can generate prosperity for oneself and be able to provide benefits to society at large.
The concept of entrepreneurship was actually first formulated by Richard Cantillon. Cantillon was a 17th century economist of Irish origin who had spent his entire life in France. Cantillon himself has a thought that is known through one of the texts on modern economics that first appeared, the text entitled Essai sur la nature du commerce en général.
As quoted from the Library of Economics and Liberty website, Cantillon argues that entrepreneurship refers to an activity of economic actors who carry out organizational activities and dare to bear the risks of the business in exchange for profits. In simple terms, entrepreneur means someone who dares to take business risks, namely in the form of losses.
Initially, entrepreneurship was labeled as an innate ability or skill as well as a talent that emerged from direct experience practice. The involvement of these traditional views makes entrepreneurship not taught in schools or universities. The majority of people think that entrepreneurship is a talent that must be honed through the process of experiencing it directly.
However, the development of studies on modern economics has finally succeeded in changing this traditional view. The two researchers from the United States, namely Thomas W. Zimmerer and Norman M. Scarborough agreed on a conclusion that entrepreneurship can become a science and can be taught in a systematic and sustainable manner. This opinion was immediately accepted by the community and changed views about entrepreneurship. As a result, entrepreneurship can be trained and taught to someone.
According to Zimmerer, through his academic work entitled Entrepreneurship and Venture Formation, which was published in 1996, argued that the definition of entrepreneurship is a mental attitude resulting from discipline. In addition, entrepreneurship must be accompanied by creativity and innovation in conducting competition in the commercial market.
A. Entrepreneurship Goals
One way to determine the level of welfare in a country is by knowing the number of entrepreneurs. Welfare indicators can be seen from the number of entrepreneurs at least 2 percent of the total population of a country. In accordance with data cited from the Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs that in 2017, the number of business actors in Indonesia reached 3.1 percent of the total population.
Even though it is above the minimum standard, the number of business actors in Indonesia is still less than that of several neighboring countries. For example, Singapore has 7 percent of the population with entrepreneurs, while Malaysia has 5 percent, Thailand has 4.5 percent, then Vietnam has 3.3 percent.
It is this data that makes the Indonesian government immediately issue various policies to encourage increasing public interest, especially youth, to create entrepreneurs. Some of the policies issued are teaching entrepreneurship material at schools, universities, to entrepreneurship scholarships from the Ministry of Finance, and so on.
All the efforts that have been made have the aim of being an encouragement and entrepreneurial spirit from Indonesian citizens. This effort is in line with the purpose of entrepreneurship itself, namely to produce progress and prosperity for society.
Quoting from old lumen learning, entrepreneurial goals are very varied and have individual characteristics. Entrepreneurial goals can also depend on the personality of each person, which is different. Well, in general, the goals of entrepreneurship that need to be understood include: running a business independently, achieving financial success or a prosperous life, to pushing for social change or initiating social entrepreneurship.
Meanwhile, quoting from the Entrepreneurship book published in 2019, Katya from Dede Nasrullah, et al. Entrepreneurship has a number of objectives that need to be known, which are as follows:
1. Increasing the number of qualified entrepreneurs.
2. Cultivating entrepreneurial spirit, attitude, behavior, and abilities among the community.
3. Growing strong and strong entrepreneurial awareness and orientation in society.
4. Improving the ability of entrepreneurs to achieve progress and prosperity.
B. Understanding Entrepreneurship According to Experts
In general, in contemporary terms, entrepreneurship is a way of “cashing in” something with a creative and innovative nature that is processed through effort. The end result of entrepreneurship is the creation of new businesses that are formed in conditions full of risk or uncertainty.
Quoting the Class X Craft and Entrepreneurship Module (2020) published by the Ministry of Education and Culture, there are a number of definitions of entrepreneurship that have been put forward by experts in this field. The following is the definition of entrepreneurship that needs to be known, including:
1. John J (1993)
John J defines entrepreneurship as an effort to create value through the introduction of business opportunities, appropriate risk-taking management, and through communication skills. The goal is to mobilize a person, people, money and raw materials or other resources needed to make the project run well.
2. Thomas W. Zimmerer (1996)
Zimmerer (1996) revealed, entrepreneurship is the process of applying creativity and innovation in an effort to find solutions to problems and find opportunities to improve life. With some of these meanings, then in entrepreneurship at least it has elements of something new (creative) and something different (innovative), as well as providing benefits and added value.
3. Robert D. Hisrich (2005)
According to Hisrich, the notion of entrepreneurship is a dynamic process or the creation of additional wealth by individuals, who dare to take big risks, provided that there is reasonableness, time, and career commitment, or giving value to goods/services that are new and unique or not, all of which are it can be realized if there is support from demand and supply (in the market), skills, and resources.
4. Instruction of the President of the Republic of Indonesia Number 4 of 1995
In the Presidential Decree of the Republic of Indonesia Number 4 of 1995, the definition of entrepreneurship is the spirit, attitude, behavior and ability of a person in handling business, or activities that lead to efforts to find, create, implement new ways of working, technology and products, by increasing efficiency in order to provide better service and earn more profit.
That way, it can be concluded that the notion of entrepreneurship (entrepreneurship) is the process of doing something new (creatively), and something different (innovation results) that is useful and gives added value to a type of goods or services.
C. Characteristics of Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurial activities are carried out in practice directly by creating added value through a variety of new and innovative ways of combining various resources, of course the main goal is to win over competition in the market. Therefore, a person must have a lot of creative ideas and have a high level of innovation ability in order to become an entrepreneur or an entrepreneur.
One’s ability is an object in the eyes of entrepreneurship learning. This is because entrepreneurship studies the values, abilities and behavior of a person in increasing creativity and the power to innovate. Entrepreneurial ability can be realized when a business actor is able to formulate life goals, has the ability to manage time, has the ability to learn from something that is natural or from experience, has the ability to dare to face challenges, to have a strong mental ability to overcome various challenges and obstacles when entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurs can also be called entrepreneurs. An entrepreneur is a person who has a brave soul to take risks in carrying out work in order to obtain maximum results. Entrepreneurs have the courage to open a business when they get opportunities and have the opportunity and have no fear at all when they are in uncertain conditions, such as getting a loss or not making a profit or returning on investment.
The entrepreneur figure is an innovator who can apply many changes to the market through a variety of new combinations. Joseph Schumpeter (1934) argues that the new combination appears in the form:
- Introducing a new product or with a new quality
- Introducing a new production method
- Opening up new markets
- Obtaining new sources of supply on new materials or components
- Running a new organization in an industry.
Meanwhile, according to the book Crafts and Entrepreneurship for Class X students published by the Ministry of Education and Culture in 2017 it explains that, an entrepreneur has several unique characteristics that are inherent in him. The characteristics possessed by an entrepreneur are self-confidence, task and result oriented, dare to take risks, have a leadership spirit, prioritize originality, and be oriented to the future.
So, here are six characteristics of entrepreneurship and examples of their behavior in entrepreneurs, including:
1. Be confident
– Work with full confidence
– Do not have dependence in doing work
2. Oriented to tasks and results
– Satisfy the need for achievement
– Work orientation in the form of profit, tenacity, perseverance and hard work
– Accustomed to taking initiative
3. Risk takers
– Have the courage to take risks at work
– Have an interest in challenging work
4. Leadership
– Has the behavior of a leader who is open to suggestions and criticism
– Easy to get along with and easy to work with others
5. Thinking/oriented towards results (benefits)
– Creative and innovative
– Flexible in carrying out work
– Has a variety of resources
– Versatile and broad-minded
6. Originality (originality)
– Have advanced thinking
– Have a sharp point of view.
D. Entrepreneurship Dimension
There are two broad categories in the entrepreneurial dimension, namely Entrepreneurial Basic Quality and Entrepreneurial Instrumental Quality. The following is an explanation of each of the categories above:
1. Basic qualities of entrepreneurship,
The basic qualities of entrepreneurship are further divided into three things, namely:
a. Thinking power, namely the ability of an entrepreneur to think creatively to find a variety of new ideas that have never appeared from other people. Thinking power can be used by an entrepreneur to create innovation in developing a business.
b. Heart power, namely the expertise of an entrepreneur in cultivating determination, perseverance, tenacity, and always liking every business. Heart power makes an entrepreneur never give up on failure and always try to get up.
c. Physical strength, namely the strength of an entrepreneur who has physical endurance and good health. Physical strength will be very beneficial for an entrepreneur because having good health will make it easier for him to manage a business.
2. Entrepreneurial instrumental qualities
Instrumental quality is related to the ability to understand various kinds of scientific disciplines, be it one discipline, inter-disciplinary, and cross-disciplinary. Entrepreneurship is a combination or combination of a lot of knowledge and insight to get a better critical, creative and innovative attitude.
E. Benefits of Entrepreneurship for Yourself
The benefits of entrepreneurship are numerous, both for yourself and for the people around you. Referring to the opinion of Thomas W. Zimmerer, as quoted in the 2020 Class X Craft and Entrepreneurship Module published by the Ministry of Education and Culture, there are a number of benefits that entrepreneurship has for individuals, including the following.
1. Provide opportunity and freedom to self-determination.
An entrepreneur means being a person who is able to run his own business. That’s what makes entrepreneurship can provide greater freedom and opportunities to achieve life goals.
2. Provide opportunities to make changes
Entrepreneurial activity can provide an opportunity for everyone to create change. When a business actor succeeds in finding community needs that have never been met, the business that is created and carried out can make a big difference in society. Therefore, the CEO of Startup Alibaba, Jack Ma once said that, “opportunities are where many people complain.” The success of the Go-jek company can also be taken as an example, one of the things that Go-Jek has realized is because it can meet the needs of people who have not been met, namely easy and cheap means of transportation.
3. Provide opportunities to reach their full potential
Entrepreneurial activity can enable a person to reach his full potential. This can happen because someone who builds his own business, or carries out entrepreneurial activities, is the same as being an alternative to developing his potential to the fullest. This benefit can be a solution for many people who may feel bored with working under a company.
4. Have the opportunity to make a profit
Entrepreneurship is the same as taking risks in the form of losses to get bigger profits. Running a business certainly promises a growing profit, however, being an entrepreneur also means having the courage to bear the risk of loss, or even bankruptcy.
5. Have the opportunity to play an active role in society and get recognition for their efforts
All entrepreneurs, both small business actors, can have a big role in society. The role could be in the form of providing employment opportunities.
6. Have the opportunity to do something you like and foster a sense of joy in doing it
Doing business independently means the same as pursuing a field that is in accordance with what you have chosen yourself. This means that entrepreneurs have the potential to get the freedom to pursue work that is in line with what they are interested in and like. The luxury of being in a world you like is of course difficult for employees who have to work according to the orders of their superiors.