Definition
Entrepreneurship is derived from the French word “entreprendre” and the German word “unternchmen” meaning undertaking. That is, an entrepreneur is someone promises to organize, handle, and undertake risks of an economic activity (Ahmad Poordariani, (2002) cited in Vakili et.al (2016)). Entrepreneurship can be thought as the skill of providing solutions and creating a responsive tool aimed at better productivity in different industrial and governmental fields (Aggarmall and Esposito, 2001). In management sciences, entrepreneurship is considered to focus on 4 factors of decision making, strategy and performance, organizational design, and risk-taking (Shane and Ulrich, 2001).
According to Susilaningsih as cited in INPRES (1995: 4) Entrepreneurship is defined as the enthusiasm, behavior, and ability of a person to handle business and/or activities that lead to efforts to find, create, implement work methods, technology and new products by increasing efficiency in the context of more service both and or gain greater profits. Because entrepreneurship is the spirit, behavior and abilities of a person, entrepreneurship involves entrepreneurial behavior, namely: taking initiative; organizing and reorganizing social and economic mechanisms to change resources and situations to be more useful and profitable; and take risks and failures. Entrepreneurship is a dynamic process in creating wealth, and the process of creating something new that has value by devoting the time and effort needed, taking financial, psychological and social risks, and obtaining results in the form of finance, personal satisfaction and freedom. Entrepreneurship can occur in all fields (Hisrich, Peters and Shepherd, 2005).
Moving on from the definition of entrepreneurship one must now understand the meaning of entrepreneurship education. It can be seen as being two dimensional in the sense that it involves students developing a broad range of entrepreneurial skills, attitudes and behaviours whilst also developing knowledge about entrepreneurship (www.educationuk.org). It should also be noted that entrepreneurship education differs to the typical business education one is accustomed to learning about. According to Vesper and McMullen (1988:9) one of the main objectives of entrepreneurship education that differentiates it from standard business education is “to generate more quickly a greater variety of different ideas for how to exploit a business opportunity, and the ability to project a more extensive sequence of actions for entering business…” Furthermore Kyro (2003) states “Education is often focused on supporting the development of knowledge and the intellect, whereas entrepreneurship education concentrates on the human being as a whole (including his or her feelings, values and interests)” (Cited in Heinonen and Poikkijoki, 2006:84).
Entrepreneurship Education
Aggarual & Eposito, as cited in Vakili et.al. (2016) stated “Nowadays, entrepreneurship is considered as a growth and development force of organizations and societies; therefore, world’s great universities have taken education and development of entrepreneurial thinking into account in their curriculum, and developing entrepreneurial skills and innovations has become a major academic educational concern in different societies. Entrepreneurship in each society is linked with a large number of benefits either independently or within an organization; therefore, this concept is highly significant. These benefits include economic growth and development, productivity, and creation of new technology.
An important challenge of entrepreneurship in today’s world is the challenge of correct defining needs, opportunities, gaps, and more importantly education of active entrepreneurs who need to learn appropriately to their career life span (Moghimi & Ahmadpour Darayani, cited in Vakili et.al (2016). Nowadays, the importance of entrepreneurship education is well understood in universities, because it is seen as an opportunity to relearn (Charney and Libecap, (2003) cited in Vakili et.al (2016)).
The concept of entrepreneurship refers to the future when old and current principles and concepts of management will change under new conditions. Also, it is a process through which something new with almost new values is obtained by spending enough time and endeavor and by taking into account financial and social risks and achieving financial awards and job satisfaction (Aisrich and Peters, 2005).
In most definitions of entrepreneurship, there is an agreement that we are discussing a type of behavior that:
- Is innovative,
- Organizes or reorganizes economic-social mechanisms in order to convert the situations and resources into practical cases, and
- Undertakes risk or failure (Sharpero, 1998, p 178).
Entrepreneurship is the ability to create knowledge out of nothing, the capacity to understand how to find, organize, and control the resources which are mostly in hands of others (Timmons, 1999, p 2-4).
The Important of Entrepreneurship Education
- Strengthening the capacity to create ideas and innovation,
- Accelerating business application of these ideas and innovations and extending these capacities, and
- Creating entrepreneurship education programs, which causes those who graduated in the past also become interested in up-to-date and transferable entrepreneurship programs (Cooper et.al, 2004).
Entrepreneurship education puts emphasis on imagination, creativity, and risk acceptance in business, on the contrary, traditional views put more emphasis on quantitative techniques than development of creative skills (Porter, 1994).
Roach (1999) referred to some goals of entrepreneurship education courses as follow:
- Promoting an individual entrepreneur’s personal knowledge,
- The ability to distinguish business opportunities,
- Enhancing main knowledge and skills in order to create an effective and flexible program for a risky business,
- The ability to identify types of business within the strategies available for entrepreneurship, and
- Understanding the required skills and current methods of collecting data needed for the marketing of a new business (Roach, 1999).
Other aspects that can be promoted through entrepreneurship education include: communication, problem-solving skill, team work, self-management, and planning. (Fones, 2004). Cited in (Vakili. Et.al. 2016, p.82)