Entrepreneurship and Intrapreneurship

Entrepreneurship: Is the process and willingness of creating or undertaking a business venture and manage it, alongside with its risks in order to make a profit.

Note: entrepreneur refers to a person while as entrepreneurship refers to the process. So the people who create these businesses are referred to as entrepreneurs and the process of creating a business and all that it requires to manage it, is referred to as entrepreneurship.

Intrapreneurship: Is the system where principles of entrepreneurship are used or practiced within an already established company. This applies in the event whereby a company wants to come up with other activates of making or generating extra money away from the revenue it generates from its core business.

An intrapreneur: Is a person who takes on the responsibility of innovating or coming up with new ideas, products, services that can be used within an already existing organization to make extra income; and in most cases these intrapreneurs are referred to as Business Development Managers (BDM).

The difference between an intrapreneur and entrepreneur is that; an intrapreneur is an employee working in an already existing company or organization while an entrepreneur does not work for any one or any company, he/she is the owner of the business and does not report to anyone.

Motive of Entrepreneurship

Motive is derived from the word motivate which simply refers to the reason or cause of doing something. If someone asks, ‘what is causing you to do what you are doing, or what is the reason behind your actions” they are simply asking what is your motivation.

Now having explained what the word motive means and having defined what entrepreneurship is, let us take a look at the motive of entrepreneurship as our next topic of discussion.

Question: What do you understand by the term, ‘motive of entrepreneurship?

Motive of Entrepreneurship is the derive or reason to why people start a business or become entrepreneurs, the desire to create something new, the desire for wealth, financial freedom, the willingness to achieve personal goals, the passion of leaving a legacy in the form of a long term profitable business.

Motivating Factors of Entrepreneurship

There are so many factors that motivate the emerging of entrepreneurs in today’s world, some of them may be internal factors while others may be as a result of external factors. Among many, we will explain a few internal and external motivating factors of entrepreneurship;

Internal Factors:

1. Financial Background: Money is a scarce commodity or resource and enables people to become entrepreneurs. Some are not satisfied with the regular monthly salary they get at their place of work and going into business seems like a good idea to generate an extra income. For some people it’s the fact that they haven’t had any luck in finding employment for a long time and going into business is deemed as the only way to regain their financial freedom.
2. Self-Actualization: According to Maslow’s need of hierarchy theory proved that motivation can bring energy, enthusiasm, creativity and efficiencies in fulfilling the desired objectives. Motivation activities innate strengths to achieve a particular goal. It is explained by Maslow’s hierarchy and it is the top level need refers to the desire for self-fulfillment. The need for financial freedom and self-fulfillment makes most people become well-formed entrepreneurs.
3. Sense of Freedom: Most people go into entrepreneurship because they want to win that sense of freedom, to be able to stay home with their families, travel from one place to the other scouting for other business opportunities without the need of reporting to someone and going into business for themselves allows them to do so.
4. Personal Background: Some people are born within a family of entrepreneurs, and going into business for themselves seems to be the correct thing to do as it is the only thing they have been exposed to. Sometimes it might not be necessarily starting up a business for themselves but to carry on with the family business that they inherited from their fore fathers.
5. Technical Qualifications/Education: This makes or enables someone to be an expert in a certain field. Specializing in one field makes or motivates someone to be an entrepreneur, to startup a business in their area of expertise. For instance, someone whose specialization is automobile mechanics will be motivated into going in business for themselves by opening a garage for car services.

External Factors:

1. Availability of Resources: If all the necessary resources are at our disposal, it really motivates someone into becoming an entrepreneur because everything you need to start a business is available such as land, labor, money, machinery, building and raw materials.
2. Demand for Product: High demand for a particular product/commodity motivates entrepreneurs to produce innovative and value added products or services. Product demand motivates most people into becoming entrepreneurs, for instance, the demand for tomato on the market as made a lot of people become business owners in the agriculture sector.
3. Government Concession: The given subsidies, concession and grants by the government through certain ministries and organizations such as the Ministry of Small Medium Enterprises, Citizen Economic Empowerment Commission, Pilot Project for Climate Resilience, Ministry of Agriculture, National Youth Development Community etc. has motivated entrepreneurs to produce new products or motivated individuals to become entrepreneurs.
4. Technology Advancement: The world is fast transforming from analog to digital and this has motivated a lot of entrepreneurs into producing innovative products and it has introduced a lot of businesses and entrepreneurs on the market.
5. Change in Taste and Preferences: The change in tastes and preferences has also motivated entrepreneurs to come up with new products and services to meet the needs and desires of people, it has also brought in a lot of people into becoming entrepreneurs. Tastes and preferences such as clothes, devices, food and types of modern and fancy places.

Importance or Benefits of Entrepreneurship to National Development

Entrepreneurship is frequently described as national treasure, it has the ability to change the way we live and work, it improves the standard of living and in addition to creating wealth, employment and contributes to a growing economy.

Entrepreneurship is important for so many reasons, from promoting social change to driving innovation, the creation of new products and services on the market by entrepreneurs can bring about positive effect, where it stimulates related businesses or sectors that need to support the new venture, furthering economic development. For example; in Zambia, industrialization is growing at a fast rate, a number of industries have been created by local entrepreneurs bring about economic development. According to an article published on the ZambiaInvest.com; in the past decades, the Zambian government made an essential move towards privatized and open market economy. This reduced Zambia’s heavy dependence on copper, leading to a growing trend towards non-traditional exports including agro-processing, primary products and textiles.

This trend has transformed the Zambian economy that has seen strong growth in recent years with Gross Domestic Product – GDP (GDP represents the total monetary value of all final goods and services produced and sold on the market within a country during a period of time usually for a period of one year. GDP is mostly used to measure the performance of a country’s economy). Growth more than 6 percent in the time period of 2005 to 2013. The GDP composition by sector of origin of Zambia includes agriculture industry that accounts for 19.8 percent of the GDP, product industry for 33.8 percent and services for 46.5 percent. Major industries of Zambia include copper mining and processing, construction, emerald mining, beverages, food, textiles, chemicals, fertilizer and horticulture. The main contributors to the overall growth of Zambian industry include manufacturing industry, agriculture industry, transport and communication, construction and wholesale and retail; these industries collectively accounted for more than 70 percent of gross domestic product.

These industries quickly expanded in Zambia and many other sectors benefited from them, businesses in associated industries such as carpentry, hardware stores (construction industry), auto spare stores (transport and communication industry), restaurant and cafeteria (food and agriculture industry) flourished. Education and training institutes nurtured new classes / courses of brick laying and carpentry, building science, construction and renovation of buildings, auto mechanics, hotel management, etc. creating a huge number of employment opportunities.

• Entrepreneurship helps to drive change with innovation, where new and improved products enables new markets to be developed.
• With new businesses emerging it improves the infrastructure, a number of buildings and roads are built bringing development.
• Economy wise, entrepreneurship can help boost national income and tax revenue.
• Social entrepreneurs use their businesses and creative skills to help identify and solve social problems on a large scale, the create businesses in various industries that can have a positive impact on society, including alternative energy, health awareness and education.