What is an entrepreneur? ACCA publisher TonySurridge looks for an answer

Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to the type of personality who is willing to take upon himself or herself a new venture or enterprise and accepts full responsibility for the outcome. Jean-Baptiste Say, a French economist, believed to have coined the word Entrepreneur first in about at 1800. He said an entrepreneur is "one who undertakes an enterprise, especially a contractor, acting as intermediatory between capital and labour".

Entrepreneurship is often difficult and tricky, resulting in many new ventures failing. The word entrepreneur is often synonymous with founder. Most commonly, the term entrepreneur applies to someone who creates value by offering a product or service, by carving out a niche in the market that may not exist currently. Entrepreneurs tend to identify a market opportunity and exploit it by organising their resources effectively to accomplish an outcome that changes existing interactions within a given sector.

Business entrepreneurs are viewed as fundamentally important in the capitalistic society.

This type of enterprise normally uses the simplest form of organisational structure where the owner makes all the major decisions. The role and tasks of the other employees are determined by the owner on an ad hoc basis. It exhibits Handy’s ‘Power culture’ which is covered in several ACCA study e-books published by ACCA study publishers TonySurridge.co.uk.

We recommend the TonySurridge.co.uk ACCA study e-books which cover exam text, diagnostic questions and answers, mnemonics and charts in selected subjects. These provide important support for students studying the ACCA syllabus.