Deconstructing the Worth of Entrepreneurship

¶ … Values of Being an Entrepreneur

Intrepreneurship is important for so many different reasons. Some of these are decidedly practical, such as the reduction of job opportunities during economic times that are less than desirable (which is currently the case). Others are perceived as more personal in nature, such as the fact that some people are not partial to working for others and would rather do so for themselves. Still, it is worth mentioning that intrepreneurship has plenty of difficulties that accompany situations in which individuals choose to expand their businesses. They have to deal with competition, increasing attention from governmental and regulatory agencies, and market trends that can impact whatever industry in which they are involved. Still, when one stops to considers both the positive and negative aspects of intrepreneurship, it becomes perfectly clear that intrepreneurship is vital to a capitalist system because it enables market forces to continually evolve and presents new forms of revenue generation.

Essentially, intrepreneurship is important because it fosters creativity. Such creativity takes many forms and can be as simple as individuals expressing their own innate creativity through the realm of business or as vital as allowing for the basic forces of competition upon which capitalism is founded. The latter has enduring importance in Western society. Quite simply, intrepreneurship provides for the creation of new market forces so that the system of capitalism can continue to evolve. Without intrepreneurship and entrepreneurship, and the injection of new types of business and new types of organizations operating them, there is the possibility that monopolies could occur and eventually result in a situation in which all of the world's resources are centralized and privy only to a select few.

Intrepreneurship is of extreme importance to the particular company that expands based on this concept. Intrepreneurship is what allows such companies to thrive and to engage in business practices. Without intrepreneurship, virtually everyone that is working for the new businesses of a company that is founded upon this principle would instead be working for another company. In fact, some companies continue to exist simply because of the whole notion of intrepreneurship. For instance, they are able to extend their lines of business from those that the company is traditionally associated with to other ones, which enable them to generate additional sources of revenue and to stay in business. A fairly good example of this capacity of intrepreneurship is found in the industrial internet in the form of equipment asset management. Traditionally, original equipment manufacturers have created and sold various forms of industrial equipment (such as jet engines or equipment for oil refineries) that require monitoring to determine when these assets might need servicing or maintenance. Currently, there are new technological advances that allow these same companies to monitor those assets with both real time and predictive analytics options (Harper). Now, those original equipment manufacturers can also offer an additional service to their customers -- the ability to monitor their equipment assets and service them before any sort of accident or malfunction occurs -- that is another means by which the manufacturer can make money from its customers. The creation of new products and services (and bringing them to the marketplace) is the very foundation upon which intrepreneurship is founded. It is important for companies to continue to utilize the intrepreneurial spirit so that they can come up with new, creative ways to stay in business.

Another really good example for the way that intrepreneurship advantages the enterprise is found in the case study provided by Amazon and its founder, Jeff Bezos. Initially, Bezos founded his business on the mere buying and selling of books, and did not believe that it would profit in its early stages (Hill and Jones c271). Bezos is an excellent example of an intrepreneur and entrepreneur for many reasons. One of the most notable pertaining to the latter is that after reading projections of the growth of the internet in the 1990's, he quit his job in the finance world and drove to the Western portion of the United States (in Seattle) to start Amazon as a book selling business. However, Bezos did not let his intrepreneurial spirit stop with the mere success that Amazon encountered in its initial years in the book selling business. He continued to exhibit his intrepreneurial savvy by gradually expanding his company's business. Today, virtually every sort of good imaginable is sold on Amazon. Moreover, Bezos has effectively crossed into other markets that are nowhere near related to the sort of market in which his company was initially positioned. For instance, Amazon Web Services is one of the leading providers of clouds (both public and private) for the growing cloud computer industry. When Bezos first launched his company, however, cloud computing was barely imagined, let alone a reality. Thus, one of the important ways in which intrepreneurship is advantageous to the company that practices it and is led by this ideal is the fact that it enables companies to expand their businesses -- which means that it enables it to stay in business.