Who invented business

It wasn't until the middle of the 20th century that economists seriously attempted to incorporate entrepreneurship into their models. Three thinkers were central to the inclusion of entrepreneurs in later iterations of economics: Joseph Schumpeter, Frank Knight, and Israel Kirzner.

Schumpeter suggested that entrepreneurs—not just companies—were responsible for the creation of new things in the search of profit. Knight focused on entrepreneurs as the bearers of uncertainty and believed they were responsible for risk premiums in financial markets.

Kirzner thought of entrepreneurship as a process that led to the discovery. Even though he was the first to describe in detail capitalist production and the profit motive of business owners, it wasn't Adam Smith who coined the term "entrepreneur. This is because the term was actually coined afterwards by an admirer of Adam Smith's book. Entrepreneur is a French word probably coined by the economist Jean-Baptiste Say from the word entreprendre, which is usually translated as "undertaker" or "adventurer.

Jean-Baptiste Say pointed out in his own writings that it was entrepreneurs who sought out inefficient uses of resources and capital and moved them into more productive, higher yield areas. Simply put, entrepreneurs seek opportunities for profit and, by doing so, create new markets and fresh opportunities. By constantly disrupting the balance of competition, entrepreneurs prevent monopolies from forming and create a wide diversity of products that keep consumers consuming and producers producing.

In return for taking these risks, successful entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Henry Ford reap fortunes far beyond those of normal agents in the economy.

Say put the focus on entrepreneurs because he was one. As a cotton manufacturer, he saw how an entrepreneur must be able to recognize opportunities and manage them effectively.

Thomas Jefferson read the English translation and tried to convince Say to teach in his new nation. Although Say never stepped foot on U. Combining Adam Smith's free-market principles and Say's entrepreneurial call to arms , the U. Henry G. Accessed June 26, Jean-Baptiste Say. A distinct subset of green entrepreneurs were engineers, or even tinkerers, who believed in the potential of technical innovation either to achieve goals they had set for religious or social reasons or simply because they were fascinated or obsessed by machines.

They were prominent among the early wind and solar entrepreneurs, such as Paul la Cour and Frank Shuman onwards. Their later incarnations included Elliot Berman and Ishaq Shahryar, who perceived solar energy as a way to tackle poverty in the developing world.

Both geographical and temporal context also mattered in shaping entrepreneurial consciousness. Although the importance of individual agency has been emphasized here, this does not mean that entrepreneurs should be seen as lone heroes acting in a vacuum.

They perceived opportunities within distinct institutional and geographical contexts. A distinct subset of green entrepreneurs were engineers, or even tinkerers, who believed in the potential of technical innovation. Environmental commitments and green entrepreneurship arose from concerns about the impact of industrialization on the health of people and the planet.

It was not surprising, as a result, that until recently green entrepreneurship was concentrated in the industrialized regions of northwest Europe and the United States. Germany and the United States appear particularly well-represented in the history of green entrepreneurship told in this book, but this may be primarily because it was slightly easier to grow businesses in those countries.

From the s onward, values-driven green entrepreneurs arose far more widely around the world than in the past, as the environmental costs of economic growth and prosperity became evident, as they had earlier in the West. They included entrepreneurs in beauty in Brazil, eco-tourism in Costa Rica, ecological architecture in Malaysia and renewable energy in China. These problems are all too familiar to many of our readers running teams and legal departments.

In Genpact it has been a question of building a culture that allows lawyers a working environment based on outcomes, and encourages the team to work as they choose, not as cogs within a predetermined pattern.

Sometimes people confuse trust with a lackadaisical attitude. Each of the lawyers has their own projects, their own clients, their own stakeholders. And there is plentiful evidence of this, he adds. A contractual joint venture was set up, and the partners commenced bidding for projects as a consortium.

The strategy failed. Indeed, as we explored in our whistleblower feature see GC Winter issue , many of the worst excesses of the financial services industry post-Lehman resulted from actions that were inadequately thought through, and driven by profit, not greater purpose.

There is often a learning curve for both the legal and the business teams, which involves revisiting the overarching purpose of the business. Chinese commercial people are now looking at deal opportunities with a long-term perspective. Many in-house are painfully aware that problems cannot be ignored, but focusing too much on the empty part of the glass and missing out on being an opportunity facilitator can mean that lawyers are not seen as part of the business culture.

In many of the stories from in-house counsel recounted here, the real value lawyers can bring is to ensure that risk management is a positive skein within the fabric of the company — tightly woven into the culture. Yet when speaking to those interested in their role as part of the whole business, and their department within the broader company, their comments would resoundingly echo many of the words written by Peter Drucker 50 or more years ago.

Perhaps he really was the man who invented management. Born in Vienna in , Peter Drucker was raised in an intellectual liberal household and grew up listening to the sound of many ideas being discussed.

He then left for London and worked in insurance and also as an economist at a private bank. After his marriage in , Drucker and his wife Doris moved to the United States, where he was to spend the rest of his life. He began teaching and also worked as a writer and business consultant. Drucker continued to teach, write and consult well into his 90s.

He died in at the age of Skip to content. In the public mind, Big Business, especially the financial sector, seemed to be to blame for the onset of the Great Depression.

Reinforcing this sentiment was the book "The Modern Corporation and Private Property" that was published in , in which authors Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means argued that those who legally have ownership over public companies that is, the shareholders have been separated from their control, leaving management and the directors to manipulate the resources of companies to their own advantage without effective scrutiny. However, the public perception of corporations rebounded after World War II.

After , America was the only major industrial power to not be devastated by war. American corporations grew without major challenges for decades.

This exalted status was eventually challenged by multinationa l Japanese and German corporations in the s and s.

A decade or more later, many corporations found themselves embroiled in financial scandals, like Freddie Mac and AIG, which led to the loss of billions of dollars. Two-thirds of Americans have a favorable opinion of major companies and even more hold positive views of small businesses, according to the Public Affairs Council's Public Affairs Pulse Survey.

The organization reports that "while people think big businesses provide useful products and services and serve customers well, they are critical of companies for paying high executive salaries and not doing enough to protect the environment, create jobs and support communities. Penguin Random House. Charles A. Accessed May 12, Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means.

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