Understanding entrepreneurship an introduction

The idea of ‘enterprise’ has entered the lexicon of economic development tools, active labour market policies, and employability skills for graduates, amongst other areas of public and private life in recent years. A quick look at the literature, however, shows a much narrower application of the term even as late as the 1980s and 1990s, when ‘multinational enterprises’ was the dominant use of ‘enterprise’ in business and economics texts. ‘Entrepreneurship’ and ‘entrepreneur’ have longer histories but these have tended also to accrue new powers as economies have restructured and developed in new ways. As with other sub-disciplines, though enterprise and entrepreneurship have spread gradually beyond their traditional social cores, their study, application and analysis have evolved over time to embrace a wide range of strategic, social, political and economic areas. This chapter introduces the concept of ‘entrepreneurship’ and offers a launching platform for the remainder of the book.