Enterpreneurship: Nature, content, and essence

Abstract

In recent times, entrepreneurship is given a special attention to as entrepreneurship is customarily seen to be a virtually free and unlimited factor of economic growth. Meanwhile, the question of its nature, content, and essence remains unresolved. This leads not only to a misunderstanding of the entrepreneurship mechanism and the behavior of entrepreneurs, but also to mistakes in economic policy in relation to entrepreneurship, in particular, associated with over-expectations regarding the entrepreneurs’ focus on social needs. The problem is aggravated by the fact that scientific literature claims that there are at least three approaches to entrepreneurship analysis: 1) entrepreneurship as an economic category, 2) as a management method, and 3) as a type of economic mindset. Each approach has its right to exist due to the versatility of the entrepreneurship phenomenon itself. The aim of this article is to study entrepreneurship as an economic category. This is driven by the fact that the other two aspects of the analysis can be appropriately described only if they are derived from the true nature of the phenomenon. Having the principles of the system-evolutionary approach in mind, the author shows the inextricable connection between entrepreneurship and the development of exchange and market economy. At the same time, it is proven that the variety of approaches to entrepreneurship stems both from the evolution of entrepreneurship itself and from wrong exploitation of its analysis methodology. This approach is novel because the article looks at entrepreneurship as a special type of business behavior. This gives a substantial conclusion that the content side of entrepreneurship is the conquest of competitive advantages, while its essence means “non-violent acquisition”, i.e. accumulation of property through market transactions. Understanding the nature of entrepreneurship as a result of exchange process and a market change agent gives promising prospects for studies in the area of evolution of exchange forms and the forms and methods of entrepreneurship existence.

Keywords

entrepreneurship, theory of entrepreneurship, interpretation of entrepreneurship, nature of entrepreneurship, content of entrepreneurship, essence of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship agent, system-evolutionary approach, innovation, innovator

For citation

Taranukha Yu.V. Enterpreneurship: Nature, content, and essence. Perm University Herald. Economy, 2021, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 223–237. DOI 10.17072/1994-9960-2021-3-223-237

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