Entrepreneurship has traditionally been defined as the process of designing, launching and running a new business, which typically begins as a small business, such as a startup company, offering a product, process or service for sale or hire, and the people who do so are called 'entrepreneurs'. It has been defined as the "...capacity and willingness to develop, organize, and manage a business venture along with any of its risks in order to make a profit."
While definitions of entrepreneurship typically focus on the launching and running of businesses, due to the high risks involved in launching a start-up, a significant proportion of businesses have to close, due to a "...lack of funding, bad business decisions, an economic crisis or a combination of all of these" or due to lack of market demand.
In the 2000s, the definition of "entrepreneurship" has been expanded to explain how and why some individuals (or teams) identify opportunities, evaluate them as viable, and then decide to exploit them, whereas others do not, and in turn, how entrepreneurs use these opportunities to develop new products or services, launch new firms or even new industries and create wealth.
At the heart of every successful business is a great idea. Some seem so simple, we wonder why nobody thought of them before. Others are so revolutionary we wonder how anybody could've thought of them at all.
#What's bugging you?
Ideas for startups often begin with a problem that needs to be solved. And they don't usually come while you're sitting around sipping coffee and contemplating life. Ideas tend to reveal themselves while you're hard at work on something else.
I will like to share a brief story about Jane Ni Dhulchaointigh, who invented Sugru. Intimidated by her surroundings and fearful that she was out of her depth in the prestigious corridors of the Royal College of Art, Jane Ni Dhulchaointigh hid herself away in the school workshop with a vague idea of finding a new, fix-everything material.
One of her series of experiments as she pursued her master's degree in product design was to combine bathroom sealant with wood-dust powder. It made balls that bounced when she dropped them.
"It was just a surprising moment. I made something that looked like wood and it bounced," she said. "I just wanted to create something that looked interesting or behaved in an interesting way, which could then lead me somewhere else."
Just over a decade later, those lab explorations have led to Sugru, a mouldable, setting silicone rubber that has been compared with Blu-Tack and Sellotape in terms of its significance.
The material can be shaped for 30 minutes after being taken from the small sealed packets it comes in, before it cures in the air into a strong, durable and waterproof substance that will stay stuck to almost any surface and can withstand extremes of temperature up to 150C.
The rise in popularity of Sugru, initially among the tech and "maker" community, has seen it used as a car engine sealant, in a school children's project to send a camera into space, and to personalize ski poles for a north pole adventurer. The youngest member of the British Olympic fencing team, James Davis, used a foil personalised with Sugru in the 2012 games.
It has been a long road to fruition for Ni Dhulchaointigh, who left the RCA with a rough idea of wanting to create a "really, really functional version of Blu-Tack that would be permanent and have lots of benefits". A summer show for graduates' ideas showed her that the public also had an interest in what she was planning.
"I had in mind this culture of people feeling empowered to improve their stuff, to fix it and that is the most difficult thing and the most exciting thing," she said.
What an amazing invention! We can all be Jane, Start thinking and creating...
See you at the top!
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