Entrepreneur's Handbook
DEVELOPMENTS IN DEFINITIONS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Today, the approach of entrepreneurship with an innovation-centered approach is of course the result of economic, social and intellectual progress. The concept of entrepreneurship has had important changes in its content since the 1730s, when it was first used in commercial terms, until today. Richard Cantillon, who used the concept of entrepreneurship in the French literature for the first time, dealt with entrepreneurship mostly with the dimension of uncertainty. According to him, an entrepreneur is the person who purchases and / or produces the inputs of production in order to sell at a price that has not yet been determined. According to Cantillon, the main feature of entrepreneurs is that they live on an unspecified income (Cantillon, 2010).
Jean Baptiste Say, one of the thinkers who followed Cantillon, who first described entrepreneurship in terms of risk and uncertainty, brought a holistic approach to entrepreneurship in 1845. According to this approach, entrepreneurs are people who work to produce commercial products and have the responsibility to bring together production factors consisting of natural resources and capital. In this definition of J.B Say, which is used even today, the managerial responsibilities of the entrepreneur have been brought to the fore.
With the increase in economic activities, interest in entrepreneurship has also increased significantly. The approach to entrepreneurship within the historical ground has also started to develop towards an innovative axis mentioned above. Joseph A. Schumpeter has made an important contribution in this area. Being one of the important idols of innovative economics, Schumpeter emphasized that entrepreneurship is one of the most important elements of the economy and emphasized that the main responsibility of the entrepreneur is to increase the welfare of the society by introducing innovations of different types. (Schumpeter, 1976).
Although Schumpeter's definition of entrepreneurship as more innovation and value creation activities was a revolutionary definition according to the conditions of the period, it was not emphasized much under the conditions of World War II, however, from the 80's to the present, the concepts of entrepreneurship and innovation have been used as concepts that are very close to each other.
These approaches, which have been put forward in relation to entrepreneurship in the historical flow, provide a deeper approach to understanding entrepreneurship today and who the entrepreneur is. Accordingly, it is possible to define the entrepreneur as a person who takes risks in order to obtain a certain return and has the responsibility to make innovations by bringing together production factors.
It is of course possible to increase the definitions for entrepreneurship. However, what is more important here is what the entrepreneur is or is not in a business. For example, the difference between the entrepreneur and the owner of the capital will differ depending on how we define the entrepreneur. Generally, the entrepreneur is also considered as the property owner of the business and it is suggested that the indispensable characteristic of the entrepreneur should be the owner of capital (money). However, as can be seen in the definitions given by the important thinkers above, capital ownership is not the basic characteristic of the entrepreneur. In other words, owning the capital of the established enterprise alone will not be enough to make an entrepreneur. For example, an entrepreneur can develop a business idea and project it in order to seize an opportunity in the market, and obtain capital by presenting his project to family members or an institution such as KOSGEB, and using this capital can produce and market the product or service. In this example, the fact that the entrepreneur's share in the company is very low does not mean that the person is not an entrepreneur. For this reason, the main function of the entrepreneur in the business is not to own capital, but to develop a business idea and to bring together the resources required by this business idea and to create value in summary.