Barriers To Entrepreneurship | Concept/misconception
Entrepreneurship has been identified as the vehicle of economic development and the major creator of job opportunities. The industrialization countries of the world depend in the entrepreneurship and indeed entrepreneurial activities to check unemployment and to improve the standard of living of her citizens.
In Nigeria, the level of unemployment and the general lack of middle class citizens are attributed to lack of entrepreneurship which has orchestrated the absence of entrepreneurs. It is therefore, necessary that the barriers to entrepreneurship are discussed, the knowledge of which will arouse interest and create passion for entrepreneurship. The barriers to entrepreneurship include but not limited to the following;
Barriers To Entrepreneurship
- The Misconception of the Concept
The concept of entrepreneurship is grossly misconstrued in Nigeria. Each time entrepreneurs are mentioned in Nigeria the average mind goes to sole proprietors, petty traders, artisans, transporters, tailors, eatery centres owners, vendors, bakers, small-scale business owners and so on. The implication is that whoever wants to go into business is interested in offering what others have offered without scanning the environment to find virgin areas of investment.
People provide what has been offered not necessarily what the market needs. Entrepreneurs, however, are dealing with uncertainty about the profitability of their new combinations of resources. Since entrepreneurs cannot insure against the profitability that new goods and services will fail, entrepreneurs bear the burden of the uncertainty associated with the market process. Guys like Schumpeter .J. and Israel .K greatly advanced our understanding of the role of the entrepreneur as an innovator.
To Schumpeter, an entrepreneur is someone who finds new combinations of resources and creates products that did not previously exist. From a Schumpeter view, the entrepreneur is a disruptive force in an economic progress. In addition to stressing the disruptive role of entrepreneur, Schumpeter differential between innovators and creditors.
Innovators serve the creative function while creditor serve the finance function. Israel K is of the view that entrepreneurship stands in some contrast to Schumpeter’s. Instead of focusing on the dis-equilibrating role of the entrepreneur, Israel K. views entrepreneur as an equilibrating force in which entrepreneurs discover previously unnoticed profit opportunities and act on them, bringing market towards their zero economic profit, long-run equilibria.
Thus Kirzner’s arbitraging entrepreneurs initiates a change that moves a market towards equilibrium, rather than disrupting an existing equilibrium as does Schumpeter’s entrepreneur. Uoicombe attempts to bring together the Schumpeterian and Kirznerian view by explaining that a Schumpeterian innovation such as the instruction of automobile creates multitudes or new profit opportunities in areas like auto accessories and fuel delivery that are there to be exploited by Kirznerian entrepreneurs.
Borne out of that, entrepreneurship is a process of generating sound